Drawer Bottoms

Six variations on a theme

by Alan Marks

Drawers have long been considered
one of the most difficult elements in
cabinetry, probably with justification.
Done in traditional fashion, they are
time-consuming and require exacting
work if they are to operate properly.
This accounts on the one hand for
industry's preference for stapled parti-
cle board, hot-melt glues, and ball-
bearing steel suspension glides; and on
the other hand for the tendency of to-
day's craftsmen to avoid traditional
drawers in favor of compartments,
shelves or pigeon holes. Dovetailed
construction, however, remains the
strongest way of making a drawer, and
also the most attractive.
The many types of construction pos-
sible using dovetails allow for innova-
tion and flexibility, as witnessed by
these six examples from Malmstens
Verkstadsskola in Stockholm. Although
the Swedes agree that the dovetailed
drawer is the sturdiest, they often con-
sider the decorative aspect incidental.
All of the front dovetail joints shown
here are half-blind. The conservative
Swedes generally eschew through dove-
tails in drawer fronts because they
interfere with the design requirements
and overall style of traditional pieces.
Drawer fronts on such cabinets often
are delicately inlaid with veneers or
carved or profiled around their edges,
all unsuitable situations for through
dovetails. Also, problems of uneven
swelling and shrinkage can occur with
through dovetails, when the wood of
the solid drawer front shrinks while the
end grain of the tails does not. Through
dovetails are, however, used in the
backs of drawers, where the unevenness
ordinarily remains unnoticed.
French bottom
The traditional drawer bottom is
made of solid wood, as opposed to
Masonite or plywood. Thought to have
originated in France, the so-called
"French" drawer bottom floats with its
grain running parallel to the drawer

Exploded view from rear, with side and glide removed, shows how
French-bottom drawer is put together. Section at left shows bottom
screwed to front rabbet; right, section shows side, glide and bottom.

The little chest shown here is used to teach drawer construction at

Malmstens Verkstadsskola (workshop and school) in Stockholm,
Sweden. It was made in 1960 by master cabinetmaker Artur Joneröt,
from drawings by guitarmaker Georg Bolin, then rector of the
school. Of mahogany, it stands 65 cm (25 in.) high, 25 cm (10 in.)
wide and 31 cm (12 in.) deep. From the top, the drawers are kitch-
en, NK, false French, French, NK with ply bottom, and side-hung.
The work of Carl Malmsten, who died in 1972 at age 83, was an in-
spirational source for the commercial furniture style now known as
Scandinavian or Danish modern. Many of his designs are still in pro-
duction; his school, which he founded in 1930, is now state-owned.
In preparing drawings for manufacturers, he usually offered alterna-
tive constructions and indicated the one he thought superior. The
second would be accompanied by a comment such as, 'This con-
struction probably won't even last a hundred years.'
front, grooved into a two-piece frame
formed by the glides. The drawer front
is rabbeted to receive the bottom,
which is slid home after glides have
been glued to the drawer sides. Then
the bottom is secured at the front with
screws or a few brads, thus allowing
later removal for cleaning, refinishing
or repair, or else it is simply glued at
the front edge. Either way, the wood
bottom is free to expand and contract
in its grooves. On a drawer this small,
the bottom need be only 8 mm ( 5 / 1 6
in.) thick; it is raised 1-1/2 or 2 mm
( 1 / 1 6 in.) above the bottom of the
glides to get around problems of sag-
ging and scraping. The tongues should French bottom, back view.
be made about 2 mm (3/32 in.) thick
and 3 mm ( 1 / 8 in.) long. the back, and rabbeted with a chisel the
The back of this drawer—and all the small amount needed to make the bot-
drawers discussed here—is made 5 mm tom of the glide flush with the bottom
( 5 / 1 6 in.) lower than the sides; this of the side, enabling the bottom to be
keeps the back from scraping as the slid home. The drawer bottom projects
drawer is pulled out. into a rabbet in the drawer front and is
The bottom edge of the drawer front fastened there with brads or screws and
protrudes about 4 mm ( 5 / 3 2 in.) below a bit of glue.
the drawer side to act as a stop. This
overhang slides into a corresponding Kitchen drawer
rabbet in the carcase rail; the drawer The kitchen drawer bottom carries
may be made to close flush or to recess the cheapening of quality construction
by varying the depth of the rabbet. to its extreme. It is nothing more than a
veneered plywood or Masonite bottom
False French bottom held by grooves in the sides and front
Because the French bottom is some- and glued in place. There are disadvan-
what complicated to make and not tages: rubbing on sides, little torsional
compatible with large series produc- strength, a small gluing surface, sides
tion, the obvious shortcut is to take weakened by the groove, and a tiny
advantage of such dimensionally stable gliding surface that eventually wears
materials as plywood and Masonite. grooves in the rails.
The resulting false French bottom
simplifies construction and saves time. NK drawer
It looks the same at the front, but from The traditional French bottom and
the back the scalloped profile of the its counterfeit version share a weakness
genuine French bottom is missing and with most drawers made ever since
three plies, two of veneer and one of
Masonite or plywood, show up. This
procedure creates a problem: The bot-
tom might warp upward or become
uneven if it is not restrained in some
way; a tongue cut in Masonite or
plywood would be much too weak. The
solution is a glide with a groove wide
enough to accommodate the whole
thickness of the bottom, glued to the
sides and butted against the front, as
before. This creates a ledge inside the
drawer, like the edge of the frame in
conventional panel construction, which
can be rounded. The final fitting of the
glides is left until sides, front and back
have been assembled. Then the glides
are held in place at the front, marked at NK glide; pins are pared flush with side.
chests of drawers replaced lidded
chests: the sides present a large scrap-
ing surface. This is noisy and can make
the drawer difficult to extract. A solu-
tion is found in the so-called NK (pro-
nounced enco) drawer.
NK is the abbreviation for a large
store with several branches, Nordiska
Kompaniet. Founded in Stockholm in
1902, a time of revolution against clut-
tered overdecoration in Swedish interi-
ors, NK set up its own furniture facto-
ry. It was able to design, build and
market tasteful contemporary pieces
more in keeping with the timeless
advice of William Morris: "If you want
a golden rule that will fit everybody,
here it is: Have nothing in your homes NK glide with low front, recessed side.
that you do not know to be useful, or
believe to be beautiful." that the drawer front closes parallel to
The glides, usually 10 to 12 mm the cabinet. Excellent fits are easily
(1/2 in.) thick, are glued to the bottom made possible if the bottom and glide
of the sides and protrude about 3 mm assembly is first fitted to the drawer
( 1 / 8 in.) beyond them. This is done by opening before it is glued to the front,
cutting the pins on the drawer front sides and back.
about 3 mm deeper than the thickness
of the sides. Thus the drawer is steered Side-hung
by the narrow side surfaces of the glides The side-hung drawer slides on
alone. After assembly, the protruding runners inset into the cabinet sides and
full pins are pared flush with the sides, screwed in place. These runners also
while the half-pins at the top and butt the end of the groove in which
bottom of the front are trimmed to hor- they ride and act as stops for the
izontal. A solid bottom is screwed or drawer. Thus the drawer front need
glued into a groove in the drawer front. have no overhang. The grooves may be
This construction gives ultimate ease made with a router, shaper or dado
in sliding, especially when used for head, and squared up with a chisel.
high drawers, and is quite strong be- The veneered Masonite or plywood
cause of the bracing the glides provide bottom acts as a cross brace for the
by being glued across the corner. front, back and sides. The sides are
rabbeted, leaving a lip of about 3 mm
NK ply bottom ( 1 / 8 in.), and the bottom is glued, or
The one drawer that provides all glued and screwed, to them. At the
possible strengths is the NK style with a same time it is glued to the back and let
veneered Masonite or plywood bottom, into a rabbet in the drawer front.
although it may offend those who insist
upon solid wood. The version shown
here has a half-open front, intended for
use inside large cabinets with doors or
within secretaries with drop leaves.
Since it needs no pull, the cabinet door
can close quite close to the drawer
front, an optimal use of space. The
bottom of the front entirely overlaps its
supporting rail.
In construction, the veneered bottom
is cut to width such that its edges on
either side lap the drawer sides by half
their thickness. It is then glued into a
rabbet in the glides. The glides butt
against the front, where the bottom
enters a rabbet. This assembly, if
squared properly, automatically ensures Side-bung drawer, back view.
These two oiled walnut chests are identical, except the one on the left has a straight front with convex drawer fronts and the one on the right
has a concave front with concave drawer fronts. From a distance, these differences are subtle, but as you look closer, the details are distinct.
Variations on a Four-Drawer Chest
Divergent details make all the difference
by Tage Frid
T
oo often, furniture is overly decorated with contrasting colors
or shapes that fight each other and shout at you from across
the room. I prefer furniture that is more subtle and beckons
to you with clean, quiet lines and well-thought-out details. Don't un-
derestimate the power of details. To demonstrate how these little
touches can change and enhance a piece, I made two identical chests
of drawers, but gave each a distinct personality by experimenting
with different drawer fronts. Both carcases have concave sides; a
sweeping, curved bevel on the fronts of their flat tops and bottoms;
dovetailed drawers; and curved pediments. But one chest has a con-
cave front and concave drawer fronts, and the other is straight with
convex drawer fronts. From across the room, their differences look
slight; up dose, the chests appear to be two different designs.
After building the two carcases, using simple tablesaw and rout-
er setups, I mocked up miniature fronts first to see what
kind of effects I could get and then weeded out the designs I
didn't like. For instance, to simulate a veneered convex front, I
colored the surface with white chalk. From this I could see that
any color would make the chest look like a parakeet, and I
wouldn't want a creature like that squawking at me when I wake
up in the morning. If a mock-up looked good, I made it full size so
I could visualize it on a completed carcase. Eventually, I decided
on the shaped fronts shown on the chests above. Here I'll concen-
trate on making the chest with convex drawer fronts, but I'll also
give you enough information to make the chest with a concave
front, if you prefer that design.
82 Fine Woodworking
Making the carcase-Gather stock with similar figure and color,
and cut all the parts following the dimensions in the bill of materials
on p. 85. Joint the edges of the -in.-thick pieces for the carcase
sides, top and bottom, and after matching them for figure, glue and
clamp them. Since my planer is too narrow for 17-in.-wide panels, I
carefully aligned the long butt joints during glue-up so that I only
had to lightly belt-sand the surfaces when the glue dried.
Next, rip the carcase sides, top and bottom to width and miter
them to length according to the dimensions in the bill of materials.
Because of the width of the workpieces, the best way to cut the
miter is to set the blade at precisely 45° and guide the work on a
sliding table or crosscutting jig. To test the angle, cut across a piece of
scrap, put the cut ends together at a right angle and check the assem-
bly with a square. Adjust the blade until the fit is accurate.
Routing the spline mortises—After the sides are mitered, the
next step is to cut the spline mortises, as shown in the drawing on
p. 84. Square thickness-planed splines, acting like loose tenons, are
inserted in mortises that are hidden in the miter. The mortises are
easily made with a router and template. I used multiple splined
joints rather than similar full-blind dovetails because the splines
have more glue surface and are stronger.
I set up my router with a -in.-dia. straight bit and a -in.-dia.
template collar and guided it in slots in one end of a
plywood template. The slots in the template are as wide as the
collar and twice as long as the mortise (2 in.), so the collar will be
secure in each slot before the bit begins cutting. I cut the slots on fastened stops on the track ends, to limit the distance the carriage
the tablesaw with a dado blade, standing the template on end and travels and prevent it from sliding off.
guiding it across the blade with the miter gauge. Make a test cut in To use the jig, first align a centerline on the carcase side with a
a piece of scrap and adjust the dado blade until the router's tem- centerline on one track. Then secure the side in the jig by driving
plate collar fits snugly in the kerf. Although the slots don't have to two opposing 24-in.-long wedges between one edge and a track and
be spaced precisely, they should be about in. apart and the by clamping 45° beveled cleats to the base at each end of the work-
outer slots should be about in. from the edges. You must be care- piece (leave the cleats in place to align the other workpieces). Next,
ful to cut each piece the same way so the adjoining carcase pieces fit slide the carriage to position the router's -in.-dia. straight bit over
together properly. Mark the front of the template to correspond to the workpiece (about in. from one end), extend it until it just
the front of each workpiece. Then, with the workpiece flat on the touches the workpiece and set the router's maximum-cutting
bench and its inner face up, align the template to cut the mortises depth stop. Raise the bit and begin routing with the grain on one
in. from the inside corner of the miter so the mortises are fully side, starting near the middle of the workpiece. Depending on
hidden inside the joint. On my router-jig setup, the bit is in. from your router's horsepower, cut only about in. to in. deep per
the edge of the slot when the collar is against it. Therefore, I marked pass. (My 3-HP router can cut about in. per pass.) Move the car-
a line on the inner face of each workpiece in. from the miter riage back and forth along the tracks and incrementally move the
corner and aligned the back of the slots on this line. router sidewise for each pass—like mowing the lawn. Gradually
Clamp the template to the workpiece and cut the mortises on one plunge to the maximum depth stop, but remove only in. on the
end, as shown in the top photo below. When you've finished, flip the final pass. This way, you'll leave a smoother surface that will only
template end for end, realign and clamp it in place, and rout the need to be lightly scraped and sanded after assembly.
other end. Do this for each carcase piece. I chisel the mortises square
(and use square-edge splines) to increase the gluing area. Assembling the carcase—Since carcase assembly is complicated,
While the carcase sides are still flat, rout the -in.-wide by you should do a dry run, inserting only two splines in each joint.
-in.-deep dadoes in their inner face for the drawer runner Then, before glue-up, gather everything you will need: the four
tongues and the stretcher tenons. Guide the router base against a
straightedge clamped to the workpiece. Each drawer front is in.
Right: A template is aligned
wide, so there is in. between each dado, with the top and bot- on a mark next to the inside
tom dadoes in. from the miters' inside corners. In order to corner of a mitered carcase
make the stretcher tenons invisible, stop the dadoes in. from side for routing bidden spline
each side's front edge and chisel their ends square. Be sure to cut mortises. The line is evident
the -in.-wide shoulder on the outer edge of the stretcher's on the piece at right.
tenons. Lastly, before shaping the carcase's outside sur- Below: Frid routs the con-
faces, rip a -in.-deep by -in.-wide rabbet in the back edge of the cave carcase sides on this
sides, top and bottom for the plywood back. Now you can begin shopmade jig. The router
working on the carcase top and sides. carriage slides along the
curved tracks and the rout-
er slides side to side within
Shaping the carcase top and sides—The front of the convex car- the carriage rails. Stops on
case is straight, even though its drawer front surfaces are shaped. the track ends prevent the
The front edges of the carcase top and bottom have a curved bev- carriage from sliding off
el, as shown in the drawing. Mark the bevel's outline with thin and stops on the rail ends
plywood patterns. As you can see in the drawing, the curve is in. limit router travel.
deep over 40 in. on their front edges and 2 in. deep over 40 in. on
the surfaces of the top and bottom. Spokeshave to the lines, and
flatten the beveled surface with a cabinet scraper. Then finish with
a sharp scraper blade before sanding. Use your fingers to feel when
the surface is smooth, the curves are fair and the corners are crisp.
The drawer fronts of the concave carcase are curved in. deep
over 40 in., and so are the front edges of the carcase (see the
drawing). Otherwise, the two carcases are identical. Bandsaw the
curve in the front edge of the stretchers and the carcase top and
bottom, and shape each piece identically with a router and template.
Then lay out the bevels on the top and bottom with thin patterns (a
curve in. deep over 40 in. on the front edges and a curve
in. deep over 40 in. on the surfaces of the top and bottom).
I scooped out the concave sides of the chests with my plunge
router and the jig shown in the bottom photo at right, guiding the
router in an arc over the workpiece surface. The workpiece is cen-
tered and wedged tightly between the jig's two tracks, which I
screwed to a plywood base. A carriage containing my router's
square base between two L-shaped rails slides over the.tracks, the
tops of which are curved the same as the carcase sides: in. deep
over 26 in. The router slides in the rails side to side across the
workpiece, but I fastened stops on the rail ends to limit router
travel and prevent the bit from cutting deeply into the tracks. I also
carcase pieces, three stretchers, 24 splines, glue, a damp rag,
clamps and assembly jigs, and a helper or two (assembly isn't a
one-man job). The plywood assembly jigs for the mitered carcase
are the same width as and in. shorter than the carcase pieces,
with 45° beveled cleats glued and screwed to each end (see the
top photo on the facing page). Since the surfaces of the jigs' cleats
are parallel to the joints' mitered surfaces, clamping pressure is
perpendicular, preventing the joints from sliding.
I used plastic resin glue for this project, because its dark color is
close to walnut and it dries slower than yellow glue, allowing more
assembly time. Using a cheap, small brush, spread glue on the join-
ing surfaces of all parts and insert the splines in the sides' mortises.
Then assemble the parts in four steps. First, stand the sides on their
rear edges and join them to the three stretchers (without clamps).
Second, join the top and bottom to the sides by pressing their
joints together. Third, clamp the miters using the assembly jigs. To
do this, secure the middles of the long jigs to the top and bottom
with a short clamp and secure the short jigs to each of the sides
with a pair of long bar clamps across the front of the carcase. But
align the stretchers' front edge flush with the carcase front before
tightening the bar clamps. Then draw the corners together, using
three or four clamps across each jig's cleats and making sure the
miters are tight inside and out. You can tap the jig's cleats to per-
suade the joints into alignment. Finally, ensure that the assembly is
square by checking that its diagonals are equal. If it isn't square,
change the angle of a long bar clamp or two. Then, with the glue still
wet and everything square and aligned, lightly hammer the corner of
any slightly open miters to bend the wood fibers and close the joint.
If I had built this chest from lighter wood, I would have used yel-
low glue, so its color would match the wood. But since it sets quick-
ly, I would glue the opposite corners together first, making sure they
were square, and allow them to dry. Then I would assemble the rest
of the case as I did the walnut carcase. I never use liquid hide glue
because I had a bad experience with it on a large commercial proj-
ect: after several years, the glue became like chewing gum. Thank
heaven I sold my business before anything came back for repairs.
Although my shop was pretty dry when I started this project, the
humidity was nearly 100% when I was ready to install the drawer
runners. It was so hot and humid that Danish sweat (which is hard
to come by and very expensive) was dripping from my brow onto
the wood, and even though I knew that the chest would one day
live in a drier atmosphere, the walnut carcase had expanded quite
a bit. Therefore, to allow for wood movement, the runners are in.
shorter than the inside depth of the carcase and glued only at one
end. Apply glue to the first inch of the runners' -in. by -in.
tongue, butt that end of the runner against the stretcher and tap its
tongue into the groove in the side. Before you screw on the back,
screw the two shaped pediments to the bottom of the carcase.

