Making Drawers

This year my projects have involved a lot of drawers, 40+ for a kitchen, 15 for a closet and 20+ for another closet. For small jobs I often just order drawers from a vendor who specializes. But on each of these jobs, it made more sense economically to build them myself.

Drawers are something people get picky about on cabinets, usually people who don't know what they're talking about. Long ago, when hide glues are the norm, dovetail joints became the trademark of quality drawers. Today, with modern glues, mechanical fasteners, biscuit joints and fancy router-bit joints, dovetails are not necessary from an engineering standpoint, and take a lot of time to make. But they are what people want.

Ideally, a high quality drawer box would be made with solid wood sides. However, that is very expensive in large quantities, due to the material and labor costs of producing the truly flat boards needed for dovetails. And despite their desire for dovetails, most clients do not want to pay for solid wood drawers.

Based on these facts I had to develop a system to build a large quantity of drawers economically and quickly. After some work, this is what came up with.

MATERIALS
I start with maple plywood, usually 1/2" thick, usually pre-finished on one side (two sides won't work, you see why later). I use 1/4" for the bottom, also pre-finished. If you can't get both materials pre-finished, then neither should be. I use A grade plywood, veneer core. Since the core will be visible, you want to make sure it will be free of voids and look good, so quality plywood is important.

DESIGN
Custom cabinets means that sizes vary, but with large projects, consistency across multiple pieces is key to the final appearance. For this reason I determine consistent sizes for drawers across a whole project and stick with it. I like having a 5" opening for the top drawer, and equally dividing the lower two opening. For different heigths or whatever I adjust accordingly, but keep the sizes as consistent as possible.

After you determine your opening sizes, determine what hardware you will use. This is VERY important becuase it determines your clearances on all for sides of the opening, which determines the sizes of your drawer box. Don't get caught assuming dimensions here or you might end up throwing out a lot of time and material. I'm partial to undermount, self-closing hardware, especially with the soft-close feature, they're expensive, but clients love them and they really impress people. (Plus, if you buy them in quantity from a pro distributor, you can save about 1/3 on the cost)

Finally, using some scrap of your plywood (or whatever you will be using for your sides) setup your jig to run half-blind dovetails and get everything dialed in perfectly. You need to know how much to allow for the pins and tails in order to determine your side board lengths (which is critical with some drawer gli. When setting up your pin board cut, cut 1/32" deeper than you need to for a flush fit. In other words, you final set up, should allow the pins to protrude above the tail board surface just a bit, which you'll sand off later.

Once you know your openings, your hardware and your jig setup, you can workout your cut list of parts. Add 1/16" to the length of your front and back boards to allow for sanding later.

CUTTING
This is the first critical step in making your life easier later. Start by ripping all boards of the same width at the same time. Make sure your saw is set up and cutting straight, that your board is well supported all the way through the cut. The more consistent you are now, the fewer problems you'll have later. I also try to make sure all my factory edges are cut off, fresh edges look better and save sanding later.

After all your rips are done, crosscut your lengths. Again, cut all your boards of the same length at the same time, regardless of the width. I use a radial arm saw with a stop. I start with the longest boards and work down to the shortest. Make sure your crosscuts are square, this is critical!

This is what a stack of drawer sides looks like for just 12 drawers!



While you're setup, now is the time to cut your bottoms as well.

If the drawers are wider than about 20" I also cut some 2" wide strips from scrap 1/2"plywood to reinforce the bottom later. (make sure your bottom clearance can accommodate 1/2" plywood)

Next cut the dado for the the bottom using a 1/4" dado blade and a zero clearance insert on the table saw. The location will be determined by your hardware. Cut the dado in the pre-finished side of each board, this will become the inside of your drawer. Cutting the dado now marks the inside from the outside for the rest of the operations, which saves a lot of headache and reduces mistakes.

This is the same stack, now with dadoes.

