Building Cabinet Drawers

This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides.

Building cabinet drawers.

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. 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. Face frames cover plywood edges.

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. 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. This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out.

Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases. How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material. 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.

Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square. But i don t try to stay away from them anymore.

Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. If the cabinet is more than 30 in. 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.

Building drawers still stress me out every single time. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups. To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one.