Bill of Materials
Making the drawers—Before shaping the drawer fronts, fit all the
drawer parts to the carcase, cut each drawer's dovetail joints (I cut
them by hand: half blind in front, through in back), and then groove
the sides and front for the bottom, as shown in the drawing. If you
cut the drawer parts following the bill of materials, they will be slight-
ly tight in the carcase openings. So trim the unshaped fronts to fit
snugly in the carcase; trim the sides as wide as the fronts, for a snug
fit between the runners; and cut the backs as long as the fronts. To
allow for wood movement in the carcase, the drawer is in. narrow-
er than the carcase's inside depth, and the drawer backs are 1 in.
narrower than the width of the drawer sides. This leaves in. above
the back, to keep the drawer from binding if a shirt sleeve falls over-
board, and in. below, so you can slide the bottom into the assem-
bled drawer and screw it to the back from underneath.
To shape the convex drawer front, I used a jig that is similar to
the one I used to scoop out the concave carcase sides, except that
the drawer front jig's tracks have convex curves ( in. deep over
37 in.). Set the router's maximum-cutting depth stop by positioning
the cutter in. from the centerline of the workpiece and extending
the bit until it just touches. After routing the convex surface, rip 20°
bevels in its upper and lower edges, setting the tablesaw fence a little
more than in. from the blade (to leave the edges that thick after
planing them smooth), as shown in the bottom photo above. Now,
smooth the surfaces, but keep the corners sharp, because they em-
Above: To check the carcase for square, Frid measures across
the diagonals. He placed the thin-plywood assembly jigs on the
outside of the carcase. The jigs are the same size as each carcase
piece, with beveled cleats on each end. Below: After routing the
convex shape on a drawer front, Frid rips a 20° bevel in its top
and bottom edges so the front's edges are straight and flush with
the straight carcase front.
phasize the curves that give the chest's front its interesting shape. To
shape a concave front, use a jig with concave curved tracks and set
the cutter depth at the end, as you did on the carcase sides. Don't cut
bevels in the edges of the concave drawer fronts.
I made wooden drawer pulls that fit the overall design. To make
them for the convex fronts, mark a matching concave curve on the
edge of a piece of walnut. Bandsaw to the line and
scrape the surface smooth and fair. With the tablesaw blade per-
pendicular to the table, rip the concave piece into four 1-in.-wide
pieces. Then, tilt the blade to 15° (angled toward the fence) and set
the fence in. from the blade. With the concave side up, rip both
edges of each piece, and then crosscut their ends at the same an-
gle. Scrape and sand the sawn edges, and glue and clamp the pulls
on the fronts before you apply the finish.
Finishing—I finished both chests with Watco oil. Never finish the
inside of the carcase or outside of the drawer sides, because they
may stick together. Instead, rub them with paraffin. And never use an
oil finish on the inside of the drawers, because it always bleeds and
may spoil what is inside. Instead, you can seal the drawers' insides
with shellac or lacquer. You needn't worry about moisture inside the
chest, however, because the drawers are closed most of the time.
Tage Frid is a contributing editor to FWW.
T
he built-ins and utility furniture I
make usually call for lots of draw-
ers. I could spend a couple of days
hand-cutting the dovetails for a big case-
work project. Or, going to the opposite ex-
treme, I could rabbet and nail the drawers
together and be done in a couple of hours.
But what I really want is the strength and
durability of dovetails, without spending
the lime it takes to do them by hand. That
is why I cut the drawer joints for projects
like the ones shown here with a router and
dovetail fixture.
Router dovetails
I use an inexpensive router fixture I
bought from Sears 20 years ago. It cuts on-
ly half-blind dovetails (meaning they're
visible from one side only). Sears and
most of the woodworking tool catalogs
offer a similar fixture now for less than
$100. I've thought about buying more ex-
pensive and more versatile fixtures that
cut through dovetails, as well as half-
blinds, and which promise the variable
spacing of hand-cut work. But then I
might as well cut them by hand if that's the
look I'm after.
Hand-cut dovetails consist of pins,
which are typically cut on drawer fronts
and backs, and tails, which are cut on
drawer sides, as shown below. Router
dovetails, however, get pins on the drawer
sides and sockets on the fronts and backs.
With hand-cut dovetails, you can tailor the
joint to suit the dimensions of the piece.
With router dovetails, you can't.
One thing that makes router dovetails
fast is that you don't have to lay them out.
The fixture clamps two boards at 90° to
each other (drawer front or back on top,
side hanging clown). On top of both
boards goes a finger template that controls
the router and dovetail bit by means of a
template-following guide bushing. The
thickness of the drawer stock can vary
from a little less than one-half inch to more
than one inch. Width can vary too, from
about three inches to 12 inches. But re-
gardless of the width and thickness, the
size and geometry of the pins and sockets
stay the same.
That means you have to size your draw-
ers to the geometry of this cookie-cutter
joint. You want to end up either with a
whole pin at the top of the joint or a half-
pin. Anything less than a half-pin looks
awkward and is liable to splinter away.
Two adjustments control the fit of the
joint. The router's vertical depth of cut de-
termines whether the joint is too loose, too
tight or just right. The in/out positioning of
the finger template controls the lateral
travel of the router and thereby deter-
mines the depth of the sockets. If the sock- Workmanlike utility furnishings, like
ets are too deep, the drawer sides will be the author's little cabinet for storing nails
recessed below the ends of the front and and screws, make the shop efficient and
back; if the sockets are too shallow, the pleasant. Rabbeted corners, screwed and
drawer sides will stand proud.
plugged, join the pine case, which mea-
sures 17 in. by 24 in. by in. deep.
Once the fixture and router are set up
and adjusted, you can cut both parts of the
joint at once. When you get used to the completely, as explained in the sidebar on
routine, clamping up the stock, routing the following page.
and unclamping take only a couple of
minutes. Doing the joints for an entire Buy unwarped stock
drawer takes less than ten minutes. For the drawer sides and backs of utility
This method lets me complete and fit projects, I buy 8-ft. planks of 1x12 #2 pine
six drawers, pretty much regardless of from the local lumberyard. Lauan and
size, in about as many hours, starting from poplar are also good choices, although bet-
uncut (but thicknessecl) stock. What about ter suited to more upscale projects. Find a
the time it takes to set up the router and yard that will let you pick through the
fine-tune the cut? You can eliminate that stock. Prepare to spend some time eye-
balling the planks. Everybody wants to buy
boards as knot-free as #2 grading will al-
low. But in selecting drawer stock, wood
clarity is less desirable than flatness. You
want pieces free of twist and cup, though a
slight bow or crook is tolerable. Reject
those twisted and cupped boards because
you'll pay the devil later if you don't. Twist-
ed boards make twisted drawers that will
never fit right, and cupped stock requires a
lot of fussy clamping during glue-up.
So what I do first is select the flat stuff
and then go through it for clarity. I avoid
boards with a lot of large knots or with any
loose knots. And when I plan to make the
fronts out of pine, I make sure the boards
have enough clear cuttings in them.
Rip first, then crosscut
Pine 1x12s are about 11 inches wide and
three-fourths inch thick, and unless your
drawers are really deep and wide, you can
get several drawers out of a single board.
Start by jointing one edge of the eight-
footer, and then rip to width, larger draw-
ers first. Avoid the temptation to rip
slightly undersized to eliminate trimming
to fit later. Every time I have done this, I've
been sorry. Shoot for parts that fit snugly in
their openings.
Another reason for ripping first is that
long offcuts are good for moldings, bat-
tens, cleats, face frames, story poles and
tomato stakes. Long scrap is always more
useful than short scrap.
While drawers for a single project may
vary in depth, most likely they will all be
uniform in plan. This means you can set a
saw stop and crosscut all the fronts and
backs in one session, all the sides in an-
other. Use a clean-cutting crosscut blade
here because rough endgrain won't glue
well and because ragged edges will show
up in the joints and on the faces of the
pins. One more thing: you don't want
knots in the joints, so be sure to crosscut
so all knots are two inches or more away
from the ends.
Now stack the drawer parts in discrete
piles. From this point on, each drawer is a
family of four members, and shuffling
them around will introduce error.
Which piece goes where
Begin by clamping the fixture to your
bench. Take a stack of drawer parts and
mark their outside faces. Draw lines about
where you'll plow the grooves for the
drawer bottom. On the bench immediate-
ly behind the fixture, stand the members
on their bottom edges and position them
just as they'll be in the finished drawer,,
with the front facing you. Now push the

Ditzy setup: what the

manual won't tell you
The owner's manual for your dovetail fixture will cover the details
of setting up, but there are some important points that it probably
won't mention.
The precise depth of cut, which determines joint tightness, sel-
dom is exactly what the manual calls for. My Sears manual says to set
the cutting depth to exactly in., a measurement that requires
a machinist's combination square and a thick magnifying lens for
people over 40. But setting my carbide dovetail bit by this rule pro-
duces too loose a joint. A slightly deeper cut tightens the joint. The
owner's manual will get you in the ballpark, but you'll have to dis-
cover the setting that's right for your bit, router and template (see
the photo at right).
Another thing the owner's manual won't explain is what's too
tight a joint and what's too loose. What I've learned is that glue takes
up space, and a joint that 1 have to tap together dry, I'll have to bang
together during glue-up. You should be able to push the dry joint to-
gether by hand without recourse to your mallet.
The manual describes how to control socket depth, but it proba-
bly won't discuss the correct depth. If you've cut your drawer fronts
to fit snugly in their openings, then you want the pins on the draw-
er sides to lie about in. below the tops of their sockets. This con-
dition lets you beltsand the endgrain edges of the front and back
flush with the sides and provides just enough clearance between the
sides of the drawer and the opening. If you do this right, the side-to-
side fit should require no further fiddling.
No manual will admit that setting up and adjusting both router and
fixture is tedious and time-wasting. It can take a half-hour to go
through the steps: install the guide bushing in your router, chuck
and adjust the bit, make a trial cut, fine-tune the depth of cut, try
again. At last you've got it. But next time, you'll have to go through Bit setting determines joint tightness. Owner's manuals typi-
the whole ditzy routine again.
cally specify a depth-of-cut setting, which determines how the joint
fits. The deeper the cut, the tighter the joint. But finding that just-
About six years ago, I got fed up with setting up, so I went out and right setting for your router and template is really a matter of
bought myself a new plunge router. This meant I could dedicate my tedious trial and error. A carbide-tipped bit is best for dovetailing
old Sears router to dovetails, and since then, I haven't had to remove because you cut to full depth in a single pass, which calls for cut-
the bushing or adjust the bit. —J.L. ting edges that stay sharp.
sides over flat, as shown in the top photo
below. The lines representing the grooves
will keep you oriented when you clamp
the pieces into the fixture. You'll need
the help because they go into the fixture
inside out and backward, and it's easy to
get confused.
I begin at the front right-hand corner of
the drawer, which means that I clamp it on
the right side of the fixture with its bottom
edges facing right. Temporarily clamp up
the drawer side, so its end protrudes about
half its thickness above the baseplate of
the fixture. Now slide the drawer front un-
der the clamp bar, and butt its end against
the protruding drawer side. At the same
time, shove the front into contact with the
fixture's registration pin.
When the joint end of the drawer front
butts hard against the side and its bottom
edge hard against the registration pin,
tighten the clamp bar. A little pressure here
goes a long way. Now put the finger tem-
plate in position, and tighten its locking
knobs. Next, back off on the vertical clamp
bar, and raise the drawer side up flush
against the finger template. To keep the
template from flexing upward, hold it
down firmly with one hand while you butt
the drawer side into it with the other. Once
the board is in position, hold it there with
your thumb, and tighten the clamp bar, as
shown in the bottom left photo.
Give everything a final check to make
sure you've properly positioned the
pieces. The drawer front should be on top,
the drawer side should hang down verti-
cally. The inside faces of the front and side
should face out with the groove lines to
the outside. Both pieces must be indexed
tight against the registration pins. Be sure
about this because imprecise registration
will make a joint that doesn't fit. If you mix
up the pieces, you'll cut the pins on the
wrong board, which means wasting wood
and wasting time.
Driving the router
The actual routing is surprisingly quick.
Hold the router firmly down against the
finger template while cutting, and never
lift it upward. If you do, the bit will cut
through wood you don't want to waste,
and possibly through the template as well.
Always exit the cut by pulling the router
out horizontally.
Begin routing by making a light right-to-
left pass down the front of the drawer side.
If you take too deep a bite when cutting
right to left (climb cutting), the router will
self-feed right into the fixture, so go easy.
This initial cut keeps the bit from tearing
out the wood at the base of the joint.
Carefully arrange the parts of each
drawer to keep track of the pieces. Stand
them up drawer-wise behind the dovetail
jig, then push them over flat so their bot-
tom, inside edges, marked with pencil for
grooving, face one another.
Position the parts in the jig. Clamp up
the front right corner of the drawer. Insides
of the pieces face out, the drawer front goes
on top, and the side goes vertical. Both
pieces index hard against the jig's regis-
tration pins, one of which is visible by the
author's right thumb. The black plastic
comb is the template that guides the router.
Steer the router in and out of the tem-
plate slots by pressing its guide bushing
against the phenolic plastic. Make a light
climb cut from right to left, then return left
to right at full depth. The router always ex-
its horizontally (an upward exit would
chew into the template).

The completed joint, still in the jig, shows
how pins (on vertical board) will interlock
with sockets (on horizontal board). Rout-
ing four joints takes less than ten minutes.
Use a stiff brush to work glue down into
the pins. Don't apply glue in the sockets be-
cause it can pool up and keep the joint
from closing.
Glue-up. Blocks set just behind the joint al-
low the clamps to pull the pins lightly into
their sockets. The drawer bottom goes in
during assembly, not after.
Now you're at the left side of the joint.
Follow the finger template in and out,
moving the router from left to right. As you
round the template fingers, twist the router
slightly counterclockwise, as shown in
the bottom right photo on p. 61. This helps
you negotiate these hairpin curves
smoothly and quickly. Because you're cut-
ting to full depth in a single pass, don't
force the router. Listen to the bit's whine,
and if its bright voice begins to dull, slow
down. But don't go so slowly that you
burn the stock and glaze or overheat the
bit. A carbide-tipped dovetail bit will put
less stress on you and your router.
After cutting the joints for the front right
corner, go to the front left, then to the left
rear and, finally, to the right rear, moving
around the drawer in a clockwise manner.
The drawer front or back always goes hor-
izontal on top of the fixture; the side al-
ways goes vertical. Before moving on to
the next drawer, mark conjoining parts
with a number, so the joints that were cut
together will be assembled together.
Grooves for drawer bottoms
For drawer bottoms, I use 5mm lauan ply-
wood captured in grooves on all four sides.
Rather than use a dado set to cut a -in.
groove, too wide for standard plywood, I
make two passes on the tablesaw to make
a groove that leaves but a little play.
Set the rip fence so that the first pass cuts
just to the inside of the bottom socket on
the drawer back and the blade depth to
cut clear of the bottom of the socket. Now
saw the first groove on all the drawer
members, making sure to register the bot-
tom edge of each against the fence. Your
pencil line helps here. Move the fence and
make the second series of cuts. One nice
thing about router dovetails is that you
don't have to stop any grooves in the
drawer fronts or backs because the groove
enters in and exits from a socket, which
gets filled with a pin.
Dry-assemble one drawer to measure
the length and width of the drawer bot-
toms. Cut the plywood about inch shy
of the full dimension to ensure that your
joints will close completely on the first try.
Assembly and glue-up
The fastest way to get good glue coverage
is to paint the pins with a stiff bristle brush.
While you're clamping up one drawer,
keep the brush soaking in a jar of water,
and wipe it dry when you're ready to glue
up the next one. Squirt a couple of table-
spoons of yellow glue into a shallow con-
tainer—I use a plastic coffee-can lid—so
you can dip your brush often. Thoroughly
coat the pins on both ends of one drawer
side (see the center photo). Now slip the
drawer front and back onto the pins, and
lightly tap the joint together. Slide the bot-
tom into the grooves, apply glue to the
pins on the other drawer side and tap it in-
to the sockets.
Squeeze the whole thing together with
bar clamps and blocks. Position the blocks
at the baseline of the pins, so the clamping
pressure will pull the sides until the pins
bottom out in their sockets, as shown in
the bottom photo.
Fitting the drawers
If you've cut the drawer members to fit
tightly, the assembled drawer won't slide
freely in its opening and might not even
enter. To trim it for an easy fit, beltsand the
endgrain edges of the front and back flush
with the sides. Test fit the drawer. If it still
won't go into the opening, most likely the
sides are a bit too wide, so handplane a lit-
tle off the top and bottom edges all around
until the drawer runs in and out without
binding. Chamfer all the inside and outside
edges (block plane or router), and wax the
edges top and bottom, along with the back
outside corners.
There's a sweet place in fitting a drawer.
If you don't trim it down enough, it will fit
too tightly and bind. The same thing will
happen if you remove too much wood be-
cause the drawer will cock in its opening
and bind. And, to make a bad matter
worse, too much air around a drawer's
edges looks sloppy. But if you trim off just
the right amount, the drawer will whisper
in and out.
John Lively is publisher of Fine Wood-
working magazine.
 Aligning the front on a
chest of drawers—The
author has developed
a technique for
beltsanding his cabinet
fronts and drawers at the
same time. When he
combines them with front-
mounted stops, the cabinet
faces are flat and smooth
and drawers always align
with the face frame,
regardless of season.

Drawer Fronts That Fit Flush

Beltsanding and drawer stops leave a front
that's always aligned
by Christian H. Becksvoort
M
aintaining drawer-front alignment to the face frame can
be a seasonal problem on furniture built with slab (or
wide board) construction and typical rear-mounted
drawer stops. The depth of the case can vary considerably from
summer to winter depending upon the width, species and cut of
the wood (see FWW #94, pp. 38-41). The length of wood does not
change noticeably with changes in moisture content, however, so
flush-mounted drawers with stops at the back tend to protrude in
the winter and are recessed in the summer.
I've borrowed a technique of front-mounted drawer stops from
an antique piece and have used it quite successfully for the last
several years. Front-stopped drawers always maintain the same
position in relation to the front of the cabinet, and they don't need
to be individually adjusted for each drawer. This technique uses
a stop glued to the divider under the drawer instead of placing the
stop at the back of the drawer.
The stops also help me sand the drawer fronts and cabinet front
at the same time, ensuring a flat, smooth plane and perfect drawer
alignment. I install the drawers in the carcase against the stops and
Scribed lines accurately position stops—The author uses a
wedge them in place. I then beltsand the entire front of the case, 4-in.- to 6-in.-wide board, cut to the appropriate length, as a gauge
including drawer fronts, drawer dividers and the front edges of the to scribe alignment marks for the drawer stops. Measuring from
cabinet sides, as shown in the bottom photo on p. 84, The drawers the cabinet back eliminates any variations that may have oc-
support the belt sander, so I don't have to worry about balancing curred when gluing in the dovetailed drawer dividers.
it on the thin dividers and gouging the case sides when I sand to
the edge of the case. While sanding the drawer fronts, I'm also able
to sand out all the minor misalignment that occurs when sliding
the dovetailed dividers into place in the case sides.
There is no other technique that will leave the case and drawers
as flat and as perfectly aligned. The whole system works because
I house my drawer bottoms in grooves that are in. from the
bottom edge of the drawers. This leaves plenty of clearance for
the -in.-thick drawer stops glued to the drawer divider below the
drawer. The stops are out of sight and don't interfere with the
drawer's contents as top-mounted stops might.

Fitting the stops

First I fit the drawers, leaving about -in. to -in. gap on either
side, and a gap above the drawer appropriate to the size, species
and moisture content of the drawer front. I also make the drawers
short enough (about -in. shy of the full cabinet depth) to ac-
commodate more than the full range of movement expected in
the cabinet side.
Then I mark the location of the stops, referencing from the back
of the case. If this were a perfect world, I could simply mark from
the front of the case, allowing for the thickness of the drawer front
and the leather bumper. But perfectly aligning the snug, sliding
dovetail joints that connect the dividers to the carcase is not an easy
task. Sometimes the glue grabs before the divider is fully seated;
other times that last tap knocks the divider in. past where you
want it, and no amount of pounding will reverse it. Referencing the
stops from the back of the case lets me sand out misalignments
when I'm sanding the drawer fronts to align with the case.
To make sure that all the stops are aligned, first I find the divider
that is inset the farthest. I measure from the front of this divider,
deducting the thickness of the drawer front plus a leather bumper.
This mark is where the front of the stop needs to be to leave the
drawer front flush with the divider's face. I then make a gauge for
marking the rest of the dividers by measuring from the back of the
cabinet to the mark. I cut a 4-in.- to 6-in.-wide scrap board to that
length to serve as a guide for laying out all the stops. The gauge is
slipped into the opening, making sure it is pushed tightly against
the cabinet back and side, so all the drawers will be equidistant
from the back of the cabinet. The stop position is marked by scrib-
The drawer stops are glued, positioned on the dividers and held
in place with spring clamps. The stops must be thin enough to
clear the drawer bottoms and short enough to allow drawer side
clearance at the ends. Leather bumpers are temporarily glued to
the stops to position the drawers for sanding.
ing a line along the front edge of the measuring gauge, as shown
in the top photo. I find that a knife-scribed line is more accurate
than a pencil line when marking the stops. To make the scribed
line more visible, you can darken it by running a pencil sharpened
to a chisel point along the line.
I cut the stops from waste stock, in. to in. wide and in.
thick. For drawers 14 in. and narrower, I usually use a single strip
across the divider. The strips are centered in the drawer opening,
and they leave plenty of room on each side for the -in.-thick
drawer sides. Wider drawers get two stops about 2 in. to 3 in. long.
After sanding, the stops are glued to the scribed lines and held in
place with spring clamps (see the bottom photo above). The stops
must be located about 1 in. from the carcase sides so they don't in-
terfere with the drawer sides. Then the leather bumpers are tem-
porarily glued to the fronts of the stops, using a minute amount of
glue. After the front has been sanded, the leather is removed for
finishing (otherwise it becomes hard) and reapplied when the
case is complete. I prefer the quality feel and sound of leather
bumpers on a custom piece because they make a better impres-
sion than the rubber, plastic or cork bumpers so frequently found
on store-bought furniture.
Sanding the case and drawers
The first time I used this method of stopping drawers, it dawned
on me that this was the perfect solution to sanding the entire cab-
Wedging the drawers in place holds them for beltsanding. The
drawers should be wedged on each side to center them in the open-
ing and wedged at the top to hold them firmly against the drawer
dividers and stops. The entire front of the cabinet can then be
sanded to one flat, smooth plane.
Sanding the cabinet front, with the drawers held in place by
front-mounted stops and wedges, ensures that the entire face of the
cabinet will be flat and smooth. The drawers support the sander
and prevent gouging the face frame. This technique eliminates the
need to set each drawer individually.
inet face. No more balancing a belt sander on a -in.-wide divider,
hoping not to gouge the cabinet side or intersecting dividers. This
was a real bonus. It takes a little preparation, but the results are
well worth the effort.
First, after drilling holes for hardware or knobs in the drawer
fronts, I slide all the drawers back into the case, Next I make shims,
using -in. by -in. pine strips, tapering the ends into wedges
with a quick knife cut. I shim the drawer sides to center the draw-
er from side to side in the opening, as shown in the top photo on
this page. Then, using thicker pine strips, I shim the top of the
drawer front to hold the drawer against the divider below it. The
shims should be good and tight to keep the drawer from vibrating
during the sanding process.
With all the drawers securely in place, I lay the cabinet on its
back on two padded sawhorses of convenient height. Using a belt
sander and an 80-grit belt, I work my way across the face of the
cabinet, from one end to the other, as shown in the bottom photo
on this page. Before sanding with a 120-grit belt, I check the cabi-
net face for high and low spots by laying a 5-ft.-long straightedge
on the face of the cabinet and sighting along the straightedge's
bottom edge. I repeat the process in four or five places across the
cabinet face, marking the high spots with a pencil line. I then con-
nect these marks, making a topographical map, of sorts, on the
cabinet face to show me where more material needs to be re-
moved. After sanding with 120-grit and 150-grit belts, I switch to a
vibrating-pad sander or random-orbit sander and 180-grit, 220-grit
and 320-grit discs.
Finishing details
At this point, the front of the cabinet is a single, flat, smooth plane.
I remove the drawers for a final hand-sanding with a bolt through
the knob hole. The first drawer is always difficult to remove, es-
pecially if the shimming was done correctly and you forgot to drill
the knob holes before wedging in the drawers. However, once the
first one is out, I have room to reach in and push out the rest from
behind. I hand-sand each drawer face with 400-grit paper and ease
and smooth all the edges. The same goes for the cabinet face: Re-
move all traces of cross-grain scratches and break all edges. Then
vacuum out the inside of the case, remove the leather bumpers
and the case is ready for the finish of your choice.
Christian H. Becksvoort builds custom furniture in New Glouces-
ter, Maine, and is a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking.
Leveling a cabinet front:
Video shows you how
A magazine article can be a great help in learn-
ing new tricks and techniques. But sometimes,
it's easier to learn and understand a process
when you can watch someone doing it. In a
13-minute companion video (VHS) to this article, Christian
Becksvoort takes you through the steps he uses to align draw-
er fronts and face frames simply and easily with a belt sander.
There is no other process that will leave a cabinet front in
such a smooth, flat plane. To order, call (203) 426-8171, or
send $7 to The Taunton Press Order Department, DrawerVid
011035, P.O. Box 5506, Newtown, Conn. 06470.
—Charley Robinson, associate editor
 All-Wood Extension
Drawer Slides
Telescoping dovetails support
a fully opened drawer with style

by Karen Robertson

I
was rifling through my desk drawer try-
ing to find a key, when the drawer
spilled for the third time that day. As I
crawled around collecting paper clips,
empty film canisters and pens with no
springs, I decided to design a drawer slide
that would put an end to this sort of thing. I
wanted something that worked like a metal,
full-extension drawer slide but was good-
looking enough to use on fine furniture.
I played around with several versions
and finally settled on a telescoping dovetail
mechanism (see the drawing on the facing
page). The key to the system is an interme-
diate slider with a dovetail on one face that
fits a groove in the drawer side. The other
face is grooved to match a dovetailed cleat
fastened to the inside of the cabinet.
Like a metal slide, these slides hold a
drawer level and stop it from coming out
all the way. But unlike a metal slide, this
one is easy to make. It uses simple setups
and reduces fussing around to a minimum.
As you begin to open the drawer, the
slider remains inside the cabinet. When
the drawer is halfway open, a pin engages
the slider and pulls it out along with the
drawer, and when the drawer and slider
reach full extension, another pin stops
them. At this point, half the slider remains
inside the cabinet, acting as a cantilever to
support the drawer in the open position.
Build the drawer first
The telescoping dovetail system works
best on small- to medium-sized drawers,
like those used in dressers and hallway ta-
bles. The dimensions shown in the draw-
ing are suitable for drawers from 12 in. to
16 in. deep and 3 in. to 6 in. tall. I’ve also
scaled down the dimensions on the draw-
ing and used the system on small, light-
weight drawers, such as the 11 ⁄2-in. drawers
that hold my drafting instruments.
The sliders fit between the drawer and its

56 Fine Woodworking Photos: Aimé Fraser

How the telescoping dovetail mechanism works
Both pins are #8 or #9 screws
The key to the mechanism is a maple slider with a dovetail on one face that fits a groove with heads removed.
in the drawer side. The other face is grooved to match a dovetailed cleat fastened to the inside
of the cabinet. Two brass pins engage the slider and limit the drawer’s extension. Upper pin is attached
to drawer.
Stationary lower pin
is attached to case.
Dovetailed Upper pin (in Slot,
1
cleat fastened drawer side) ⁄4 in. wide
to cabinet
Closed

When the drawer

38
⁄ in. is first opened, the
slider remains inside
the cabinet. The pins
run freely in the slots.