Once all this is done, it's time to sort. You need to determine which boards are tail boards and which are pin boards. Your sides will be tails, your fronts and backs will be pins. You will also need to separate by widths.

You should end up with a stack of sides and a stack of fronts/backs for each width of board. Make sure you know which stack is which!

With your jig set up, cut all your pins and tails. If you use a jig that cuts both at once, you'll have to mark each half of each joint so they can go together later, so you'll need to make sure you work on a single drawer box at a time. If you use a jig that only cuts one side of a joint at a time, like the Leigh jig, then your approach is different and much faster.

Set up the jig for how you want your pins and tails to look according the the manufacturer's instructions. I try to always arrange to have a tail at on top of the dado, this makes sure you don't have an odd hole on the side of your drawer. Set the jig up for one width of boards. Cut all your pins for that width, then all your tails. Then move on to the next width. This is where the more expensive, adjustable jigs pay for themselves, since every set of pins will fit every set of tails, no need to match joints. Since your router is already setup, you only need to adjust tail/pin spacing for different width boards.

Jigs like the Leigh were not intended to be used with plywood. As a result you will need to take your time and use a few tricks. But with half-blind dovetails, the jig works just fine.

Trick 1: always use a backer board locked in the top clamp when cutting the tails, and a facer board locked in the front clamp when cutting pins.

Trick 2: When cutting tails, work from right to left, starting with a shallow relief cut to score the face veneer of the plywood before cutting all the way through. With plywood, some of the inside tail pieces will loose some material to chipping, but it won't be visible or compromise the joint strength so don't worry about it as long as it isn't excessive.

Trick 3: use repeated shallow passes with the router instead of a single deep cut.

Here's a close up of a tail board and a pin board.











If you use an undermount drawer glide, like I do, set aside half your front/back boards to be fronts. Cut out the notch required by the drawer glide from both ends of the back boards. I do this on a band saw, which makes the job very fast and repeatable.



Now you're ready to assemble the drawers. Apply glue to the pins and tails, and assemble 3 sides of the drawer. Add the bottom, which should float free in the dado, and add the fourth side. Tap all the joints home with a rubber mallet, making sure the tails are slightly proud of the pin board face and set the drawer aside to dry.

Once assembled, measure the inside distance between front and back along one side on the bottom of the drawer and cut a 2" wide strip to that length.

Now it time to square up and reinforce the drawer. With the drawer upside down, place the 2" strip in the center, running front to back and nail it through the face of the front and back. This will prevent the bottom from sagging and pulling out of the dadoes on wide drawers, plus it prevents the flexible 1/2" plywood from bowing away from the bottom of the drawer at the back.

Next measure the drawer corner to corner in both directions and square it. Then run a bead of hot-melt glue along the front and back where to bottom enters the dado. At the front be sure to stop short of the corner to allow for the glide standards if you need them. If using undermount glides do not use glue along the sides. If you added a support strip, run a bead along both sides of it to further reinforce it.

If your glides require a hole to be drilled in the back of the drawer, now is the time for that. I use a jig to make this process quick and easy. (I've also done it with a drill press setup before assembling the drawers, do whatever works for you.) The same jig is used to pre-drill for the drawer standards, I do this now also.

Now the drawer is almost done. Just sand the outside and break all the edges with sand paper or a hand plane. While sanding, sand the pin boards flush with the sides. Finish up by sealing the outside of the drawer. If you spray your finish, turn the drawer upside down to prevent over-spray from ruining the pre-finished interior. I don't worry about sealing the cut edge, just sand it smooth to remove splinters. Once dry the drawer is ready to mount.

All this seems like a lot of work, and it is. But if you have a lot of drawers to do this will save you hours, if not days! I cranked out 40 drawers with dovetailed joints, ready to finish in 2 days using this method all by myself. 15 drawers took less than a day to assemble. The speed of this system increases the more drawers you have because all the work is in the set up, after that each additional drawer only adds a about 5 minutes.