Building Cabinet Drawers

Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker.

Building cabinet drawers. How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material. 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. 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. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible.

Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. If the cabinet is more than 30 in. To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints.

Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases. In wood magazine torture tests this drawer joint proved stronger than even dovetails. Building drawers still stress me out every single time. We ll be using 1 2 cabinet grade plywood for all parts of these drawers including the bottoms.

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. This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides. Most traditional side mounted drawer slides require 1 2 clearance on each side of the drawer. My journey learning to build drawers the very first time i built a drawer was for this x leg accent.

Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom.

Let s stick with those since it makes sizing your drawer super. Face frames cover plywood edges. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one.