Slot length Drawer side,

is one-half 1 ⁄2 in. thick
length of slider.

Half open
At half extension,
2 in. the upper pin
strikes the front
end of the slot and
pulls the slider out
as the drawer
continues to open.
2 in.

Lip, 1 ⁄4 in.,
covers
slider.

Slider is 1 ⁄2 in.
thick and same
height as
drawer side.
Drawer
face

Lower pin
is screwed to
cabinet side; use
a block if slider is
not flush with 3
inside of cabinet. ⁄8 in.

Full extension
When the drawer and slider
reach full extension, the
bottom pin hits the back
of the bottom slot,
preventing the drawer from
Cabinet with offset side Cabinet with flush side opening farther. The drawer
is cantilevered from the
slider and can’t come out
Pin Pin of the cabinet until the upper
Drawer Drawer
side side pin is removed.

Hanging Leave 3 ⁄8 in. Slider

cleat between
dovetails.
Hanging
Gap, cleat Gap,
Block for about about
lower pin 1 ⁄64 in. 1 ⁄64 in.

Pin Pin

Drawings: David Dann March/April 1996 57

Sequence of cuts
1. Cut the dovetail profiles on both
edges of the hanging cleats.

2. Groove and dovetail the outside

faces of the sliders to fit the cleats.
1 2
3. Leave 3 ⁄8 in. of stock between
the profiles.

4. Machine the inside face

of the sliders into a dovetail.

5. Cut the groove in the drawer

sides to match the sliders.

Cutting safety: The slider gets a little

tippy when making the final cuts on its
inside face. The only contact with the
table is the relatively narrow dovetail.
To keep the piece from tipping, leave a 3 4
thin leg of waste near each edge until the
last cut. The leg will split off easily (see
the photo below). Make one last careful
pass to clean up the face.

frame, so the drawers are narrower than
the opening in the cabinet by twice the
thickness of the sliders. To hide them, I put
a 1 ⁄4-in. lip on each side of the drawer front
(see the drawing).
The sides of the drawer are part of the
telescoping mechanism, so they have to be
strong and smooth. I make them from a
dense hardwood—usually 1 ⁄2-in. maple. Be-
yond that, it doesn’t matter how you build
your drawers. I use dovetails most of the
time because I like the way they look.
I cut the grooves for the slider in the
drawer side after the dovetails are cut, so
when I reassemble the drawer, some of the
drawer-front pins will be in the way. I just
pare them down with a chisel after the glue
is dry. Label the drawer parts before you
take them apart to cut the grooves. Note
the faces where the grooves will be cut.
Making cleats and sliders
I chose a dovetail profile for the sliders be-
cause the shape keeps the drawer aligned
even when the fit is loose enough to ac-
commodate seasonal wood changes. The
exact amount of play is not critical, but if
the groove is too wide, the action will feel
sloppy. I make the grooves about 1 ⁄64 in.
wider than the dovetail, and I’ve had no
problem with binding parts, even in our
damp British Columbia weather.
Far more important to prevent binding is
the selection of wood. I use 1 ⁄2-in. hard
maple for all the parts of the mechanism,
except the cleat inside the cabinet, which I

58 Fine Woodworking58 Fine Woodworking

make from a clear, straight-grained wood
like mahogany or cherry. I also keep the
height of the sliders to less than 6 in. be-
cause the wider they get, the more likely
they are to warp and bind.
Because you are machining back-to-back
dovetails in the slider, the amount of mate-
rial between the two profiles is very im-
portant to its integrity. The slider needs at
least 3 ⁄8 in. of wood at the shoulder where
it meshes with the drawer side (see the
drawing on p. 57).
Machine setups
and sliding dovetails
When working with something as hard as
maple, I like to play it safe and remove
stock with a series of light cuts. It’s easier
on the equipment and on the nerves. I re-
move the bulk of the waste with a dado
cutter. Then I use a router mounted in a
table to cut the dovetail profiles and re-
move the sawmarks. Depending on the
amount of wood to be removed, I might
make as many as four passes.
For wasting the excess quickly, I use
1 ⁄2-in. dado cutters adjusted to cut a 7 ⁄32-in.-
deep groove. I set up the table-mounted
router with a 1 ⁄2-in., 14° dovetail bit to cut
to a depth of exactly 1 ⁄4 in. (1 ⁄32 in. deeper
than the dado). Once set, neither of these
heights is adjusted. Only the fences move.
The machining process will be far less
confusing if you keep the cuts centered on
the drawer sides and sliders. I do that by
making two cuts for each fence setup. Run
the piece through, end-for-end it and cut
the other side. Then set the fence for the
next cut (for details of the sequence of cuts,
see the list and photos on the facing page).
Installing the stop pins
The telescoping mechanism depends on
two brass stop pins that pull the slider into
its supporting position and prevent the
drawer from falling out of the cabinet.
I make the pins by sawing the heads off
#8 or #9 by 1 ⁄2-in. round-head, brass wood
screws and slotting the shanks for a screw-
driver. Rather than trying to drive the soft
brass pins into pilot holes, I first run in a
steel screw a few turns to cut the threads.
Before you install the pins, put in the
hanging cleats, and slide the drawers and
sliders in place. Check the fit. If the drawer
is too loose side to side, shim under the
hanging cleats with paper or business cards.
If it’s too tight, carefully sand the drawer
sides (not the groove).
When the drawer fits properly, it’s time to
Slotting jig
Color-coded blocks, sized to the slider, stop the router
cut at each end. The right and left sliders are mirror
images, so the blocks will be reversed.
Routing the top slot
Router is guided by
12
⁄ -in. by 1-in. strips
Colored blocks,
nailed around slider.
1 ⁄4-in. plywood
Plywood base Dovetail side up
Router bit and guide bushing
Routing the bottom slot
Length of slot is half the length of slider.
drill pilot holes for the pins in the sliders.
Remove the drawer, and push the sliders in
all the way. Drill the pilot hole into the cab-
inet side at the front of the bottom slot. You
may need to glue a block to the cabinet to
receive the pin (see the drawing detail on
p. 57). Install the pin so that the slotted
head is just below flush with the slider.
To install the upper pin, pull the slider all
the way out, and line up the inside back of
the drawer with the front of the cabinet.
Drill the pilot hole for the upper pin into
A jig for
plunge
routing
the slots
The slots in the drawer slider are
half as long as the slider’s overall
length. They’re laid out with the
top slot toward the front of the
slider and the bottom slot to-
ward the back (see the drawings
at left). For strength, I leave at
least 2 in. of stock between a slot
and the end of the slider and
3 ⁄8 in. between a slot and the
edge of the slider.
Mark the right and left sliders
and designate the front and back
of each. Now the sliders are iden-
tical, but they need to be slotted
as mirror images of each other.
A plunge router and a jig make
slotting easy (see the drawings).
I set up my router with a down-
cut spiral bit and a guide collar.
It’s sized so that when I push the
collar against the strips, the
router cuts the slot 3 ⁄8 in. from
the edge. I size the stop blocks at
either end of the jig to take the
collar offset into account.
For the first slot, the blocks are
laid in the jig, as shown in the
top drawing. When routing the
lower slot, the short block is at
the back. Remember that the
sliders are mirror images, so
when you slot the second slider,
the blocks will be reversed.
Think it through carefully be-
cause the placement of the
blocks is different for each slot.
Coloring the blocks helps to
keep things straight. —K.R.
the drawer side at the forward end of the
slot. As you disassemble everything for fin-
ishing, make sure all the parts are clearly
marked for easy reassembly. To keep
everything moving freely, apply three coats
of wax to the drawer sides, sliders and
hanging cleats, and buff with steel wool.

Karen Robertson is a woodworker and
part-time instructor in the fine furniture
program at Camosun College in Victoria,
B.C., Canada.
March/April 1996 59
I n the late 17th
century, English
tastes in furniture ran
to surfaces veneered in burls
and other wild-grained,
exotic woods. The thin
veneers were vulnerable
to chipping unless they were
protected by molding.
Drawers were especially at
risk. Edges were completely
exposed when the drawer
was open, and simply
opening and closing the
drawers could damage the
veneer on the drawerfront. Rout the rabbet. Cut to full depth, but set the fence to slightly less than the thickness
of the rabbet so that it can be trued up with a plane. To avoid tearout, rout the sides
first and then the top and bottom edges.
Then some innovative
furnituremaker came up Interest in cock beading survived into the and sizing the bead to fit the rabbet; and
Federal period, even on surfaces that were mitering and securing the beads in place.
not veneered. Cock beads were used like
with the idea of attaching string inlay—to create a line around a draw- Rabbets are routed
er face or along a table apron. and then cleaned with a plane
small, molded strips to the I use cock beads in many of my designs, I finish building and fitting a drawer to its
both around drawers and at the bottom of opening before cutting the rabbets to
drawer edges. They protected aprons (see the photos on the facing page). house the cock beads. Anything more than
Cock beads and imitation cock beads, the smallest amount of fitting done after the
called incised beads (see the box on p. 41), bead is glued in place will be noticeable. If
the veneer and gave the add visual interest to a range of furniture you take a few shavings off the sides of a
styles, from Federal to Shaker-inspired. drawer that's too tight, all of a sudden, the
drawer a distinctive border. Cock beading a drawer is quite easy. cock beads on the drawer's sides may look
There are three steps: cutting the rabbet for thinner than the top and bottom beads.
A detail was born. the bead around the drawer front; shaping In earlier days when dovetails were just
The top edge of the drawer front is rabbeted all
the way to the drawer side when a contrasting
wood is used for the bead. This way, only one
kind of wood is visible along the top edge when
the drawer is open.

Clean up the back edge of the top rabbet. A knife or a chisel

works well. Leaving this paper-thin buffer in place while routing
prevents damage to the front edge of the drawer sides.

Bottom and
side rabbets
are cleaned up
with a rabbet
plane. The in-
side corners can
be cleaned out
with a chisel,
if necessary.

construction joints rather than aesthetic
focal points on a piece of furniture, cabi-
netmakers did not mind covering their
dovetails with cock beads. Today, howev-
er, furnituremakers generally want their
dovetails to be seen. So when I cock bead
a drawer, I use half-blind dovetails and rab-
bet the sides of the drawer to the base of
the dovetail pins—usually about in. (see
the drawing above). A typical cock bead is
about in. thick and extends beyond the
drawer face about in.
On the bottom edge of the drawer front,
the rabbet is the same depth as it is on the
sides. But on the top edge, I rabbet the full
thickness of the drawer front when I'm us-
ing a contrasting wood. When the drawer
is open, you see only the cock bead, not
the wood used for the drawer front. Be
sure to make the top half-pin wide enough
for the bead (see the drawing above).
If you intend to use the same wood for
the cock bead and the drawer front, you
can just cut the same size rabbet all around
the drawer front. By saving an offcut from
the drawer face, you will get the best pos-
sible color and grain match, and the joint
will be nearly invisible.
The rabbet can be cut with a tablesaw,
router or hand tools. Because the rabbet's
exact dimensions depend on the size of the
bead, I either make up a sample piece of
bead or use a piece saved from a previous
project to make sure that the size of the
rabbet will be right.
I think a router is the easiest tool to use for
large drawers. I clamp the drawer to my
bench and use a hand-held router with a
wooden fence to get a rabbet of consistent
width. The rabbet's depth is set by adjusting
the bit's depth of cut. Marking the outside
edge of the rabbet with a knife, especially
where the router will exit the cut, will pre-
vent any splintering. Routing across the
grain first (the sides of the drawer) and then
with the grain also will eliminate tearout at
the end of the cut. I cut the rabbets slightly
undersize, so I can true and size them with
a chisel and a small rabbet plane.
For small drawers, you can cut the rab-
bets on a router table (see the photo on
p. 39). Set the bit height for the depth of the
rabbet, and set the fence for the thickness
of the bead. Cut the sides first, then the bot-
tom and then the top. The bit height will
need to be reset for the top rabbet. For the
rabbet on the top edge of the drawer, set
the bit so it cuts just shy of the drawer sides.
Clean up the paper-thin strip that's left with
a knife or a chisel (see the top photo on the
facing page). Holding the router bit slightly
away from the drawer sides eliminates the
possibility of chipping or tearout.
A few passes over the edges of the draw-
er with a finely set rabbet plane will give
you a straight and true edge and produce a
nearly invisible glueline (see the bottom
photo on the facing page). I check fre-
quently along the length of each side of the
drawer with a small square to be sure the
rabbets are square to the face.
Beads can be shaped
with a number of tools
I've cut beads with a router, beading
planes, a Stanley No. 66 beading tool and
homemade scratch beaders. A router is the
most consistent and easiest tool for making
lots of beading, even though it's hard to
find bits that will cut small beads.
Beading planes can be found in antique-
tool shops, some as small as in. Also,
many antique-tool dealers have the Stanley
No. 66 (a reproduction of the Stanley is
made by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks). Quite of-
ten, I use a homemade scratch beader. With
the Stanley No. 66 and the scratch beader,
there are no restrictions on the size of bead
I can make because I can grind my own
cutters. Because of the time involved, these
hand-tool methods are better for cutting
beading for just a few drawers. Although
the resulting bead is slightly inconsistent, it
has a wonderful, handmade feel.
I cut strips of beading from a board a few
inches longer than the drawer width and
the cock
bead's
country
cousin
Shape a bead by hand—A
homemade scratch beader is
the author's preferred tool.
A scratch beader can be both
pushed and pulled.
Beads cut into and flush with the face of the drawer are known as incised beads.
They're just scratched into the surface of the drawer front, but when they run all
around the drawer, they look as though they were mitered. Sometimes they're just
cut into the top and bottom edges of a drawer front. They're found more often on
country furniture and were meant to imitate high-style applied cock beads. Incised
beads don't create the same shadow lines, but they are an interesting detail on an
otherwise plain drawer face. The bead isn't very deep: Just the faintest suggestion
is all that's necessary. If you cut it too deep or make the bead too narrow, the
short-grain beads at the sides of the face will be vulnerable to chipping.
Incised beads can be cut in nearly as many ways as cock beading. I like to use a
homemade scratch beader (see the photo above) along with a chisel, a marking
knife and a block plane. To make my scratch beader, I ground a profile on a piece
of heavy-duty hacksaw blade with a thin grinding wheel mounted in a drill. The
grinding wheel is the kind you find in a hardware store, with an arbor already on
it. I find it easier to bring the steel to the grinding wheel, so I pinch the drill in my
bench vise. Then I hone both sides of my cutter on benchstones and use a slip
stone to hone the profile. The cutter is driven into a sawkerf in a hardwood block
and is held in place with a finishing nail. The profile is adjusted by extending or
retracting the blade from the side of the block, which acts as a fence.
The trick to a good incised bead is to take your time and work carefully—
especially around the corners. It's very easy to overshoot a corner and cut
through the adjoining bead. I creep up on a corner from both directions using
light cuts. The scratch beader
can be both pushed and pulled.
And it shapes wood across the
grain nearly as well as it does
with the grain.
After I've done all I can with the
scratch beader, I use a chisel and
marking knife to clean up the
inside corners and a block plane
to refine the shape of the outside
edge of the bead all around.—G.H.
Complete the corners. Use a
chisel and knife to clean up the
comers. The corners should be
sharp and appear to be mitered.

Router cuts beads quickly and con-
sistently. When he has a lot of beading
to cut, the author chooses the router. The
only drawback is the limited availability
of router bits with small profiles.
Plane strips of beading to thickness. A fixture consisting of three pieces of soft-
wood glued and tacked to a piece of plywood holds the bead in place.
Beads are sawn off both sides. The
author leaves a little extra material next
to the bead and then planes the bead to
a precise thickness. A push stick is used
to move the bead past the blade.
somewhat thicker than the width of the
widest finished bead. I start by planing the
two long edges of the board smooth, flat
and square. I work from both edges of a
board at the same time, shaping two beads
on a router table (see the far left photo). It
saves time.
After cutting the beads, I rip the strips off
the board on the tablesaw, keeping them
slightly thicker than the depth of the rab-
bets (see the near left photo). Then I plane
them to thickness, using a caliper to check
my progress as I go. When planing, I place
the strips of beading jointed side down to
remove sawmarks.
To hold the beads in place when I'm
planing, I put them in a very simple fix-
ture, a thickness gauge of sorts (see the
bottom photo at left). The strips of wood
holding the bead in place are approxi-
mately the desired thickness of the bead
and are glued and tacked to a piece of ply-
wood. Make sure the brads are set well be-
low the surface so that you don't nick a
plane iron.
Jointing new edges on the board, cutting
two beads, ripping them off and planing
them to thickness eventually yields enough
strips for what I need and some extras, just
in case. Depending on how many drawers
I'm cock beading, I'll make between 20%
and 50% extra—the fewer the drawers, the
higher the percentage.
The final step is to rip each strip to the
width of the rabbet plus the amount the
bead projects from the surface. I find this
more accurate than cutting the strips from a
board that's only as thick as the final bead-
ed strips are wide. It's easier to keep the
wider strips a consistent thickness across
their width as I'm planing them. Also, I can
cut the wider top beads with the same set-
up. I measure for the top bead by setting
one of the thinner beads in place at the side
of the drawer and using a caliper to mea-
sure from the front of the bead to the back
of the drawer front. This ensures that the
top bead will project beyond the drawer
front the same amount as the cock beading
around the sides and bottom.
Work your way
around the drawer
The beads are mitered on all four corners.
If you are setting the top bead in a rabbet
the same depth as the other three, rather
than the full depth of the face, then the mi-
tering is straightforward. If the top edge
bead is full width, then it's mitered only to
where the side beads meet it. This stopped
 After the door has been rabbeted, strips of beading
are glued into place. Each corner is mitered.

When the top bead is the full width

of the drawer front, it is stop mitered
at the corners where it meets the
side beads.

