Building Cabinet Drawers

Face frames cover plywood edges.

Building cabinet drawers.

Let s stick with those since it makes sizing your drawer super. Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. Building drawers still stress me out every single time. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square.

Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases. How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material. This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides. To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints.

When you follow these instructions you ll end up with an inset drawer that has a perfect 1 2 wide space for a drawer slide. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one. I like to use plywood to build my drawers because then i don t have to worry about twisted or warped boards causing me issues with alignment.

This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. Most traditional side mounted drawer slides require 1 2 clearance on each side of the drawer. Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation.

My journey learning to build drawers the very first time i built a drawer was for this x leg accent. Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. Avoid getting glue into the dado grooves position the first two pieces with the dovetails aligned and tap the dovetail joints together at the corners of one side image 1. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out.

But i don t try to stay away from them anymore. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible. If the cabinet is more than 30 in. Best of all this technique allows you to cut all parts of the joint with just a dado blade and a single setup on the tablesaw.