Clamp the bottom and sides in two directions. A rabbeted caul allows
you to damp the cock bead firmly into the drawer face in both planes,
producing the least visible gluelines. Aflat caul protects the top bead.

miter is not terribly difficult to cut; howev-
er, it is the part of this process that requires
the most attention.
I start with the bead along the top edge.
I mark and cut it to length and mark out
the depth of the stopped miters at either
end. Holding the strip against a simple
miter block, I saw the miter close with a
dovetail saw, and then I pare it so that it fits
perfectly. Before attaching the beads, I
smooth-plane the face of the drawer front
one last time. Then I glue and clamp the
top bead in place, using softwood cauls to
protect the bead and the rabbet at the
drawer bottom.
I work my way around the drawer face.
There are two minor differences in dealing
with the three remaining sides. The side
and bottom beads need to be clamped in
two directions, tight against both faces of
the rabbet, so you don't end up with a visi-
ble glueline. I use a rabbeted caul to exert
pressure both down and in (see the photo
above). Because of cross-grain movement,
the side beads on drawers wider than about
5 in. are best secured with a few small brads
in addition to glue. Drawers wider than 8 in.
or so should not be cock beaded By setting
the brads and filling the holes with a wax
pencil of the same color as the cock bead,
the holes are nearly invisible.
Garrett Hack trained as an architect before
turning to furnituremaking in 1975. He
designs and builds furniture and farms
about a dozen acres in Thetford Center, Vt.
M
y wife, Laura, doesn't understand
why I make such a fuss about
drawer fitting. The drawers in our
kitchen cabinets slide on plastic runners,
and she says they work better than the
drawers in any of my furniture. I can't ar-
gue with that—those nylon rollers do their
job well. But plastic slides don't belong on
dovetailed drawers. Fine furniture requires
another solution, an approach that substi-
tutes craftsmanship for the manufactured
precision of drawer slides.
The technique we use in my workshop
involves three successive levels of fitting.
The first is of the individual drawer parts,
then the assembled drawer without its bot-
tom and, finally, the drawer with its bottom
installed. The result is a drawer that fits
so well that it's slowed by a cushion of air
as you push it in. And when you pull out
the drawer, any other drawers in the case
are gently pulled back into the nearly air-
tight case. It takes time to achieve this pis-
ton fit, but the results speak for themselves.
Other furnituremakers may pride them-
selves on their dovetails or some other
joinery, but for me, a finely fitted drawer is
the benchmark of a craftsman's skill.
Well-built drawers start
with stable wood
Drawer sides should only be made of top-
quality, mild-grained and, preferably, quar-
tersawn stock. What you are looking for is
wood that will remain straight, move very
little with shifts in humidity and plane easi-
ly and cleanly. At the top of my list is Hon-
duras mahogany. Most of my drawer sides
are made of material salvaged from old, fac-
 FITTING DRAWER PARTS

SIDES FIRST
1. Mark the
drawer sides. Be-
cause each drawer
is fit precisely to a
particular open-
ing, the location
and orientation
of each part is
marked.
2. Shoot the edge.
A sharp jointer
plane and a shoot-
ing board will give
you a straight edge
that's 90° to the
face of the drawer
side. A little wax on
the sole and side of
the plane will help
it glide better.
3. Snug but not
binding—When
the sides will just
slide in and out
without binding
in the case, they're
fit. If they do bind,
look for shiny
spots on the top
edge, which indi-
cate high spots.

tory-made mahogany furniture. Because of
its age, the wood is about as stable as it's
ever going to be. After mahogany, quarter-
sawn oak is my choice for drawer sides.
I make my choice depending on the
wood used for the drawer fronts, always
aiming for a contrast in color. I like ma-
hogany with lighter colored drawer fronts,
such as ash or sycamore, and oak sides
when the drawer fronts are made of darker
woods, such as walnut or rosewood. From
time to time, I use other woods, such as
teak, because it wears so well, and rippled
(curly) sycamore on special cabinets or
desks, where the visual quality of the draw-
er sides is very important.
Fit the drawer pieces
individually and precisely
Regardless of how much care you put into
making and fitting the drawer, it will not fit
well if the opening in the case is not con-
sistent front to back and top to bottom.
Check the openings, and true them with
a shoulder plane if necessary. Make sure,
.above all, that the case doesn't taper in
from front to back. Once the case is trued
up, sand the inside, and polish it with a
good-quality paste wax.
I don't make or fit drawers on damp or
particularly humid days. Instead, I'll wait
for a dry spell so that the drawer parts
aren't swollen with moisture. Also, when-
ever possible, I bring the drawer stock into
the shop to acclimate for a few weeks be-
fore dimensioning it.
Fit the sides first, top to bottom—The
first step in fitting the drawer pieces is to

cut them to rough size, say, within in. of
finished length and width. All pieces can
be thicknessed to final dimension, as long
as you bear in mind that you'll be planing
and sanding them slightly to fit. Before I do
any planing, I use a pair of winding sticks
to be sure that all pieces are flat.
I work with the sides first, testing both
faces of each side to see which planes bet-
ter. I choose this side for the face because it
will have to be planed to fit and mark it ac-
DRAWER BACKS ARE NEXT
Fit the backs from side to side.
Check the fit often because only one
stroke of the plane separates a drawer
that fits from one that's sloppy. These
drawer backs have been cut to width
to fit over drawer bottoms.
cordingly (see the top right photo on p. 73).
If there's more than one drawer, I also in-
dicate which drawer the part belongs to.
The end of the drawer where I start my
plane stroke becomes the front end so that
all fitting is from front to back. If one edge
of a drawer side is more difficult to plane, I
try to make it the bottom edge because the
top edge is where all the planing to fit takes
place. Then I plane the inside of the draw-
er and sand it with 400-grit paper. After
The sides have been
fitted. The drawer
backs are next.
Colored dots at the
corners of the case
piece identify mating
edges and indicate
the front of the case.
this, I shouldn't have to do anything more
other than apply a coat of paste wax.
I cut the sides to length on the tablesaw
and then plane the bottom edges on a
shooting board. I saw the other edges to
within in. of the finished width (or less)
and then plane them, too, on the shooting
board (see the bottom right photo on
p. 73). After nearly every pass with the
plane, I check the fit in the case. If it binds,
I check the top edge to see where it's bur-
nished, indicating rubbing between the
drawer side and the case, and remove a
shaving there. When the side goes all the DRAWER FRONTS
way home without binding, but still re- ARE LAST
quires a fair amount of force, it's ready (see
the photo on p. 72). There should be no 1. Mark the fronts
play at all. Further fitting, which will make from the backs.
the drawer side move more freely, will take Because the backs
fit snugly from end
place after the drawer has been assembled. to end (and on
Repeat the process for all drawer sides in large drawers,
the case. from top to bot-
tom), they can be
Fit the back perfectly—A perfect fit for used to lay out the
the back is absolutely essential because it fronts. Marking
with a knife gives
is used as the pattern for the front. With the author a precise
large drawers, I fit each back precisely to line that he extends
its opening, so it just snugs into the case across the face of
opening on all four sides. This is important, the drawer front
because the opening often will not be per- with a small square.
fectly square. Fitting the back (and then
front) of the drawer to the opening helps to
2. Plane a slight
bevel on the ends.
ensure a perfect fit. This inward taper
On small drawers, however, like the helps with the fit-
ones in this desktop unit, it's less important ting of the drawer
to fit the drawer backs from top to bottom. front.
Because the drawers are so narrow, only
3. Fitting the
the lengths of the backs need to be fit to fronts. With the
the case openings. Openings this small fronts snugged into
can't be out of square by very much. place, no light or
I mark the backs by indicating which gaps should be
drawer each one belongs to and writing visible at the top,
this number on a little round paper dot that bottom or sides.
I can peel off later (see the bottom right
photo on the facing page). I stick the dot
on the inside of the drawer—facing the
front of the cabinet, at the top—so I know
how the back is supposed to be oriented
throughout the fitting process.
To prepare the back, I shoot the bottom
edge and then saw and plane the top edge
to width to fit snugly in the drawer open-
ing. Then I'll transfer the outline of the
drawer back to the front before cutting the
back to width to fit over the drawer bot-
tom, which slides beneath it. In the case of
a small drawer, though, I just cut and plane
the back to width right away. I get this
measurement—from the top of the drawer
bottom groove to the top of the opening—
from my full-scale drawing.
Next I shoot one end of the back square,
set it in place in the opening and then po-
sition the other end as closely as possible
to where it belongs. I make a pencil mark
at this end, cut the back just a hair long and
then plane it to fit, checking it in the case
after each stroke (see the bottom right pho-
to on the facing page).
To prevent end-grain tearout at the edge
of the board (what we call spelching here

in England), I pivot the plane nearly 90°
to the direction of cut as I complete the
stroke. This way, the blade cuts across the
fibers at the edge of the board rather than
catching them and breaking them off.
There should be no gap at all at the ends of
the backs when they're in place in the case.
The front should fit like a plug—I mark
out the length of the front by placing the
corresponding back on it, with the bottom
edges flush, and knifing marks at either
FITTING DRAWERS TO THE CASE
end of the back (see the top photo on
p. 75). After shooting the bottom edge of
the front, I saw and then plane the top
edge to fit, beveling it ever so slightly front
to back. I check the fit after each stroke,
holding the piece in its opening at an angle
(because it hasn't been cut to length yet),
being extremely careful not to take off too
much with any one pass.
I fit the front from end to end in the same
way that I do the back, except that I bevel
the ends slightly, just like the top (see the
Fronts are fitted.
With all drawer parts
fit to their openings,
the drawers can now
be dovetailed together.
center photo on p. 75). The front should fit
its opening exactly, with no gaps around it
at all (see the bottom photo on p. 75).
Fitting the drawer box
Drawer joinery is another subject entire-
ly—far too big to include in this article. Suf-
fice it to say that any drawer worth fitting
this well has been properly dovetailed.
And be sure to mark out the dovetails so
the tails stand slightly proud of the pins.
The front and back of each drawer have
MAKE IT SQUARE
Make sure the drawer glues up
square. As soon as the joints are
together, compare diagonals and
adjust the drawer box if necessary.
 TRIM TO FIT

1. Pare away the

top back corner.
This will prevent the
drawer from bind-
ing as you try to fit
it into its opening.
2. Clean up the
sides. A few strokes
with a plane will
bring the sides flush
with the end grain
of the front and
back, which have
been fit precisely
and should not be
planed further.
3. Plane stops to
position drawer
front. If you have
more than one
drawer stop per
been fitted precisely to the opening, so drawer, remove
you'll want to remove material from the material evenly
drawer sides, not from the ends of the front from each.
or back, which are your reference lengths.
When I glue up a dovetailed drawer, I
don't use any clamps, relying instead on
the accuracy of the joints to hold the draw-
er together. I use glue very sparingly and
just tap the dovetails home with a hammer.
I use a block of wood to prevent the sur-
face of the drawer sides from being
marred. The same goes for mortises and
tenons, which I sometimes use to attach
the back to the sides as I did on this draw-
er. Extending the sides past the back allows
the drawer to open fully without dropping
out of its opening. Whatever the construc-
tion, if a drawer is going to fit its opening
well, it's important to compare measure-
ments from corner to corner when gluing
up and to make adjustments to get the
Section through
drawer square (see the bottom photo on drawer stop
the facing page).
Plane front
A drawer board supports the drawer of stop
as you plane—Once th e glue has cured (I
wait several hours at least, but overnight is
better), I take a chisel and pare away the
top back corner of both sides (see the top
left photo above). If the back corner was
dovetailed, often it will have swollen up
because of the moisture introduced by the
glue. Even if that's not the case, taking Rail
down this corner will prevent the drawer
from binding as it enters the case. I also Wood grain for stop
is oriented vertically
ease all the arrises (the sharp corners for strength.
where edge meets side) with a block plane
followed by some fine sandpaper, and I
soften the top edge of the drawer back.
I leave the bottom out at this stage so I
can position the drawer over a drawer
board to plane the sides (see the top right
photo on p. 77). The drawer board fully
supports the drawer but doesn't get in the
way of the plane. The drawer board should
fit quite accurately between the inside
faces of the drawer front and back.
I take a few passes with a plane to bring
the sides flush with the end grain of the
drawer front and back and then check the
fit of the drawer in its opening. I leave just
a little sanding or planing to do after the
drawer bottom is installed. I slide the draw-
er in and out of its opening rapidly a few
times. This burnishes the sides and top
edges of the drawer sides wherever they're
rubbing against the case. I plane away
these burnished (shiny) spots and check
the fit again.
This process is repeated until the drawer
will move in and out with relative ease, but
no slop. The closer I get to a fit, the more
often I check.
As you're planing the drawer sides, be
careful not to remove too much material
from the edge of the drawer front, where it
would be visible from the front of the case.
After cleaning up the dovetails, I often
won't touch this area with a plane again. I
just sand it lightly until the fit is right.
Final fit is with the drawer bottom in
place—Once the drawer is sliding nicely in
its opening, it's time to put the drawer bot-
tom in. I almost always use solid cedar of
Lebanon. It smells nice, my clients like it
and it keeps moths and worms away. Be-
cause it's solid wood, I orient the grain
from side to side so that any
expansion is front to back. I
spot-glue the bottom at the
front so that no gap opens
up there, and I screw the
bottom to the back using
slotted screw holes so the
bottom can move.
To make sure that the
bottom is seated in its
groove all the way along
its length, I set the drawer
on the bench on one side
and then tap on the other
with a hammer. A piece of
scrap protects the side that's
being hammered. I repeat the
process on the other side.
Next I check the fit of the drawer in its
78 Fine Woodworking
opening. Often it will need no further fit-
ting. If it's a little snug, removing a shaving
The result is or two is the most that will be necessary. A
light sanding with 400-grit usually will do.
With the drawer fit, I make sure all outer
a drawer that fits faces and edges are sanded to 400-grit (the
insides have already been done). Then I
so well it's slowed apply a coat of paste wax to all surfaces ex-
cept the face of the drawer front. It will be
finished with the case later.
by a cushion Drawer stop determines
the position of the front
of air as you push All that remains is to get the plane of the
drawer front where you want it—either
it in. And when flush with the sides of the case or back a bit
if you prefer. Many furnituremakers simply
glue a small block of wood to the drawer
you pull out divider for a drawer stop, perhaps affixing
a piece of leather or felt to cushion the im-
pact. Unfortunately, this type of drawer
the drawer, stop will almost always get knocked out
over time.
any other drawers In my shop, we prevent this problem by
mortising L-shaped drawer stops into the
drawer dividers (mortises are cut before the
in the case are case is assembled). The grain of the drawer
stop is oriented vertically, perpendicular to
the dividers. No amount of force will break
gently pulled back off a stop like this, and the leg of the
L-shape gives me material to plane away to
into the get the drawer to stop where I want it (see
the bottom photo and drawing on p. 77).
I check the drawer in its opening once
nearly airtight more, this time to see how much material I
must remove from the front of the stop. A
few passes with a bullnose plane and the
case. job is done. If you have more than one stop
(I usually use two, one near either case
side), try to remove material evenly from
both stops. To see if you've succeeded,
place a little pressure against the drawer
front right in front of one of the stops. If the
drawer front gives at all, the stop behind it
has had more material removed from it.
The other one will need a shaving or two
removed to even things up. As always, the
closer I get to where I want to be, the more
cautiously I proceed.
Alan Peters first began woodworking as an
apprentice in Edward Barnsley's work-
shop in 1949. He has been designing and
building furniture ever since. In 1990, he
received the OBE (Order of the British Em-
pire) from the queen of England in recog-
nition of his contributions as a designer
and craftsman. He lives and works in Ken-
tisbeare, Devon, England, where he man-
ages a team of four other craftsmen.
Versatile Plywood Drawers
An honest box
with your choice
of two simple
drawer joints

BY GARY ROGOWSKI

S
ome drawers are built with
great care, hinting at the
treasures hiding behind
their polished faces. They have
the look and feel of a crisply
tailored suit. But plywood util-
ity drawers feel more like loose-
fitting jeans: They're made for
comfort and use, not for show.
Utility drawers are the perfect
receptacles for those minor tor-
nadoes of odds and ends.
You can build simple ply-
wood drawers with a tablesaw,
a router and your choice of two
basic joints: the rabbet or the
tongue and dado. For ease of
construction, build the drawers
with -in. plywood (I use 9-ply
Baltic birch) or a high-density
particleboard. Just make sure
your sheet goods are flat and of
consistent thickness. Millwork
then simply involves cutting the
parts to length and width. Use
-in. plywood for the drawer
bottoms, which also serve as
the drawer runners.
Construct the cabinet carcase
out of the same -in. plywood
CLOSET CADDY DESK SHOP used for the drawers. For a clean
look, I spline-miter my cabinet
 The tongue-and-dado joint
The simplest setup for cutting a tongue-and-
dado joint requires only one bit-height setting
on the router table. However, the bit hole in the
table must be small enough or have a table
insert to prevent the drawer pieces from diving
into the hole when passed vertically over it. If
your table doesn't have an insert, drill an access
hole through some flat -in. plywood or
hardboard, and clamp it to your table.
First cut the dadoes in the drawer sides. Set
the bit height for the full dado cut, and then
position and clamp the fence. I always take a
practice pass before committing good stock to
the cut. If the dado is in the right place, the
outside face of the drawer front will wind up
flush with the end of the drawer side. Without
changing the bit-depth setting, cut the tongues
in the drawer face and back with the pieces
held vertically. Score the face with a gauge line First cut the dadoes in the
to prevent tearout. You will have to adjust the drawer sides. The dado should
be one-third (or less) the thick-
fence to get a perfect-fitting tongue.
ness of the board.
Because the end of the dado is fragile and
can break off, avoid too tight a fit, and use
caution when pulling the joint apart. —G.R.
Next cut the tongues in the
drawer face and back. Adjust
the fence for the shoulder width,
but leave the bit height the same
as it was for the dadoes. Hold the
stock vertically.
Front
Test the fit. If you cut the dado
first and use it to locate the
tongue, the fit should be right.
sides together, as shown in the The rabbet joint
drawing at left. I rabbet the rear
edges to accept a flush-mount- The rabbet joint requires just one router cut into only one pass, with the bit set to full depth.
ed, -in. plywood back, but you each end of the drawer face and back. The The sides on my utility drawers are about
could rabbet the sides together drawer sides are simply crosscut to the correct 3 in. wide. When you cut narrow boards like
and simply screw on the back. length, figured by taking the outside dimension these on a router table, you can gang up two
Before glue-up, dado -in.- of the drawer box less the width of the rabbet or three to give them greater stability against
wide grooves into the cabinet on both ends. Use a router bit the same width as the fence and to reduce tearout. Make sure
sides for the drawer runners to the drawer side, so you can cut the full width of you're aware of where your fingers are when
rest in. Make sure the case goes the rabbet with each pass across the bit. the bit emerges from the cut. After the
together square by checking the To spare your bit, take two separate passes to drawers are glued up, pin the drawer sides to
diagonals across the face and
cut the rabbets to depth. The first pass takes the face and back with -in. dowel pins. If you
back of the cabinet. Pull the cab-
away about in. of material; the second cuts to prefer to fasten the sides with finish nails,
inet square by clamping across
the longer diagonal. Squaring depth, in this case, in. A rabbet joint can also drive the nails at a slight inward angle, and
the cabinet will make fitting the be roughed out on a saw and then router cut in set the nail heads. — G.R.
drawers much simpler later on.
Both the rabbet and the
tongue and dado are excellent Back
joints for plywood construction
because they help line up the
drawer parts when gluing. The
difference between these joints
is partly structural and partly vi-
sual. The tongue and dado
shows the ply edge on the face
of the drawer, whereas the rab-
bet keeps this edge hidden
from sight. But the rabbet needs
fasteners such as dowels or
nails to resist being pulled apart
every time the drawer is yanked
open. Because the tongue of
the drawer front is secured by
the dado of the drawer side, the
tongue and dado naturally re-
sists this same movement,
You can cut either joint on a
router table (see the boxes on
this and the facing page). For
pulls, I bore 1-in. holes in the
drawer fronts with a Multispur
bit or a Forstner bit, positioning
the bit so that a portion of the
hole overlaps the top edge of
the drawer.
Glue up the drawer sides, and
then glue on the bottoms. Make
sure that the drawer boxes fit
between the case sides with on-
ly a little slop; let the drawer
bottom be the item you adjust
for that perfect fit. Then comes
the best moment: filling all
those drawers with stuff.
Gang several pieces together. Cutting two or Pin a rabbet joint with dowels or nails. Fasteners
Gary Rogowski is a contributing editor three pieces at once improves stability against the keep the joint from breaking apart when the drawer
to Fine Woodworking magazine. fence and reduces tearout. is yanked open.
 Graduated Drawers
A little arithmetic is all it takes to enliven the proportions
and increase the utility of a case, a cabinet or a built-in
BY CHRIS B E C K S V O O R T

A CASE WITH AN EVEN

NUMBER OF DRAWERS
The formulas for the example here—a
four-drawer chest with 1-in.
graduations—can be used for any
chest with an even number of
drawers.
To get the usable drawer height,
subtract the dimensions of the top
( in.), base ( in.), and drawer
dividers (3 x in. = in.) from the
chest's total height (36 in.):
36 - ( + + ) = 27

To find the average drawer height,

divide the usable drawer height (27 in.)
by the number of drawers (4):
27-4 =

To find the height of the drawer below

the middle divider, add one-half the
graduation increment in.—to the
average drawer height (6 in.):

Add 1 in. to the drawer height below

and subtract 1 in. from the two above.

T
he Shakers were among the primary proponents (and
practitioners) of graduated drawers, although there are
lots of cases—Chippendale, Federal and Queen Anne—
that have graduated drawers. Under the dictum "a place for every-
thing and everything in its place," the Shakers built drawers to
house specific items. There is no reason for a drawer that will hold
cassette tapes to be as deep as one that holds CDs, or for your un-
derwear drawer to be as high as your sweater drawer.
Also, I never build solid wood drawers much more than 9 in.
high. Because of seasonal wood movement, anything higher will
leave too wide a gap in midwinter (even with overlay drawers),
and the drawer could bind in summer.
Another consideration is overall proportion. Small drawers in
desks or in a collector's cabinet may graduate in only in. to in.
increments. In bureaus used for clothing, on the other hand, the
drawers can be graduated in in. or 1-in. increments. If you are a
stickler for detail, you may also want to consider graduating the
size of the knobs or drawer pulls as well.
Find the usable drawer height,
then figure the average drawer height
Once you know the height of the case and the number of drawers
in the case, laying out graduated drawers is straightforward. To get
the available drawer space, subtract from the total height the di-
mensions of the top, bottom and all of the dividers. The number of
dividers in a case will always be one less than the number of draw-
ers: e.g., a five-drawer case will have four dividers. Dividing the
available drawer space by the number of drawers will give you
the average drawer height. Regardless of whether you're building
a case with an odd number or even number of drawers, the aver-
age drawer height is the most important dimension.
If you have an odd number of drawers, the middle drawer will
 A CASE W I T H
AN ODD NUMBER
OF DRAWERS
A case with an odd number of
drawers has a middle drawer
with an equal number of
drawers above and below it.
The method of determining
the average drawer height
is the same as for a case with
an even number of drawers.
The formulas for the example
here—a seven-drawer chest
with 1-in. graduations—can be
used for any chest with an odd
number of drawers.
To get the usable drawer
height, subtract the dimensions
of the top base
and drawer dividers
from the
chest's total height ( in.):

To find the average drawer

height, divide the usable
drawer height ( in.) by the
number of drawers (7):

For the drawers below the

middle drawer, increase the
drawer heights in 1-in.
increments. For the drawers
above the middle drawer,
decrease the drawer heights in
1-in. increments.

be equal to the average drawer height. For the drawers above, sim-
ply subtract the amount by which you want the drawers to get
smaller—the graduation interval—and add this amount to the
drawers below the middle one.
When figuring drawer graduations for a case with an even num-
ber of drawers, you still need to find the amount of available draw-
er space and calculate the average drawer height. However, there
will be no average-height drawer in the case when you are
through; the average drawer height is just the starting point in your
calculations. Determine an average drawer height, then add or
subtract one-half the graduation increment to or from that average
height to get started. Then proceed by full graduations.
Always remember that you have some flexibility. If needed, you
can add a fraction of an inch to the top molding or remove a frac-
tion of an inch from the base to make the numbers work in a sim-
ple way (making your life a lot easier) without compromising the
chest. You probably can't change the dimensions of your dividers,
though, which have to be a specific size if they are to fit into dove-
tails or dadoes cut with a standard router bit.
The illustrations above are examples of how to graduate the
drawers for a case with an even number of drawers and for one
with an odd number of drawers. Here's an important thing to keep
in mind: You can graduate drawers by any increment—1 in., 2 in.,
3 in., even fractional inches—as long as you subtract the increment
from the drawers above the average-height drawer and add the in-
crement to the same number of drawers below the average-height
drawer. The formulas can be used for any number of drawers,
from the smallest case with three drawers to a floor-to-ceiling
built-in with 16.
Chris Becksvoortis a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking. He is also
the author of The Shaker Legacy (The Taunton Press, 1999),

Drawings: Vince Babak

Build this Hepplewhite table
and further hone your hand-tool skills
BY MIKE D U N B A R
T
his small table is a typical example of a furniture form that
became popular in the 1790s and remained in favor
through the first half of the 1800s. It is generally referred to
by antique collectors as a lamp stand. That name distinguishes it
from the tripod tables that had been popular during much of the
1700s. The name also explains this form's sudden development.
Tripod stands are commonly called candle stands, from the prac-
tice of placing candlesticks on them to illuminate a room. Oil
lamps became popular around 1790. But the lamps used highly
combustible liquid fuel and so were more hazardous than a single
candle flame.
To provide a more stable and safer resting place for oil lamps,
the small, four-legged table was introduced. Outside the antique
world, this form is called an end table, indicating the table's popu-
lar use at the ends of a sofa or on both sides of a bed. For this rea-
son, many people prefer these tables in pairs. The pair I made are
 BACKSAW BASICS
Saw both corners, then connect the cuts. Cutting through a
tenon's long grain can be a problem unless you ease into it by making
of woods native to New Hampshire—cherry with a curly maple ve-
neer drawer front.
Making one of these tables is an excellent project to help the be-
ginner or intermediate woodworker develop and practice hand-
tool skills. It is a natural progression from the more basic joints and
work methods introduced in the blanket chest I wrote about in a
previous issue (see FWW #I34, pp. 48-53). Obviously, this table
could be built with straightforward machine work, but it is a lot
more fun if you do at least some of the tasks by hand. You could
prepare the stock with planes and handsaws, as I did when I made
the blanket chest; however, for the table I did all of the thickness-
ing and ripping on machines. Then I moved to the bench to make
the actual table. After stock preparation, the table has four major
operations—the joinery, the leg taper, the top and the drawer.
Complete one operation at a time
The two most important tools you will use
in making this table are the square and
straightedge. Slight differences that are
easy to overlook in a larger piece are mag-
nified in a table this small. Use the straight-
edge and square to check everything as
you progress.
After cutting all of the parts to size, re-
move any saw, planer and jointer marks (if
you used these machines) and obtain a
smooth surface with handplanes. Check to
be sure that with all of your handplane
work you do not plane out of square.
A mortise gauge is a scribing tool with
two points and is used for laying out mor-
tises and tenons. Adjust the two points to Tabletop attachment. Use a marking gauge to
the width of the joint, and slide the fence mark in. down from the top edge of the aprons
to the thickness of the shoulder. Always and then use a gouge to cut pockets for the table-
run the gauge's fence against the outside top attachment screws.
a diagonal cut through both corners and then connecting those cuts
across the middle. Use the same process when cutting the shoulder.
surface on all parts. Doing so will give you a consistent reference
that might not be reliable if you were to make some marks off the
inside edges and some off the outside edges.
Use a square—again, always on the outside surface—to mark the
ends of the mortises and the tenon shoulders. I lay out the mortis-
es so that the rails will protrude above the tops of the legs by in.
After the table has been glued up, it is easier to true the rail-to-leg
joints by planing the long grain of the rails rather than trying to
plane the end grain of the top of the legs.
Notice that the tenons used to join the rails to the legs have just
one shoulder (see the drawings on the facing page). In keeping
with the Federal period's preference for sleek lines, the rails are
flush with the legs. If the tenons were double shouldered, the out-
side walls of the mortises would be too. thin. While the single-
shouldered tenons are not as resistant to racking, they are more
than, adequate for this table. They are also
easier to cut.
Backsaw the tenons
and chisel out the mortises
I cut tenons with a sharp backsaw (see the
photos above). I prefer to cut on the out-
side edge of the line rather than on the line
itself. This usually results in a bit of extra
material. Remember the old maxim about
wood being easy to remove but hard to
put back on. The extra material is easy
to trim away.
Start the sawing with the shoulder. Hold
the part in a bench hook—an easy-to-
make holding device that is very useful in
handwork. You can use clamps, but they
take more time. Rather than laying the saw
across the part and cutting the shoulder at
once, tilt the saw so that you start on one
Photos: Michael Pekovich
CHERRY LAMP S T A N D
WITH CURLY MAPLE
DRAWER FRONT
First popularized at the end of the
18th century, tables of this type are
often made in pairs and used on
both sides of a bed or couch. Plain
in form, almost stark, this table is
dressed up by the addition of curly
maple veneer and cock beading on
the drawer front. For cock-beading
details, see the drawing on p. 55.

corner. Repeat on the other corner and then connect the cuts. Al-
though I lay out my shoulders with a square, I cut them at a slight
angle (1° or 2°) away from the tenon, which helps in obtaining a
tight joint between the shoulder and the leg and eliminates a lot of
work with the shoulder plane.
Cut the tenon's cheek by holding the rail upright in a vise. It is
hard to keep the saw from wandering if you cut straight across the
part and straight down the cheek. Once again, start the cut on one
corner and deepen it on one side almost to the shoulder. Repeat
on the other side. These two cuts will keep your saw straight as
you complete the cheek. To separate the waste cleanly, you may
have to deepen the shoulder cut to meet the cheek. Do this care-
fully because overcutting will weaken the tenon.
Before moving on to the leg mortises, cut the screw pockets in
the inside upper edges of the rails. Use a scribe to mark the pock-
ets' upper surfaces. With a gouge, hollow out the pockets (see the
bottom photo on the facing page). Drill the screw holes at an an-
gle that will exit through the rail's top edge.
To hold the legs while cutting the mortises, I like the two-clamp
system shown in the top photos on p. 52. When I need to knock

Drawings: Bob La Pointe M A Y / J U N E 2000 51

 MORTISING WITH A CHISEL

Popping chips. A stout mortise chisel is de-
signed to be used as half cutting tool and
half prybar. After driving the chisel into the
wood with a mallet, you can pop the chip out
of the hole. Don't try this with your bench
chisels, or you might end up with a bent tool.
A square mortise makes a square table.
When you first mortise by hand, it is important
to check your work constantly. Hold a square
on the table leg and sight along the square and
the edge of the chisel to make sure the mortise
is square to the face of the leg.
Mortise tuning. If need be, use a wide chis-
el to pare the sides of a mortise when fitting
it to an already cut tenon. The author's two-
clamp system holds a leg for mortising;
the clamp flat on the bench is set just wider
than the leg thickness, holding the leg se-
curely but allowing it to be lifted out easily.

out a reluctant chip from a mortise, all I have to do is loosen one loose but stick in the mortise. Keep a thin chisel or screwdriver on
clamp and pick up the leg. hand to use as a pick.
A mortise chisel will make quick work of chopping a mortise. It Check the mortise's depth with a ruler. It speeds up the fitting if
is a stout tool designed to take a lot of pounding and levering. you go just a bit deeper than the tenon. Finally, use the chisel to
Make sure your chisel is sharp. Start the mortise back from the end make two cleaning cuts that bring the mortise's narrow ends up
and drive the chisel straight down. Pull it out and move about in. to the scribe lines.
down the mortise for the second cut. The chisel's wedge shape Rotate the leg and cut the second mortise. You will find that it in-
pops out a chip of wood the same width as the tool. Repeat along tersects the first. To avoid blowing out large pieces of wood from
the mortise, stopping short of the other end. the wall of the first mortise, drive the chisel with less force as you
Begin another, deeper pass along the now well-defined open- near the full depth.
ing. It is important that the mortise be per-
pendicular to the leg. To avoid wandering Getting the right fit
to one side, check yourself with a square. To ease the tenon's fit into its mortise, use
Do this frequently in the beginning of the a low-angle block plane to ease all of the
cut. You will probably discover that you edges. Where necessary, trim the mortise
tend to lean to one side or another. (I tend wall. Use a wide, sharp chisel so that you
to push too far away and usually need to can make the cut in a single pass, which
draw the handle toward me.) Very quickly creates a more uniform surface than trim-
you will develop the feel for vertical, ming in multiple passes with a narrower
and you will need to check yourself only chisel. This low-angle trimming is called
once in a while. paring. Where necessary, trim the tenon
During the second and subsequent pass- cheek with a shoulder plane. This plane's
es, the chips do not easily pop out of the sides are square to the sole, and its narrow
mortise. You have to lever them loose by mouth allows it to take very controlled
pulling the chisel so that it rocks on its cuts. It is used cross-grain.
bezel. This pulling is the reason for stop- Repeat this process of fitting and trim-
ping short of the mortise's end. The waste Tracing tail. The top drawer rail locks into the
ming as necessary. You want a snug fit that
will keep the chisel from crushing the end. top end grain of the two front legs by means of will move by hand. You should not have to
As the mortise deepens it becomes more a large dovetail. The bottom drawer rail is se- drive the tenon, and it should not fall out
difficult to get the chips out. They pry cured to the legs with two small tenons. on its own. This friction fit may take a few
tries to achieve, but hand skills develop on- Ruler and square
ly with practice. However, if you do trim are invaluable. Af-
ter the joints have
too much, glue a piece of veneer to the
been cut, dry-fit the
tenon and start the trimming again. table with clamps
When you can push the tenon to full and take diagonal
depth, check the result. The shoulder measurements
should be tight to the leg. At the same time across the top of the
check between the rail's lower edge and frame (left). Equal di-
the leg for square. Do the same along the agonal measure-
leg and the rail's outer surface. (This is easy ments indicate it is
square. Check the
to do before the legs are tapered and im- rail-to-leg joints for
possible afterward.) Make adjustments to square while the
the mortise or tenon as necessary. Use a table is clamped but
shoulder plane to get a tight fit of the shoul- before the legs are
der to the leg. Repeat the fitting until the tapered (below).
table is standing on four legs. Do not be too
concerned if the rail's outer surface and the
leg do not align perfectly. You will plane
them after glue-up. Finally, fit the bottom
drawer rail.
Lay out the dovetailed tenons that secure
the top drawer rail to the front legs (see the
bottom photo on the facing page). Cut the
tails using a hacksaw the same way you did
on the rail tenons. Start on one corner and
cut down the line. Repeat on the other cor-
ner. Use the tails to lay out the pins on the
top of the legs and fit and test the joints.
Drill and countersink two top-attachment
screw holes in the rail.
Dry-fit the table and clamp lightly. Test for
square (see the photos at right). Double-
check by measuring from corner to corner.
Place the table on a flat surface such as a ta-
blesaw to make sure all four legs will touch.
Use a straightedge across all four top edges
to look for high or low spots. Use a pair of
winding sticks to test front to back and side
to side. Winding sticks are two straight-
edges usually of contrasting colors. When sighting across the the other. Make sure your smoothing plane is very sharp and well
winding sticks, you can make sure that all four sides are coplanar. tuned. Use a very low setting. If you do nick an adjacent surface
with a cross-grain cut, clean it up with a handheld scraper.
Legs are tapered with a plane
Tapering a leg is very easy to do with a plane. On the lower end of The top's long grain runs side to side
each leg measure in in. per side and connect the lines to make a For the table's top you will probably have to glue up two or more
square. On opposing surfaces of the leg, use a straightedge and pieces. Remember that the joint will run side to side so that you
pencil to connect the lines on the foot to the location of the rails won't see end grain when looking at the table head-on. Make the
lower edges. Use a jack plane to remove the bulk of the waste, top oversized and cut it to dimension when the glue is dry. The top
paying attention to the grain. Finish to the lines on both sides with is small, so the glue joint can be done very easily with a jointer
a smoothing plane. Rotate the leg and do the same to the other plane. Although I did it while gluing up boards of the blanket
sides. Then lay out the lines for the two remaining straight sides, chest, I don't recommend springing the joints for this tabletop be-
and repeat the process. You cannot lay out all four sides at once cause it is made of short, thin hardwood.
because you would plane away the lines for the second two tapers Once the glue is dry, joint and square one edge with a jointer
while making the first two. plane. You can cut the other three sides on a tablesaw or with a
Glue and clamp up the table. When it is dry, clamp the table in a fine handsaw. If you do it by hand, use a large square to lay
vise and plane the leg-to-rail joints flush, as necessary. Be careful, out two edges square with the first. I had one of my medium-
because the grain in the two parts runs in different directions, and sized handsaws filed to a 14-point crosscut for use on thin hard-
any overlap by the plane will leave a rough cut on one surface or wood. Using this saw, there is almost no chipping on the lower
 S I M P L E VENEERING

Heating hide glue turns it to goo. The
pine drawer front is veneered with curly
maple. Coat the drawer front with hot hide
glue and coat both sides of the veneer,
then stick the pieces together. Coating both
sides of the veneer keeps the thin wood
from curling.
Don't hit with a veneer hammer. The hammer
is used more like a squeegee. After the glue-
coated veneer is placed on the glue-coated draw-
er front, use the veneer hammer, starting in the
middle and working toward the edges, to push air
bubbles out from between the two layers. The
hide glue sets in a few minutes.
Flush-cutting veneer saw. The curved,
thin blade of a veneer saw has no set to its
teeth, making it ideal for flush-cutting
across the drawer front's veneer. The saw
will leave a crisp edge on the veneer's fin-
ished side.

edge. Measure 18 in. up these two sawn sides and lay out the
final edge. Test again for square and make any final adjustments
while smoothing the sawn edges with handplanes.
Use a jointer plane to remove saw marks from the two edges that
are edge grain. A low-angle block plane with a very light setting
will clean the end grain. You can do this with a bench plane if it is
razor sharp. Be sure to plane in from both edges toward the mid-
dle to avoid chipping the corners.
Jack-plane the bottom to remove any planer marks, glue or over-
lap. This surface is not seen, so there is no point in spending a lot
of time on it. Use a smoothing plane on the top to remove any
thickness-planer marks and any overlap in the joint. Finish up
with a scraper to achieve a perfect surface. I have a Stanley No. 112
scraper plane that I use to produce a glassy surface.
Place the table upside down on its top, protecting the top from
damage during this process with a towel or blanket between it and
the workbench. Measure to make sure you
have the same amount of overhang on all
four edges. Once you have the best place-
ment, make some light marks on the top's
bottom surface with a pencil, just in case
something moves while you are working.
Screw the top in place.
The drawer has a veneered front
The drawer front is veneered with curly
maple. If exposed, the edges of the veneer
would easily chip when the drawer is
opened and closed. The veneer is protect-
ed with an applied raised edge called cock
beading (see the drawing and photos on
the facing page). This detail serves another Scraper plane for drawer veneer. After cutting
important purpose. With flush rails, the the veneer flush with the drawer front, use a
table is sleek to the point of being stark. scraper plane to finish the veneer.
Cock beading makes the front three dimensional. The beading is
usually the same wood as the table.
The cock beading on the drawer ends are more narrow than
those on the top and bottom. The end pieces are fit into rabbets
cut across the dovetails. The tails would be weakened if the cock
beading were run right up to the scribe line. Of course, the two dif-
ferent widths of the cock beading require the use of a stopped
miter joint.
Make the drawer to fit the opening. Smooth-planing machine
and saw marks and trimming the leg joints may have made very
small changes to the dimensions in the drawing. I made the draw-
er of pine, as a New England cabinetmaker would have in the 18th
century—a southern cabinetmaker would have used poplar—but
you can use any suitable wood.
Thickness the wood for the drawer, the runners and the cock
beading. Remove the planer marks with a smoothing plane. Then
cut the parts to dimension. You can use a
square to lay out these cuts, or you can use
the edge of a bench hook as a guide. Glue
the drawer runners to the lower inside
edge of the rails. The glue will dry while
you are making the other parts.
To make a drawer that slides smoothly
and fits well, it is important to maintain
square. For small parts use a shooting
board and a well-tuned and sharp hand-
plane. I use a Stanley No. 605 in a shooting
board. Its cutter is adjusted laterally so that
its edge is at a right angle to the right
cheek, ensuring that it cuts a square edge.
After ripping the parts to width and cross-
cutting them to length, check for square. If
they are not perfect, scribe a line with the
striking knife where they need to be
trimmed. Place the pieces on the shooting board and use the plane
to shave the end grain to the scribe line. Keep the high side toward
the shooting board's stop so you do not chip the far edge.
Groove the sides and front for the drawer bottom. I did this us-
ing a plow plane, which is fast and easy. However, a plow plane is
an expensive tool. If you do not have one, use your tablesaw.
When you lay out your dovetails, leave enough room above and
below the tails to trim the top and bottom edges of the drawer
front to accept the cock beading. Cut and fit the dovetails. When
you are satisfied with the fit, run a marking gauge along the top
and bottom edges of the front and plane to this line. Using the
shooting board gives you good control, and because the scribed
line is facing up, it is easier to see.
There are several ways to make a drawer bottom. I used the
method favored by period New England cabinetmakers. They
used a jack plane to feather the front edge and two sides until they
were narrow enough to fit in the groove.
Use a bandsaw to cut two pieces of veneer from a piece of curly
maple. That way, the grain pattern on this table and its mate will
match each other. Between cuts handplane the wood so that each
sheet of veneer has one smooth face for gluing. I applied the ve-
neer with hot hide glue and a shopmade veneer hammer (see the
top photos on the facing page). Brush a thin coat of glue on the
drawer front and on both sides of the veneer. Place the two pieces
together and push a veneer hammer from the center in all direc-
tions to remove any air and excess glue. The hide glue hardens by
cooling, so the process takes mere minutes. Use the shooting
board to joint the veneer flush with the top and bottom. Trim the
ends with a veneer saw. This is a special curved saw with no set
that allows you to cut veneer end grain flush with an edge.
Holding the drawer front in a vise, plane and scrape the veneer
so it is smooth and uniform in thickness (see the bottom photo on
the facing page). Glue up the drawer, and while clamping, check
for square. When it is dry; test the drawer's fit.
With a marking gauge, scribe the thickness of the cock beading
on the ends of the drawer front and scribe its width on the dove-
tails. Cut this rabbet with a very sharp backsaw and clean it up with Saw a cutout for the bead strip. Miniature miter box for cock
a shoulder plane. To avoid chipping the veneer, plane both edges All four sides of the drawer fronts beading. Once the edges of the
must be cut back to fit the cock drawer front have been cut back,
toward the center. beading. Cut each end of the draw- cut the cock beading with a back-
Cut the top and bottom strips of cock beading to the same length er with a backsaw and plane the saw and a small miter box.
as the drawer front. Using the edge of the rabbet as a guide, mark top and bottom to size.
the joint's stopped miter. Stand the cock beading in a small
miter box held in the bench hook and cut the miter with a very
fine backsaw. Hold the top and bottom cock beading in place
with clamps while you miter the two end pieces. Test their fit
Round the inside edges with a block plane and glue all four Tape clamps. Cock
pieces of beading in place. When the glue is dry, level the cock beading sits proud of
beading with a block plane, if necessary, then round the out- the veneer by In.
side edge with a sanding block. Masking tape works
The drawer should fit in its opening so the veneer is flush like another set of
hands to hold the
with the legs and the cock beading stands proud To do this,
cock beading in
glue two small blocks of pine to the drawer back to act as stops. place while fitting
Use a block plane to trim these blocks until they hold the draw- the final pieces. After
er at the desired depth. The final decision is the hardware. I all of the pieces have
used a period brass oval pull. However, a turned knob would been fitted, glue and
also be appropriate. clamp the cock bead-
ing in place.
Mike Dunbaris a contributing editor.

I
admire the resourcefulness of shopmade hardware. If it’s en-
tirely made of wood, all the better. I discovered full-extension
wooden slides on an antique chest of drawers I restored. They
are beautiful in their simplicity and can be made almost any size.
Full-extension slides are necessary whenever access is required
all the way to the back of a drawer (file drawers and card catalogs,
for example). The drawer must be held in a fully open position
and should be easy to remove. This system of wooden slides
meets both criteria.
There are a few rules to follow when making these slides. First of
all, the drawers must be 15⁄16 in. narrower than the opening. The
drawer must have an applied front, obviously, to cover the gap.
The carcase must be built with solid vertical dividers or sides,
which provide an attachment point for the slides, and horizontal
dividers, which may be solid or open web frames.
The slides may be as tall as the drawer sides. For light-duty cas-
es, you may wish to make the slides narrower, about two-thirds
the drawer height. For very deep drawers, such as files, there’s no
need to make the slides any wider than 6 in. At that dimension,
they will provide plenty of strength. For inset drawers, the slides
74 FINE WOODWORKING
Full-Extension
Wooden
Slides
Shopmade
hardware designed
to fit any drawer,
large or small
B Y C H R I S T I A N B E C K S V O O R T
must be 1⁄4 in. shorter than the total length of the drawer sides (do
not include the applied front when measuring the drawer length).
To make a pair of slides the same height as the drawer, mill two
pieces of 7⁄16-in.-thick hardwood 3⁄8 in. wider than the actual draw-
er sides and the correct length. Measure about a third of the way
across one piece, set the rip fence for that dimension and rip all of
the stock in two. The exact width doesn’t matter as long as every-
thing is cut at the same setting. Put the narrow pieces aside and
work on the wider halves, which will become the lower slides.
(If you’re wondering how the slide parts end up becoming the
same height as the drawer, here’s what happens: The saw kerf will
reduce the width of the stock by 1⁄8 in.; and once the parts are ma-
chined for the mechanical connection, the slides interlock, reduc-
ing the width by another 1⁄4 in., for a total reduction of 3⁄8 in.)
Begin with the lower slides
Start by cutting a rabbet 3⁄16 in. wide by 5⁄16 in. deep along the entire
length of each lower piece (for more on making the lower slides,
see the photos on p. 76). Next, set your tablesaw blade for a 9⁄16-in.-
deep cut. Set a slide or slides (same-side slides may be ganged to-
Photos, except where noted: Vincent Laurence; this page: Michael Pekovich
 HOW THE SLIDES WORK
Upper slide is
#6 wood
approximately
screws
half the width of
the lower slide.

Wooden cleat
is mortised into
drawer side.

Stopped
rabbet

Locking
tab

Lower slide
Upper
slide

Slides are Drawer

7
⁄16 in. thick. front

Lower Cleat
slide
Subtract 1⁄4 in. from the length of the drawer sides (not including the
applied front) to arrive at the correct slide length. The heights of the
slides may be equal to or less than the drawer height. The drawer cleat
position is determined once the slides have been installed in the carcase.

1. As the drawer slides out, its cleats engage

the lower slides.
2. The drawer and lower slides continue moving
until the tabs on the lower slides reach the ends
of the stopped rabbets in the fixed upper slides.
gether) against a miter gauge or sled and make two crosscuts, one
15
⁄16 in. from one end and another 11⁄4 in. from the opposite end. Re-
member that the left and right slides are mirror images of one an-
other. In other words, while making the crosscuts, the rabbet will
be facing the blade for one slide and facing the miter gauge for the
opposing slide.
Set up a couple of stops along your saw’s rip fence and careful-
ly cut away the rabbet between the notch. Clean up the corner of
the rabbet using a handsaw and chisel. Go back to the tablesaw
and make another crosscut on the stepped portion of each slide,
7
⁄8 in. from the back and as deep as the rabbet, then remove the
waste on the bandsaw to create a locking tab at the rear of the
slide. This step engages with the rabbet on the upper slide and
keeps the drawer from tipping out. Finally, go back to the table-
saw and rip off the portion of the step on the front of each slide
that protrudes above the rabbet.

Machine the upper fixed slides

3. The drawer can be lifted off the slides As with the lower slides, the uppers should be mirror images of
when fully extended. one another (for more on making the upper slides, see the top

Drawings: Michael Pekovich (left); Vince Babak (top) JULY/AUGUST 2000 75

 MAKING THE LOWER SLIDES
1 CUT RABBET 2 CUT NOTCHES FOR DRAWER CLEAT

Begin work on the lower half of the slides.
Machine a full-length rabbet 3⁄16 in. wide by
5
⁄16 in. deep.
Set the tablesaw blade for a 9⁄16-in.-
deep cut. Make crosscuts 15⁄16 in. from
the front and 11⁄4 in. from the rear of the
lower slides. Left and right slides are mir-
ror images of one another.
Using stop blocks, make a rip cut
along the rabbet to remove the
center portion. Be sure to stop short
of the notches. Finish the rip using a
handsaw.

3 DEFINE THE LOCKING TAB 4 TRIM THE UPPER STEP

Make another notch. Set the notch Remove the waste behind the notch. Remove the upper step at the front of the
7
⁄8 in. from the rear of the slide and as The locking tab engages with the upper slide. The step is removed right down to the
deep as the rabbet. slide and keeps the drawer from tipping. base of the rabbet.

photos on the facing page). First joint the edges to remove the saw
marks. Then lay out and cut a stopped rabbet—1⁄4 in. wide and
5
⁄16 in. deep—in each slide equal to two-thirds its length, measured
from the back. The rabbet must be located on the carcase side of
each slide. One way to ensure this happens is to mill opposite
slides on opposite sides of the tablesaw’s rip fence using a stop
block. Square up the rabbets using a handsaw and chisel.
At the back end of each slide, make a notch by cutting off 1 in.
from the thin wall of the rabbet. The notch allows the other half of
the slide to be inserted or removed. Drill and countersink two or
three screw holes on each slide, going in from the sides that will
face the drawer.
Fit together the two left pieces and the two right pieces, flat on
the benchtop. Use a 1⁄16-in. spacer to separate each pair, and com-
pare them to the height of the drawer sides. If necessary, trim the
bottoms of the movable slides so that the total height (with spac-
ers) is equal to or less than the height of the drawer sides.
Install the slides and check the action
Make sure the slides are lightly sanded and that all sharp edges are
broken. I like to add leather bumpers to the slides. Cork or rubber
discs would work just as well. The bumpers are applied to all of
the parts that bump into one another.
Place an upper and lower slide inside the drawer housing. The
movable slide rests on the bottom of a divider. Place the fixed slide
atop it, being sure to use a 1⁄16-in.-thick temporary spacer between
them. Now maneuver the lower slide (the one with the bumpers)
so that the distance from the front bumper to the edge of the car-
case equals the thickness of the drawer front. Clamp both slides in
place, keeping the upper slide in line with the lower (wood to

76 FINE WOODWORKING
 MAKING THE UPPER SLIDES

1 CUT THE STOPPED RABBET 2 CUT THE CLEARANCE NOTCH

Stopped rabbet engages locking tab of lower Square the corners of the Cut a notch at the rear of the upper
slide. The rabbet, 1⁄4 in. wide by 5⁄16 in. deep, runs stopped rabbet. Remove the slide. The notch is 1 in. from the back
two-thirds the length of each upper slide. waste using a chisel. and as deep as the rabbet.

wood, not wood to bumper). Screw the upper slide to the case and When the glue has set, position the drawer back in its opening,
remove the spacers. Do the same for all of the slides. lower it onto the slides and shut it. Now pull it out. It should ride
The action of the slides should be smooth, with only 1⁄16 in. of ver- smoothly and stop in the fully extended position. (Use a little paste
tical play. When pushed all the way in, the lower slides may be tilt- wax if parts stick.) The drawer back will remain in the opening,
ed out via the small notch at the rear of the upper slide. while the cleats resting on the slides support the weight. If fine-
tuning is needed, a little bit of material may be removed (or added)
Drawer cleats are added last to the front steps of the lower guides.
Once the slides have been completed, locate and install the cleats I think these wooden slides are a pleasing alternative to using
(see the photos below right). Pull out a pair of slides as far as they metal hardware on fine pieces, whether they’re antique or con-
will go. Fit the drawer between them so that the inside of the temporary, small or large.

drawer back is flush with the outside of the case. This is the fully
extended position. Clamp the drawer so that the bottoms of the Christian Becksvoort is a contributing editor.
slides and the bottom of the drawer are
flush. With a sharp pencil, mark the top L O C AT I N G T H E D R AW E R C L E AT S
of the slide (horizontal) and the step
(vertical) on both sides of the drawer.
The antique cabinet that I used for a
model had brass cleats set into the
drawer sides. Aesthetically, I don’t like
the look of the metal in the middle of
the drawer sides nor the green metallic
streak it leaves on the slides. Instead, I
use hardwood cleats, the same species
as the drawer sides and slides.
Make each cleat 1⁄4 in. thick by 11⁄2 in.
wide. For drawers 1⁄2 in. thick or less,
I make the cleats about 9⁄16 in. long
and cut mortises 3⁄16 in. deep into the
drawer sides, which leaves 3⁄8 in. of cleat
exposed. For thicker drawers, the cleats
After installing the slides in the case, mark Cut mortises into the drawer sides. Once the
may be longer; be sure to cut deeper the cleat locations on the drawer. Clamp the cleats have been glued in place, the drawer is
drawer mortises, too. Glue the cleats drawer at full extension and trace along the ready to be used.
in place. step and lower slide.

JULY/AUGUST 2000 77
A Guide to Drawer Slides
Whether hidden, under-mount or side-mount,
your choice depends on the project
BY J O H N M A R C K W O R T H

E
ver since man aban-
doned the hollow log for
storage and began build-
ing furniture, drawers and
drawer making have defined
the quality of both cabinet and
cabinetmaker, If you don't be-
lieve that, just watch customers
in a furniture or kitchen show-
room. One of the first things
they do is yank open a drawer,
the equivalent of kicking the
tires at a car lot.
Traditional and high-end fur-
niture designs still call for
piston-fit drawers that slide on
wooden runners. They are time-
consuming to fit and, even
when executed with skill, may
become sticky or sloppy due to
extreme changes in humidity.
That's one reason why drawer
slides were invented. Depend-
ing on the project, mechanical
 accustomed to with other types
UNDER-MOUNT SLIDES of mechanical slides. Despite
If one or both sides of a drawer are built at an
these requirements, I've grown
angle other than 90°, mount one or two slides to like hidden slides. Customers
underneath the drawer on the cabinet's appreciate them, too.
base or on a horizontal divider.
Under-mount slides
solve unusual problems
Under-mount (also known as
center-mount) drawer slides are
mounted under the centerline
of the drawer. Because only one
Hidden slides may limit your slide is generally used, the
design options. Drawer sides, drawer may be prone to racking
for example, can be no thicker when fully extended or over-
than in. or in., depending loaded. The best under-mount
on the model of slides. And slides are of the captured ball-
The best slides for mounting under a drawer bottoms must be re- bearing design. (The same
drawer. Ball-bearing slides, commonly cessed from the sides to pro- ball-bearing slides are also used
used as side-mounts, are the author's vide a nook for the runners (the in side-mount applications.)
choice for under-mounting. But their load
movable parts). Clips on the Wooden under-mount runners
ratings will be lower when used this way.
underside of the drawer hold are also available, but I don't
the drawer fast to the runners recommend them because they
drawer slides may be a good from kitchen cabinets to enter- and make drawer removal a don't have the smooth action of
choice for custom furniture and tainment centers to bedroom snap. For hidden slides to oper- the ball-bearing slides.
cabinetry. furniture. They are available in ate smoothly, drawers must be Under-mount slides are ideal
Drawer slides have a lot going three-quarter or full-extension built to fairly tight tolerances for situations in which one or
for them. They cut down on the models and tend to be among ( in. sloppy layout here and more drawer sides are purpose-
time it takes to build furniture. the more expensive slide op- there can make a difference)— fully not square (see the right
They can support greater loads. tions on the market. closer than what I've become photo above). (Hidden and
Drawers can be opened with-
out tipping. Also, slides are un-
affected by the seasons, and
the best of them are virtually SIDE-MOUNT SLIDES
hidden and won't detract from
For utility drawers or applications where
the look of a finely crafted piece heavy loads are encountered, side-mount
of furniture. slides are commonly used.

Hidden slides
are for fine furniture
Exposed drawer hardware has
the kind of beauty that makes
engineers smile, but wood-
workers generally look upon
them with considerably less af-
fection. Fortunately, there are
slides that mount under the
drawer, hidden from sight. Ball-bearing slides can han-
Among the top choices are dle big drawers. Whether the
Blum's Tandem, Mepla's Dy- load is 50 Ibs. or 500 Ibs., you
namic and Hettich's Quadro can find suitable ball-bearing
slides. All are self-closing, and slides for the job.
most have micro-adjusters that
can raise or lower the drawer Simple, economical roller
front for fine-tuning after instal- slides for utility drawers. When
lation. They are made to handle matched to the color of a drawer,
these slides are unobtrusive.
loads of about 75 lbs. to 100 lbs.,
good for most applications,
side-mount slides require
square construction.) Under-
mount slides can be used in
pairs to improve the load-bear-
ing capacity of a drawer. In such
a situation, I mount the slides as
close to the sides of the drawer
as possible. Be sure to plan
carefully for the load the drawer
will carry—the stated load rat-
ing may decrease by more than
50% when ball-bearing slides
are mounted under the drawer.
Side-mount ball-bearing
slides are designed
for heavy loads
Ball-bearing slides have the
smooth, positive action of hid-
den slides and are easier to in-
stall. But they are visible when
the drawer is open. Ball-bearing
slides are available in three-
quarter extension, full exten-
sion and over-travel (usually
1 in. extra travel past full exten-
sion), as well as extralong
lengths and with heavy load rat-
ings (some can carry 500 lbs.).
The slides require in. to in.
clearance on each side of the
drawer. Ball-bearing slides
are among the most versatile
of drawer slides and a favorite
for commercial installations or
for projects that have heavy
load requirements, such as
kitchen drawers designed to
hold canned goods or heavy
cookware.
Roller slides work well
for utility drawers
Roller slides are used mostly on
commercially produced furni-
ture and cabinetry because of
their low cost, simple design
and straightforward operation.
Each slide consists of two parts.
The drawer-mounted piece
has a fixed nylon or ball-
bearing wheel at the back, and
the cabinet-mounted piece
has a corresponding wheel at
the front. The slide interlocks
on one side, and the two
wheels run along channels
formed by the opposing part.
Pain-free slide installation
GENERAL GUIDELINES
Using a tape measure, pencil and square to
mark each slide's location in a cabinet invites
errors. I employ a "pattern method for
dummies," which works even on bad days and
guarantees accuracy better than in., the
tolerance required for most drawer slides.
Lay out the drawer using a story stick, which
is a piece of scrap the same height as the
cabinet interior. Mark the drawer dimensions
and the location of hardware on the story stick.
Mark the location of drawers and slides on a
Be sure to note whether the drawers are inset story stick. Used in tandem with a jig, the story
or overlay, because this will affect the depth of stick ensures accurate placement of the slides
the slides. Also, pay attention to the clearance inside the cabinet.
between drawers: the requirements are given in Pilot holes
the instructions. Mark the story stick should be cen-
accordingly. Use the story stick to position tered. Self-
centering bits
drawer-guide jigs accurately inside the cabinet. guarantee accu-
When ordering slides in bulk, you may have rate placement.
to buy screws separately. Order the correct style
of screw from the manufacturer; incompatible
screws may cause the moving parts of slides to
jam. Use a self-centering drill bit when
predrilling mounting holes. Most slides have a
combination of round and elongated mounting
holes. Use the elongated holes for the initial
mounting, adjust as needed, and secure the prefer wooden blocking, which can be fine-
slide by placing screws through the round holes. tuned with a pass across a jointer and provide a
For Euro-style frameless cabinetry, drawer rock-solid mounting surface.
slides are mounted directly to the sides of the And yet a third alternative is nylon or metal
cabinet. For traditional face-frame cabinets, I sockets, which mount to the cabinet back and
usually install blocking (a wooden spacer) attach to the rear of slides. I don't use sockets
behind each slide. The blocking, which runs the because they are more difficult to position
full length of the slide, is unobtrusive because I accurately than blocking and don't provide the
use the same material used on the cabinet same kind of strength.
interior. Blocking can be adjusted for either Even the best installation may require some
inset or overlay drawer faces. As an alternative fit and fiddle at the final stage, especially with
to wood blocking, plastic or nylon spacers are flush drawers and narrow reveals. If the drawer
available in in. (or metric equivalent) is a bit too narrow for the opening, shim the
thickness increments. Use proportionally longer slides out from the cabinet using a piece of
screws with these. The spacers work, but I paper or cardboard.
Most makes require in. clear- design is that the slides wear From production cabinetry to
ance on each side. out sooner because fewer parts custom furniture, modern draw-
Some roller slides incorporate carry the load. Roller slides are er slides can provide a fast and
a "self-closing" feature—a short, not suitable for heavy loads, reliable method of dealing with
downward-angled section at and their design allows for a fair the hallmark of the cabinetmak-
the back of the runner that pulls amount of rack (side-to-side er's art: the drawer.
the drawer into the cabinet the movement) when extended.
last inch or so with no effort on They're okay for utility applica- John Marckworth is a woodworker in
your part. The downside of this tions such as kitchen drawers. Port Townsend, Wash.
HIDDEN SLIDES
The runners of hidden slides cannot be removed. Drawers are held
on top of the runners by hooked tabs at the back corners and a
pair of clips under the front, behind the face. Aim for tolerances of
in. when working with these slides.
Installing the slides on the sides of a cabinet is fairly
straightforward, much like other side-mount hardware. Use a piece
of plywood scrap, cut to the height of the slide location (transfer
marks from the story stick), place the slide on top of it and then
screw it in place. Proceed from top to bottom, cutting the plywood
as you go. Commercial jigs are also available for predrilling
mounting holes.
The drawer part of the project is where things get different. For
a typical hidden-slide design, two clips are screwed to the
underside of each drawer. Screw the clips to the front of the
drawer, which is usually made of thicker stock than the bottom.
Although the mounting holes in the clips may be used to guide a
drill bit when predrilling, jigs and special drill bits are available,
and they do help.
Some brands of hidden slides require a hole to be drilled in the
drawer back. A hook on the runner fits into the hole to help
stabilize the drawer. Notches must also be cut on the drawer
backs (bottom) for the runners. (But if you build drawers whose
backs are flush to the bottoms, you can skip this step.)

Use a piece of scrap plywood to
position the slides inside the
case. Also, set the slides back
from the edge of the case, as per
the manufacturer's instructions.
Hidden slides require clips,
which go underneath the draw-
er. The author uses a boring guide
from Blum to predrill the mount-
ing holes at the proper angle.
The rear of the drawer is bored The drawer sits on top of the
out using a jig, too. The holes runners. Notches are cut in the
are for hooks located at the tail back to clear the runners.
ends of the runners.

UNDER-MOUNT SLIDES BALL-BEARING AND ROLLER SLIDES

Under-mount slides are installed under the centerline of a drawer.
You really don't need a story stick to install them. Simply mark a
centerline on the divider and the underside of the drawer bottom.
Then place the slide halves over the marks and screw them in
place. Thick drawer bottoms, usually in. minimum, must be used
to provide enough material for the screws to take hold, and this
may add a lot of unnecessary weight to a drawer. Under-mount
slides must be mounted to a fixed shelf, a divider or a stretcher.
Plastic or wooden guides, attached to the carcase (under the
corners of drawers), are required to keep the drawers from tipping.
Ball-bearing and roller slides may be positioned on the case
using the same plywood-scrap/story-stick method mentioned
in the section on hidden slides (above). Some companies offer
jigs made specifically for their products—this type of jig can
be more efficient when doing large runs of drawers. When
screwing ball-bearing slides to the sides of a drawer, place the
drawer and slide half on a flat surface to ensure that the slide
ends up flush with the side. With roller slides, the drawer runner,
which is usually L-shaped, wraps around the bottom and side and
is held with screws.

Locate the slide along the cen-
terlines of the cabinet divider
and the drawer. The slide screws
into the drawer bottom, so use
material that's at least in. thick.
Place guides under the corners
of the drawer. A variety of plastic
guides are available. The wooden
ones are shopmade.
Ball-bearing slides are in-
stalled flush with the bottom
edge of the drawer sides. Use a
flat surface such as a workbench
when installing them.
Roller slides are easy to posi-
tion. The L-shaped runners wrap
around the undersides of drawers.
 A Better Way
to Build
Drawers
NK-style drawers are easier
to fit, offer smoother action
and have a longer life
than traditional drawers
B Y M A R K E D M U N D S O N

C
onsider a dresser drawer that is 16 in. deep and 30 in. wide.
T H E N K A DVA N TAG E Let’s say that every time it’s opened it travels 12 in. out and
NK drawers, named for the Swedish furniture 12 in. back in. If this drawer is opened once a day for 30
manufacturer that popularized them, use a separate years, it will have traveled more than four miles, carrying its load
bottom assembly to eliminate the drawbacks of
of sweaters and jeans solely on the thickness of the drawer sides.
standard drawer designs.
By then it’s probably running like a brick over a cheese grater.
Worse, if the wear extends into the groove for the drawer bottom,
TRADITIONAL it will damage not only the drawer but also the carcase itself.
DRAWER Side-hung drawers avoid this problem by having the drawer run
Thin, tall sides on rails dadoed into the drawer sides. French bottoms avoid the
create a large
friction surface wear by adding slips to the bottom of the sides, which increase
area and are prone the surface that bears the weight of the drawer. In both of these
to sticking. Narrow cases, however, the sides still rub against the drawer opening. This
glide surfaces wear
out quickly. is especially a problem in deep drawers, where the tall sides are
difficult to fit to the carcase and are prone to sticking.
A style that solves both problems—excessive wear and too much
friction—is the NK (pronounced “enco”) drawer, developed in the
early 1900s by a Swedish manufacturer, Nordiska Kompaniet. I
started building NK drawers, which require no hardware, for deep
NK DRAWER drawers. Now I make almost all of my drawers this way.
Short, wide The NK drawer is quite different from a standard drawer. For
runners in the one, the front is slightly wider than the sides, except where the
bottom assembly
reduce the friction
dovetail pins have been pared flush. Runners glued to the bottom
area and provide a of the sides also protrude from the sides, making them even with
wide, long-wearing the sides of the drawer front. The last big difference is the bottom.
glide surface.
It’s made of plywood and glued into a rabbet in each runner.
The NK drawer has a few advantages over a standard drawer.
The runners provide extra surface area where it’s needed—under
the drawer—and reduce the amount of surface area rubbing at the
sides. Also, fitting this drawer means fitting the bottom assembly

66 FINE WOODWORKING Photos: Asa Christiana

 B U I L D T H E B O T T O M , T H E N T H E B OX
Two runners and a
plywood panel make up Runner
the bottom assembly.

Runner

Drawer
bottom

Seam between runner

and plywood is located
under the drawer side.

Drawer
1
⁄16 in. side
Plywood
drawer
bottom

Protruding pins
1
⁄2 in. are pared flush
with the drawer
side.
Plywood bottom extends
from front of runners and
1 in. Hardwood fits into a groove at the
runner bottom of the drawer front.

only, which is easier than fitting a standard drawer, especially if it

is large. Without the front, sides and back of the drawer to obstruct
your view, it’s easy to see where the runners are binding. Finally,
even if the box isn’t glued up perfectly square, the drawer will op-
erate smoothly, because the bottom sits proud of the sides.

Build the bottom assembly first

The construction of the NK drawer is as different as its design. The
bottom assembly comes first, because it determines the dimen-
sions of the drawer box. The bottom assembly is composed of
three parts: two runners and a plywood bottom. Fine plywoods
are available in a variety of species, but I often make my own
drawer bottoms with veneer chosen to match the drawer front,
laid up on a thin plywood core.
The runner dimensions must be sized to minimize the friction
against the carcase sides and maximize the support of the drawer’s
weight. On the dresser featured here, the drawers are 16 in. deep
Start with the bottom as-
and 30 in. wide, with heights ranging from 53⁄4 in. to 8 in. I made
sembly. With the runners in
the runners 1⁄2 in. high and 1 in. wide.
place, determine the width of
Because the runners butt up to the drawer front, their lengths are the plywood bottom. Cut the
determined by subtracting the thickness of the drawer front from bottom a bit wider than neces-
the drawer depth. In this case, the front is 3⁄4 in. thick, so the runner sary. Then trim it to fit.
length is 151⁄4 in. The runners are rabbeted to accept the bottom.
The rabbet depth is the same as the thickness of the bottom, and
the width of the rabbet is such that the edge of the plywood will
The drawer pocket is the
end up directly underneath the drawer side, splitting its thickness.
best place for gluing up the
Because the runners provide all of the support for the drawer, the bottom assembly. The author
drawer sides can be thinner than 1⁄2 in. For these large drawers I re- uses clamping cauls and small
sawed 5/4 stock and ended up with sides that are 1⁄2 in. thick. sticks wedged against the
Once the runners have been rabbeted, place them into the draw- drawer divider above.

Drawings: Vince Babak JULY/AUGUST 2001 67


Each part determines the size of the next one. Lay out the groove
in the drawer front directly from the bottom assembly. Then measure
to the groove in the drawer front to determine the height of the
drawer sides.
er opening and measure the distance between the walls of the rab-
bets. Cut the plywood panel a hair wider so that you have some
wood to work with when making the final fit. You may want to
glue a strip of solid wood to the back edge of the plywood to con-
ceal the core. The bottom must extend past the front of the runners
into a groove in the drawer front, so make the bottom 1⁄4 in. longer
than the runners. Once these pieces have been cut to size but be-
fore gluing them together, test the fit in the drawer opening. If the
fit is tight, you shouldn’t have too much work to make it run
smoothly, but if it won’t fit at all, reduce the width of the bottom. If
it’s too loose, place a shim between the plywood’s edge and the
rabbet during glue-up. Once these pieces are to your liking, they
may be glued up.
D R Y- F I T A N D M E A S U R E F O R S I D E S A N D B AC K
The drawer side is set
in from the bottom
runners and the sides
of the drawer front
(above). When laying
out the half-blind pins,
set a marking gauge
about 1⁄16 in. heavier than
the thickness of the
drawer sides.
68 FINE WOODWORKING
The bottom assembly may also be glued up in the drawer pock-
et itself, to ensure a close fit from the get-go. This way you also can
align the front edges of the runners with the carcase during glue-
up, which in turn will cause the drawer front to be parallel with the
front of the carcase. You will need two 1⁄2-in.-square clamping cauls
cut to the same length as the runners. Place the bottom assembly
in the drawer pocket and set the cauls on the outside edges of the
plywood. The easiest way to clamp down the cauls is to wedge
small sticks against the drawer divider above. Make sure that the
back of the runners and the back of the bottom remain flush.
When the glue is dry, you can begin fitting the bottom assembly
to the drawer pocket. This definitely will be the easiest large draw-
er that you will ever fit. The bottom assembly should fit the pock-
et tightly and only need a few plane strokes to make it run
smoothly, but there is always at least one renegade in the bunch
that will need a little bit more coaxing. Begin by flipping the as-
sembly upside down and fitting the front few inches of it into the
opening. If the back is still off, check the dimension of the back
end of the bottom, fitting from the back of the cabinet. Once this is
done, plane the runners so they are once again straight. Check the
fit frequently to avoid removing too much material.
To test whether the bottom assembly fits and is running smooth-
ly, pull it out about three-quarters of the way (you may have to
place a weight at the back of the assembly to keep it from tipping)
and try to close it by pressing at either the right side or the left side.
If the assembly goes in without binding, it’s ready. If it sticks it
probably needs a little bit of sanding to create a smoother run.
If, in the excitement of fitting the bottom assembly, you take off
a little too much wood—which I’ve done more than once—and the
fit becomes sloppy, just rip about 1⁄8 in. off the side of the runner,
glue on a slightly thicker strip and start again.
The runners must line up evenly with the front of the opening to
ensure a consistent reveal around the drawer front. If the runners
don’t line up, use the front of the carcase to determine how much
Temporarily attach the bottom assembly to find your next
dimensions. Use the back of the drawer runners to scribe the
length of the sides (left). Then measure across the sides to find
the length of the drawer back. Cut the sides and back to length,
then cut the through-dovetails at the back corners.
PA R E T H E P I N S
A F T E R A S S E M B LY
A small dowel at the back helps keep the
drawer box aligned during glue-up. Just be
sure that the edges of the drawer front line up
exactly with the sides of the runners.
Paring back the pins. Use a small stack of
index cards and a plane blade to pare away the
pins without tearing out the short grain. Re-
move one card at a time until they’re gone
and the pins are trimmed flush. Sections of the
half-pins at the top and bottom are removed,
leaving them square.
to trim the longer runner. Scribe a line and clamp a square guide
block to the runner, then pare away the excess with a chisel.
Size the drawer front
Cut and plane down the edges of the drawer front until the draw-
er fits snugly in the carcase opening. Using the bottom assembly as
a reference, locate the groove in the drawer front that will receive
the protruding edge of the plywood.
Now measure from the top of the drawer front to the top of the
groove to find the height of the drawer sides. Add a fraction more
to the height to allow for slight misalignment of dovetails.
Cut the half-blind dovetails—Cut the tails first. Then, to hold the
sides in from the runners and the drawer front, set a marking
gauge 1⁄16 in. heavier than the drawer side’s thickness when laying
out the pins in the drawer front. Any more than 1⁄16 in., and the
drawer front’s protruding end grain will be too fragile.
I leave the sides long until I’ve finished the joinery at the front.
This way, if I mess up a set of tails, I can cut them off and do them
over again. Usually I cut all of the pins in the fronts, choose the
worst-fitting side and redo its tails, working in reverse and marking
from pins to tails. This second chance takes a little pressure off
cutting dovetails.
After the joinery has been cut for the sides and fronts, dry-fit the
parts and place the box on top of the bottom assembly. If every-
thing looks good and the runners are snug against the drawer
front, use the runners to mark off the lengths of the sides. Then cut
the sides to length.
Now measure the distance from the outside of one drawer side
to the outside of the other at the front, and cut the back to that di-
mension. After the joinery has been completed but before the
glue-up, finish-sand the drawer sides; otherwise, the protruding
runners and drawer front will make sanding difficult.
Glue up the drawer
Gluing up an NK drawer can be a bit fussy. Start by gluing up the
front, sides and back. Once that assembly is dry, you’re ready to at-
tach the bottom assembly. Line up the sides and runners carefully:
If the front overhangs a runner on one side, it will come up too
short on the other, and all could be lost.
The back corners of the drawer should be centered on the bot-
tom assembly. To ensure alignment, while the assembly is
clamped up during the dry-fitting, drill a small hole at the back of
the plywood bottom, up into the drawer back. During glue-up,
slide a dowel into this hole. The front will stay put, because the
plywood bottom slides into the groove in the drawer front.
All that’s left now is to pare down the protruding pins on the
drawer front. A sharp chisel will do, but I like to use a freshly
sharpened plane blade and some index cards as shims. If you take
off too much at once, the end grain can crumble. Start with a stack
of index cards slightly lower than the pins, lay down the blade and
make small shearing cuts. Then remove a card or two and repeat
as necessary. Finally, pare away the slope of the half-pins at the top
and bottom, leaving horizontal lines.
NK drawers are more complex than standard drawers, but they
make fitting large drawers a much less nerve-wracking job. And
it’s a comfort to know that these drawers will continue to run
smoothly as the years and miles pile up.

Mark Edmundson is a furniture maker in northern Idaho.
JULY/AUGUST 2001 69
w
Anatomy of a
Chest of Drawers
TOP
The solid-wood
top is usually
molded on three
sides and is
attached to the
upper molding
frame.
DRAWER-
DIVIDER
FRAMES
Three common
styles offer a
UPPER variety of looks and
MOLDING different degrees
FRAME of mechanical
This molding strength and ease
frame will not of construction.
move seasonally,
but it allows the
top and carcase
to do so.

DOVETAILED
CARCASE
The heart of a
long-lasting case
piece is a solid-
wood, dovetailed
carcase. Note the BASE
secondary wood Whether
species used in horizontal-grain
the top and bracket (shown
bottom panels. here) or vertical-
grain feet, the
base is attached
solidly to the lower
molding frame.

LOWER
MOLDING
FRAME
The lower molding
frame allows the
case to move
seasonally and DRESSING UP A BASIC BOX
accommodates a A seemingly complex chest of drawers simply is a stack
variety of bases or
feet attached
of components. By varying moldings, feet, drawers and
below. drawer dividers—not to mention proportions and
materials—an endless array of case pieces is possible.

36 FINE WOODWORKING Photos: Michael Pekovich


C
ase furniture based on a dovetailed
box is found in a wide range of
styles and periods. While the de-
tails vary, many pieces can be built using
similar construction solutions. When I
build a case, I work from a firm set of
ideas—both traditional and modern—that
I’ve found to be reliable and efficient.
The techniques required to make a chest
of drawers are mostly common knowl-
edge: dovetails, dadoes, miters, mortises
and tenons. The complex appearance is
the result of a straightforward sequence of
simple steps. At its most basic level, a chest
of drawers is a stack of separate assem-
blies. However, based on moldings (or
lack thereof), leg treatments, drawer styles,
proportions and materials, a wide variety
of case pieces is possible. Like my past ar-
ticles “Engineering a Table with Drawers”
(FWW #130, pp. 40-45) and “Sideboard
Strategies” (FWW #138, pp. 42-49), this one
CARCASE AND BACK CONSTRUCTION
The case is joined with half-blind dovetails, which are hidden from view. Traditionally,
the back consists of shiplapped boards.
Shiplap joints
and slight spaces
allow for wood
movement.
Back boards, set into a
rabbet in the case
sides, are screwed or
nailed to the top and
bottom edges.
Drawings: Bob La Pointe
MAY/JUNE 2003
Start with
a dovetailed box,
wood from the same board will give a uni-
then choose form look to the case.
A chest of drawers begins with four pan-
els: top, bottom and two sides. The strips of
among options primary wood that edge the top and bot-
tom can be glued onto the secondary-
for drawers, wood panels after rough-milling. Match the
grain direction of all parts during glue-up
moldings and base so they can be finish-milled as one piece.
The case is joined with half-blind dove-
tails, so lay them out for strength, not ap-
B Y W I L L N E P T U N E
pearance. You may want extra tails near
the edges, especially the front, to resist
loads that could pop the front shoulder.
describes a basic, proven construction ap- Another trick makes the joinery for the
proach. The execution is up to you. back a little easier. Run the rabbets for the
back boards all the way up the sides with-
Start with a dovetailed case out stopping. Then rip the top and bottom
When preparing your primary stock for the panels to be flush with this rabbet; the back
sides of the case, put aside strips to be used boards will extend all the way up to the top
later to edge the top and bottom case pan- and bottom of the case but be hidden by
els as well as the drawer dividers. Using the true top, which goes on later. The back
B AC K - PA N E L O P T I O N S
Half-blind
dovetails are
sized and
located for
strength, not
appearance.
A more attractive frame and panel can be
fit into the rabbet.
Because the top and bottom
panels will be hidden, these can
be secondary wood edged at the Horizontal shiplapped back boards help
front with primary wood. prevent tall sides from bowing outward.
M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 3 37
 D R AW E R - D I V I D E R F R A M E S boards, lapped in some way to allow for
wood movement, are screwed to the case.
Only the front 3 in. or 4 in. are glued to the case, allowing the
case sides to move. Choose a frame type based on the desired Drawer dividers: three options
look and the need for strength. Once the case dovetails have been cut, fit-
ted and dry-clamped, it’s time to work on
the system of drawer dividers and sup-
STOPPED DADOES
Basic stopped dadoes offer a clean, contemporary look ports. For function and appearance, the di-
and the easiest construction. vider frames must stay flat. Again,
secondary wood can be used for all but the
Stopped dado front edges. Choose the inner secondary
wood for stability. Avoid secondary wood
Only the front edge
is primary wood. that was significantly bowed in the rough,
and make the front divider wide for extra
stiffness. I make the fronts 31⁄2 in. to 4 in.
Notch
wide, and the less-critical back dividers
21⁄2 in. to 3 in. The runners can be narrower,
Runner about 2 in., because they are held in da-
does. Leave the parts a bit thick to allow for
leveling the frame after gluing.
Although there are other divider systems,
typically I use one of the three shown at
Front rail
left. For all three types, I prefer to glue up
the mortise-and-tenoned frame first and
STEPPED DOVETAILS fit the unit to the case dadoes. But you
Stepped dovetails offer a more traditional look and a also can fit and glue the pieces together in
mechanical connection between the case sides.
the case, using the dadoes to align the
parts. One last note: The right time to glue
Through-dado
up the case is after the dadoes have been
Dovetail housing cut but before building and fitting the
divider frames.
Keep the dovetail short,
or its housing will
weaken the case side. Stopped dadoes—This simple approach
offers a streamlined look and straightfor-
ward joinery. The main liability is the lack
of sound glue surfaces between the frame

NOTCHING THE DIVIDER

DOVETAILS WITH HIDDEN DADOES

Dovetails with hidden dadoes not only tie the case sides
together but also offer a clean look.

Thin dado is hidden

by the lap dovetail.

Front rail has a

dovetail and a
tongue.

A divider in a stopped dado is inserted

from the back. The front rail must be
notched to reach the front of the case.

38 FINE WOODWORKING
and the case. Usually this isn’t a problem, D R AW E R S
but for a tall case or one with unstable
wood, you may want one of the other The two common drawer styles are
frame systems that use lap dovetails to tie flush and lipped. On the lipped style,
the ends of the case together. The other the drawer front covers the gap for a
types also offer the traditional look of ex- more refined look.
posed joinery.
Start by laying out and cutting the da-
does, which are about 1⁄4 in. deep. I do the
layout while the case is dry-clamped, using
a story stick to avoid measuring errors. The
goal is to get the pairs of dadoes at equal
height and parallel to the inside faces of
the top and bottom. Square up the front
ends of the stopped dadoes at an equal dis-
tance from the front edges of the case Match the divider to the drawer. The
dovetail with hidden dado offers a clean
(about 1⁄2 in.). The front of the frame should
look for flush drawers (above), while
be flush to the case edge, but the back lipped drawers look better with the
should be inset about 3⁄8 in. from the rab- stepped dovetail (below).
bets to allow the sides to shrink. Gauge the
length of the dividers from the bottom of
the dadoes, and cut them about 1⁄32 in. un-
dersize to make the frames easier to fit.
To join the divider frames, I use mortises
with open ends; then the runners need
only tenons. When clamping and gluing
up the frames, take diagonal measure-
ments to check for squareness, and be
sure that the frames are flat. A good tip is to
level the joints on the top of the frame first. You still need to cut a shoulder in the The front rail will resist forces pushing the
Then, as you test the frame and slide it into front of the frame so it can extend past the case sides outward, and it can be used to
the dadoes, you can do all of your fitting stopped dadoes to the front of the case. pull in bowed sides slightly. This tradi-
from the bottom. The front 3 in. to 4 in. of tional solution is called a stepped dovetail
the frame should be snug, but the rest can Stepped dovetails—Adding lap dovetails because both the dado and dovetail are
be eased to make it slide in the dadoes to the front of the frame gives it a strong visible at the front. I like this joint with
with less drag. mechanical connection to the case sides. lipped drawers, where the side lip matches

Scribe for a perfect fit

DOVETAILING THE CASE SIDE

Slide the divider to the front of the Dovetailed dividers go in from the front. Slide in the dadoed section as far as possi-
dado and scribe the shoulder. Then The dado is cut first; the dovetail housing is ble. Then transfer the layout of the dovetail onto
cut the notch in the rail. cut second. the case side.

M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 3 39
 MOLDINGS AND CASE TOP
The trick is to find a way to attach moldings
across the grain of the case sides and the
top. Molding frames are the key.
Elongated screw holes along the sides
and back edge of the molding frame
allow the top to move seasonally.
Elongated holes for the screws that
attach the case to the molding frame
allow the case to move.
Round holes along the front edge of
the case and molding frame keep all
three aligned where it counts most.
Elongated screw
holes are the answer.
These are elongated
along the bottom side
only, allowing the
pieces to shift against
each other without
coming apart.
The correct sequence. First, attach the mold-
ing frame to the top (above) and then to the case
using the elongated holes only. Last, screw all
three parts along the front edge (right).
40 FINE WOODWORKING
the dado depth. Be prepared to spend ex-
tra time on these joints, though, because
there are many surfaces that must fit at the
front edge, and gaps will be obvious.
This joint uses a shallow (about 3⁄16 in.
deep) through-dado, with a lap dovetail at
the front extending into the case side.
Start by penciling in the lap location on
the case sides. This gives the length of the
front rail. Before gluing up the frame,
notch the front rail to leave the stubs for
the dovetails. Now build the rest of the
frame and shape the dovetails on the front
stubs. This joint will show any gaps, so
work carefully and test the dovetail fit as
you pare. When you install the frame, rub
the rear part of the dado with paraffin wax
so that any glue that drags back won’t keep
it from floating.
Lap dovetail with hidden dado—The
third frame type uses a narrower through-
dado that is hidden at the front by the lap
dovetail. This dovetailed frame gives the
same mechanical strength as the stepped
version but has a cleaner look. When used
with flush drawers, it has a neat, logical ap-
pearance. This system has another advan-
tage over the stepped dovetail. Because
the dovetail fully covers the dado, there are
fewer surfaces that must close up. Use a
standard dado size that is 1⁄16 in. or so
smaller than the base of the tail, and make
the dadoes about 1⁄4 in. deep.
Once the frame has been made, you
 FL AT VS. RABBETED MOLDING FRAME
The type of molding frame will determine how much of the top or bottom edge of the carcase is visible.

FLAT FRAME
Internal
frame

Molding

Watch for
gaps here.
Internal frame
is the same A flat frame is easier to build and fit.
thickness as But it shows the entire case edge and
the molding. must lie perfectly flat.

RABBETED FRAME
Internal
frame

Molding
is thicker
than frame.

Smaller
reveal
Molding
overhangs the Rabbeted frame leaves the carcase re-
frame, creating
veal up to you. Also, if the frame doesn’t
a rabbet.
lie perfectly flat, the gap won’t show.

need to form the tongues, stopping them at
the front and leaving extra wood for the
tails. Because the tongues and dadoes will
be hidden, only the shoulders for the dove-
tails need to be tight, and the tongues don’t
need to bottom out in the dadoes; however,
the tongues should be snug in thickness,
especially at the front.
A few tips for the drawers
Once the frames have been fitted and
glued in, you may build and fit the drawers
by any method you’re comfortable with.
Drawer fronts, of course, have a lot to do
with the appearance of a chest, so look
over the wood and plan the overall grain
pattern before you begin.
This article presents two options: a flush
drawer and a lipped drawer (see the top
photo on p. 43). Both types need stops (the
fragile lip molding is there only to cover
the clearance gaps). One reason why I lo-
cate the stop blocks on the rear dividers is
that it’s easy to clamp them in place while
testing the drawer. Just remember to size
your drawers to make room for the stops.
But the great trick here is that putting the
stops on a floating frame keeps the draw-
ers flush at the front even as the case
changes depth through the seasons.
Ease the transitions with moldings
Visually, top and bottom moldings have a
powerful effect. They frame the case with
their strong horizontal lines and play of
light. Their projection at the bottom gives
the base a sense of stability and strength.
An upper molding provides a transition to
the overhang of the top and also balances
the bottom molding.
Many times you’ll see old work with
moldings attached to the case itself, but
these tend to fail over time as the case
shrinks. Using separate frames for the
moldings will give the same appearance
while allowing for case movement.
These top and bottom frames can be
built using either of two methods (above).
Both can use secondary wood for the inner
part of the frame. The first is a simple
mitered frame with a molded edge. A more
complex, rabbeted frame system wraps
over the sides and front edge of the case.
With this system you can choose how
much of the front case edge shows, giving
a wider range of effects.
Both frame systems should overhang the
back to allow for expansion of the case.
Fasten the frames to the case with screws,
tight along the front but with elongated
holes along the sides and back to allow the
case to move.
Flat frame is quicker to build—The first
step for the flat frame is to know the ex-
act dimensions of the molding you want,
its projection from the piece and the width
of the primary wood. The next step is to
glue the primary-wood strips onto the

M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 3 41
 inner-frame stock and then mill the blanks
to thickness.
Get the front miters fitting correctly be-
fore mortising in the flat, unmolded rear
rail. Join the mitered corners with biscuits
or stopped splines. Last, mold the desired
profile on the outside edge.

Build the rabbeted frame in two

parts—The second frame system is built in
two stages. The inner, secondary-wood
frame is thinner than the molding, based
on how much of the case edge you want
covered. I build the frame first, slightly
oversize, then trim it to fit the case exactly.
Let the back edge overhang to hide sea-
sonal case expansion.
Now form the rabbet with the three
Molding frame thicker molding blanks. Dry-fit the parts
Secondary
serves as the
wood is used
carefully, making sure the miters come to-
attachment point gether exactly at the corners of the case,
for the base. at the back of
the base. keeping the end pieces long at first to al-
low room for adjustment. Then glue the
blanks to the edges of the frame and mold
the profile. The frame is held with screws
Glue as before, with slotted holes to allow for
blocks movement.
Half-blind dovetail
or tongue-and- Attach the top
dado joint The top of the case is often molded on
three edges and usually has an overhang-
ing back to hide shrinkage and to avoid a
Bracket feet may
be flat or molded.
BASES large gap between the case and the wall.
A strong bottom molding frame If a molding is used below the top, it’s
serves as a stable platform for important to let the case, the molding
attaching the feet, whether frame and the top move independently. All
bracket style (shown here) or three parts are held tight with screws along
vertical (see the facing page). the front edge to keep the miters and re-
veals constant. But along the sides and
Miter joint at back, use elongated screw holes between
front corners the frame and top, as well as the case and
frame. People commonly lift cases by the

Mitered BRACKET FEET

corner
Molded or unmolded, with a wide variety of cutouts, bracket feet are used in many
periods and styles. They are glued to the base molding frame (or attached to the case).

Glue blocks reinforce the

joint without restricting
wood movement. FLAT BRACKET FOOT OGEE BRACKET FOOT FLAT BRACKET BASE

42 FINE WOODWORKING
 Details define the style
This construction system will produce a wide variety of case pieces, depending on
the combination of the individual elements. An 18th-century piece (top) combines
moldings, drawers and feet common to that period. Lipped
drawers soften the line of the front. A wide base mold-
ing and classic ball-and-claw feet give the piece a
broad stance. The top is carefully dimensioned and
molded to relate to the rest of the piece.
The bottom chest of drawers offers a more contem-
porary look with harder lines and surfaces, including a
flush front. The curved, tapered legs flare outward,
broadening the stance of the piece without looking
heavy. The base and top moldings are beveled to com-
plement the style. And the top is chamfered to make it
Period or contem-
porary? The choice appear thinner and to match the other elements.
of moldings, draw- These two examples are the tip of the iceberg.
ers, feet and hard- You could make the case taller than it is wide, or use a
ware offers a wide
different array of drawers. And consider the effect of
range of design pos-
sibilities. other wood species or figured wood for the drawers.

top edge, so all of these connections
should be very strong.
Choose a base
The final bit of woodworking is to prepare
a base. For this article I built the two most
common systems, each adaptable to many
leg styles. Bracket feet are cut from blanks
with horizontal grain and are mitered at the
front. The other leg style has vertical grain,
which usually features narrower legs, often
braced by flanking side pieces.
Bracket feet—Start the flat bracket feet
with one long board about 3⁄4 in. thick. The
six blanks should be taken out of a single
board, if possible, so the grain pattern
wraps around the base, matching at the
Round tenon
attaches to the
molding frame.
Transition
pieces are
tenoned into
the foot.
miters. It’s also nice to use the same board
here as you did for the base molding to
help hide the joint between the base frame
and the feet.
The rear feet are braced with secondary
wood. The joint at this back corner can be
half-blind dovetails or, more simply, a
tongue and dado. The miters for the front
parts can be reinforced with a spline, but
usually it’s enough just to butt them.
Cut and dry-fit the joints before cutting
the foot profile. The assembled feet are
glued to the base frame. All of the foot and
base joints should be reinforced with glue
blocks. A single vertical block can cause
the foot to crack, so I use three short blocks
with 1⁄8 in. of space between them.
Vertical feet with support pieces—The
second construction system is seen in the
VERTICAL -GRAIN FEET
Vertical-grain feet come in a wide array of styles, from turned bun feet to 18th-century ball-
and-claw feet to more contemporary saber feet. Most have flanking transition pieces.
saber leg with flanking transition pieces. Its
main advantage over bracket feet is that the
vertical grain direction allows a strong foot
of a much smaller size.
Generally, a round or square tenon is cut
in the top of the foot blanks to match a
hole or mortise cut through the base frame.
The mortise should be located away from
the corner of the frame so that the miter
joint isn’t weakened. The transition pieces
are tenoned into the foot. As before, these
assemblies are glued to the base frame.
This sums up the approach I rely on for
fine-quality casework, but many variations
are possible. The great thing about this is
that 10 people will use this information to
build 10 very different chests, each one a
record of that maker’s taste and skills.

Will Neptune is a furniture maker in Acton, Mass.

Vertical-
grain foot

SABER FOOT BALL-AND-CLAW FOOT TURNED FOOT

M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 3 43
 Quick and Sturdy
1
Drawer sides mate with
dovetail slots in the
drawer front.

2
Drawer back sits in dadoes
in the sides and is secured
with nails.

3
Plywood bottom slides in
from the back.

4
Nail keeps the bottom from
moving when the drawer is
opened.

70 FINE WOODWORKING
Drawer Construction
Build elegant drawers in record time B Y L O N N I E B I R D

Drawer
Drawer back
bottom
Groove for
drawer bottom

Top of tail
rounded over

Dado for
drawer back
3
⁄16-in. rabbet
at top and sides

Drawer
Dovetail side

Drawer
front
D R AW E R - F RO N T D E TA I L S
Thumbnail profile
on all four edges
of drawer front

Dovetail slot
stops 1 in.
from the top

M
y wife and I recently moved into
a new home. You guessed it—it
was time to build yet another set
of kitchen cabinets. I wanted to build
strong, natural-wood drawers with an un-
cluttered look, and I wanted to do it fast. I
knew that traditional hand-cut dovetailed
drawers would require too much time and
fuss to make. And I’m not a fan of router
dovetail jigs; they’re time-consuming to set
up and produce machined-looking joints
that don’t quite satisfy me.
After careful consideration, I came up
with a drawer design that was strong and
quick to make. I used sliding dovetails to
connect the sides to the drawer front. The
drawer back sits in dadoes in the sides and
is nailed in place. With this simple system
I was able to mill the stock, cut the joints,
and assemble and fit 13 drawers in just one of the drawer
day (though I confess it was a long one). front.
Start with precise measurements
I measured the height and the width of
each opening to determine the size of each
drawer front. I wanted lipped drawers, so I
added 3⁄16 in. to the measured height and
3
⁄8 in. to the measured width. This gave me a 3
⁄16-in.
3 C/L
⁄16-in. overhang on the top and sides. radius
1 in.
I made the sides 1 in. shorter in height
than the front to accommodate the side-
mount nylon roller runners I chose for 13
⁄16 in. 9
this project. To install each drawer in its ⁄16 in.
opening, I would need the extra space
that this distance (between the top of
3
each drawer side and the drawer front) ⁄8 in. 3
⁄16 in.
5
affords the rollers, which are proud at the ⁄8 in.
bottom. Each drawer back was sized

Drawings: Melanie Powell NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 71

S L I D I N G D O V E TA I L S C R E AT E S T R O N G , I N V I S I B L E J O I N T S
RIGHT AND LEFT DOVETAIL SLOT S ARE CUT IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS
Stop line for
The right slot is rout- 1 in.
right slot
ed left to right. When
pushing the workpiece
left to right, you are
feeding stock in the di-
Dovetail Drawer
rection of the bit’s rota- bit front
tion (called a climb Direction
cut). In this direction, of feed
the cutter wants to
push the work away
from the fence. A
clamp and a miter
gauge keep the work
on track.
Clamp

Stop line
The left slot is cut 1 in. for left slot
right to left. When
pushing the workpiece
right to left, the bit
pulls the work securely
against the fence. Still,
it’s a good idea to Direction
clamp the work to the of feed
miter gauge to ensure
accuracy.

the same as its corresponding sides and
was trimmed later. Why I did this will be-
come clearer to you when the groove is
cut for the bottom.
Cut the dovetail slots,
and machine the tails
The sliding dovetails are 1⁄2 in. wide and cen-
tered on the 5⁄8-in.-thick poplar sides. The
first step is to cut the dovetail slots in the
back of each drawer front. To hide the joint,
the slots begin at the bottom edge and stop
1 in. from the top edge. To locate the center
of the slot, I added 3⁄16 in. for the lip, plus
1
⁄2 in. for the drawer slide, plus 5⁄16 in. (half of
the side thickness). This positioned the
slot’s center 1 in. from the end of the draw-
er front (see the detail drawing on p. 71).
I cut the slots on the router table using a
1
⁄2-in.-dia., 14° dovetail bit. I set the fence 1 in.
from the center of the bit and marked a line
on the fence to indicate when to stop feed-
ing the workpiece. I didn’t attach a stop
block to the fence because the drawer fronts
are of different widths. Finally, I clamped
each workpiece to a miter gauge. The first
stopped cut is made left to right, in the di-
rection of the bit rotation (called a climb
cut). When climb-cutting, the router wants
to push the work away from the fence. The

Rout the thumbnail

Rabbet to create a profile on all four
lip. Once the dovetail sides of the drawer
slots and tails have front. In this operation,
been cut and dry-fitted, the thumbnail bit will at-
use a straight bit to rab- tack the grain from four
bet the top and side directions. To avoid
edges of the drawer tearout, proceed slowly
front. This creates a but decisively when mak-
3
⁄16-in. lip. ing your cut.

72 FINE WOODWORKING Photos: Matthew Teague

 SETUP TO CUT PRECISE TAIL S
For a strong joint, the tail must be snug in the slot. Too loose, the joint
will be weak; too tight, the tail will split the drawer front. With the router
fence properly set, clamp the drawer side to another piece of wood for
bracing. Slide the bracing along the top of the fence to steady the cut.
Each face of the tail is cut in a single pass and produces a precise fit to
the drawer-front slots.

Bracing

Drawer side

Router
fence
Dovetail Pare away the top cor-
bit ner. Using a chisel,
round over the top of
each tail so that it will
fit into the routed end
of the slot in the
drawer front.

clamp and the miter gauge hold the work-
piece tightly against the fence; without them,
the cut would be unsafe. To cut the slot
on the opposite end, the workpiece is fed
right to left, against the bit’s rotation.
Then, using the same bit, I prepared to
cut the tails. As a matter of habit, I made a
couple of test cuts on stock of the same
thickness to dial in the depth. It is important
to make practice cuts before cutting a
whole stack of drawer sides. I buried most
of the bit in the fence, stood the practice
piece on end, and took a pass at each face.
During assembly, the two surfaces slide to-
gether. Remember, though, that water-
based glue will swell the tail, adding to the
difficulty of assembly, so the fit of the tail to
the slot is critical. Once I achieved a snug
fit, I went ahead and cut the dovetails on all
of the drawer sides.
Once the dovetails were made, I changed
out my bit and routed the drawer-front rab-
bets, cutting the top and sides only, 1⁄4 in.
deep and 1⁄4 in. wide. Then, with a thumb-
nail bit, I profiled the drawer-front edges.
Cut the remaining joints
At the tablesaw, I cut dadoes on the sides
to accept the drawer back. Then I ripped
1
⁄4-in.-wide grooves 5⁄16 in. from the bottom
of the sides and fronts to accept the draw-
er bottom. To ensure a perfect fit, I raised
the blade after cutting the grooves, then I
ripped the drawer back to width. The
drawer bottom slides into the grooves and
caps the bottom edge of the drawer back.
Assemble and glue the drawer
I began assembly by lightly coating the
dovetails with glue. Then I tapped each tail
into its slot with a deadblow mallet. You
have to work quickly here; if the joint
seizes, you will not be able to assemble the
drawer completely.
Once the sides have been installed in
the front, I determined the length of the
back. I looked to the drawer front, where
the distance is fixed, and measured the
distance between the sides. Then I added
the depth of the dadoes on the inner faces
of the drawer sides. After laying out these
dimensions on the back, I crosscut it to
length and nailed it into the dado.
The drawer bottom slides into the draw-
er box and is secured to the lower edge of
the back with a nail. I used 1⁄4-in.-thick
birch plywood for the drawer bottom.
Plywood will bear the kind of weight and
abuse expected of a heavy-duty drawer,
whereas natural wood of the same thick-
ness will mar or split. With the bottoms in
place, I attached the metal runners and
slipped each drawer into its opening.
With these methods, you’ll be able to build
strong, durable drawers in record time.

Lonnie Bird teaches woodworking near Knoxville,
Tenn. You can find information about his classes
at www.lonniebird.com.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 73
 Fitting
Drawers

A
well-fitted inset drawer is one of the hallmarks of fine furni-
You don’t need a perfect ture, separating hand-crafted work from factory made. The
hands and eyes go naturally to such a drawer, trying its pis-
drawer or case to get ton fit and appreciating the fine gap around its edges. Articles and
books have addressed the fitting of drawers, but most have fo-
perfect results cused on the best-case scenario, ignoring a common situation: fit-
ting a slightly imperfect drawer into a slightly imperfect opening.
Ideally, a drawer should slide smoothly into place, with a thin,
uniform gap all around and the drawer front aligned perfectly with
B Y P H I L I P C . L O W E
the front of the case. However, there will be times when a case or a
drawer box ends up a bit crooked, warped, or twisted. Sometimes
fitting becomes problematic because a drawer divider has warped

80 FINE WOODWORKING Photos: Asa Christiana


3
FIT THE
D R AW E R S I D E S
Plane the sides to fit the
opening. Also, mark and
cut them to length,
allowing for the half-
blind dovetails at the
front ends.
F I T T H E D R AW E R PA R T S
BEFORE CUTTING THE JOINERY
The most important steps in fitting an inset drawer happen before
the drawer box is even assembled.
4 C U T T H E D R AW E R
BACK TO SIZE
Cut the back 1⁄16 in. shorter than the
front to allow for easier final fitting.

1
PLANE THE LONG EDGES
O F T H E D R AW E R F RO N T

FIT THE
2
ENDS OF
T H E D R AW E R
FRONT

Plane one end to fit

the case (above).
Then set the drawer
front in the case and
mark the other end
Start with stock 1⁄16 in. too wide. Before for length at both
planing to fit, check the opening with a the top and bottom
straightedge (top). If the dividers or the edges (right). Aim
case is bowed, plane the long edges of for a snug fit at this
the drawer front to match (bottom). point in the process.

Drawings: Stephen Hutchings NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004 81

 F IN E -T U N E T H E F IT AFTE R
G L U I N G U P T H E D R AW E R
Provided you cut the drawer back slightly short as
recommended and that the glue-up went well, only the
front end of the drawer will need to be fitted to the opening.

1
G LU E U P T H E D R AW E R
Careful assembly is essential. Glue up
the drawer box on a flat surface and
measure diagonals to ensure that the
box goes together square.

2
CLEAN UP
THE JOINTS

Only this area needs

to be planed to fit
the drawer.

3 FIT THE FRONT

O F T H E D R AW E R B OX

All but the last few inches of the

Lightly plane the bottom
edges flush with each other
(top) and then plane the rear
dovetails flush (bottom).
drawer should slide in easily at this
point. Level the dovetails at the front
of the drawer box and continue
planing those areas until you achieve
a 1⁄32-in. gap at each end. Also, touch
up the top edge for the same gap.

82 FINE WOODWORKING
 4
PLANE THE BOTTOM
O F T H E D R AW E R
FRONT
Relieve the bottom edge of the
drawer front. Use a rabbet
plane to create a 1⁄32-in. lip
(left and drawing below). This
will create an even gap on all
sides of the drawer (below)
and prevent the drawer front
from catching on the case.

Drawer
front

Lip,
1
⁄32 in.

slightly after the case was assembled. Regardless of the cause, it’s
possible to get perfect-looking results even when a drawer or case
is less than perfect.
Fit the drawer front and sides before assembly
The process for fitting a traditional inset drawer begins while the
drawer still is in pieces. The drawer front should be trimmed to fit
the opening in the case—be it square or ever-so-slightly askew.
The drawer front will then determine the shape of the drawer box.
Start by checking the drawer opening to see whether there is any
bow to the dividers or case. If the dividers are straight, rip the
drawer front 1⁄16 in. oversize in width. If the dividers are not straight,
you may have to leave the drawer front a bit more oversize.
Joint away the saw marks and then fit the drawer front to the
height of the opening. If the case or horizontal drawer divider has
a bow, start planing this shape from one end of the drawer front to
the other. Then plane one end to fit the vertical member it must
match (this could be out of square), checking it by sliding just that
end into position.
Next, fit the other end of the drawer front. Place most of the front
into the opening and use a knife to mark its length at the top and
bottom edges. Connect these two marks with a straightedge. After
squaring this line around the entire end, make a square crosscut on
the tablesaw to the longest length if the scribe line is not square,
and then use a handplane to trim
the end until it fits into the open-
ing. Aim for a snug fit of the
drawer front in the opening. You
should be able to slide it into
place without pushing very hard.
Once the drawer front fits per-
fectly, work on the sides and
back of the box. Orient the grain
of the drawer sides so that it will
be easy to plane the outside faces
from front to back during final fitting. When fitting the sides, follow
this sequence: Joint the bottom edges straight and rip the sides
1
⁄16 in. wider than the opening. Remove the saw marks and plane the
pieces evenly until they slide into the opening.
Now, resting the sides against the bottom of the drawer opening,
slide them into place. Use the front edge of the case to mark the
length of the sides, adjusting for joinery that will be at the front cor-
ners. If you’re using half-blind dovetails, stop them at least 3⁄16 in.
from the face of the drawer front. This allows plenty of room for
planing this face flush with the case later, especially if the drawer
ends up slightly twisted or crooked. For that reason, I usually start
with an extrathick drawer front, say 13⁄16 in. or 7⁄8 in.
As for the back of the drawer, a tried-and-true method is to

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004 83
Fitting problem drawers
T W I S T E D D R AW E R S
A twisted drawer is easy to spot.
1 P L A N E T H E D R AW E R S I D E
Place it on a flat surface (below) TO REMOVE THE T WIST
and look for a gap under one of Locate the low corner of the drawer
the corners. It is best to remove Plane the rear and relieve the opposite corner. Try to
corner of this maintain a straight edge as you plane
as much of the twist as possible
drawer side. it, continuing until the drawer sits flat.
from the bottom of one drawer
side before the final-fitting stage.
Plane from the front of the
drawer to the back, tapering
the drawer side until the entire
drawer sits flat. Then continue
with the fitting process as usual.
If the twist is more than
slight, the situation gets more
complicated. As you plane the
bottom of one drawer side, the
drawer front becomes tilted in
the opening. To correct this prob-
lem, you may have to plane the
Low corner
front of the drawer surface to of drawer
line it up with the opening.

2 PL ANE THE FRONT, IF NEEDED

If the drawer is
tilted noticeably,
you must plane
the face to bring
it plumb with the
case front. Plane
very carefully to
maintain a flat
face.

Plane the lower

section of the
drawer front.

cut the back 1⁄16 in. shorter than the width of the opening. By cut-
ting the back shorter, you intentionally make the drawer box a
slight trapezoid, which makes for easier fitting. The slight play at
the back also will allow you to adjust a crooked drawer in the
opening so that its face ends up flush.
At this point, dovetail the drawer parts together and glue them
up as square and as flat as possible.
Fine-tune the fit after assembly
Once the drawer has been glued up and the clamps have been re-
moved, the final fitting begins. You should be able to handle most
problems at this point, ending up with a great fit. However, there
will be times when a drawer ends up so twisted or crooked that it
must be scrapped altogether.
First, check the drawer for twist. You can do this using winding
sticks, or you can place the drawer on a flat surface, such as a saw
table, to see whether it rocks. Sometimes I use the top surface of
the cabinet or chest I am working on, if I know it is flat.
If the drawer is flat, the task of fitting it should be straight-
forward. The first steps are merely to clean up the joinery. Begin
by taking a couple of consistent plane shavings to clean up the
dovetails at the back corners. Also, lightly plane the bottom

84 FINE WOODWORKING
 C R O O K E D D R AW E R S
Another problem that can occur at glue-up is a drawer box 1
slipping out of square (forming a parallelogram in a top PLANE THE
view). If the drawer front does not line up across the opening, REAR CORNER
you have a few options. If the misalignment is minimal, there Locate the protruding
might be enough play at the back of the drawer to correct end of the drawer. Then
the alignment by simply adjusting the drawer stops. plane the back corner of
the opposite side to
If the drawer can’t be pushed into alignment, you will have
allow the drawer box to
to plane some material from the back corner, allowing the pivot so that the front is
drawer box to pivot sideways and the drawer front to come flush with the case front.
back into alignment. Again, you will have to align the drawer
stops to bring the drawer front square when it is pushed in.
Plane the rear
Beware: If you have to remove too much material from a face of this
drawer side.

Protruding end

drawer side, it can become too thin at the groove or rabbet

that was cut to house the drawer bottom, weakening the con-
struction. If you feel this happening, stop removing material
2
ADJUST THE
from the back corner and begin planing the drawer face STOP BLOCKS
where it protrudes from the case. Glue stop blocks to the
I’ve also used a tight-fitting drawer bottom to push a front divider so they
crooked box back toward square, or tapered the drawer stop the drawer front
guide (when there was one). A last resort is to plane a taper when it is flush with
the case.
into the actual case side, which can be a nightmarish task.

edges of the drawer sides flush with the bottom edge of the
drawer front.
Because the back is shorter across than the front, the box should
go into the opening almost all of the way. Then, with two or three
passes of the plane at the ends of the drawer front, take off an even
thickness. Maintain the angles of the ends as they were fitted to the
opening, and the drawer should slide home.
If you push the drawer into its opening and notice that the front
is not parallel with the dividers, see “Crooked drawers” (above). If
not, continue planing to create a consistent, fine gap—1⁄32 in. or
less—at each end of the drawer.
With the ends finished, work on the long edges. Plane away a
consistent amount from the top of the drawer. Finally, use a rabbet
plane to relieve the bottom edge of the drawer front. Take three or
four shavings, leaving the drawer sides resting on the drawer run-
ners but creating a consistent, fine gap all around the drawer front.
The lip created by the plane also prevents the bottom edge of the
drawer front from catching when the drawer is slid shut.

Philip C. Lowe is a furniture maker and teacher in Beverly, Mass., where he
runs The Furniture Institute of Massachusetts. For information on classes, go
to www.furnituremakingclasses.com.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004 85
Beading
a Drawer
Applied molding
disguises gaps, adds a
sophisticated look
B Y S T E V E L A T T A

C
ate it.”
ock beading is a prime exam-
ple of the design philosophy,
“If you can’t hide it, accentu-

As all woodworkers know, wood

HOW C OC K BEADIN G WRAPS AROUND A DRAWER FRONT
After the drawer has been fit to its opening, the edges of the drawer front
are cut away so that the thin beading can be added. The bead completely
moves, and with components like covers the top and bottom edges of the drawer front but fits over the sides
drawers there is no real method to hold by only about 3⁄8 in., enough to cover the tips of the dovetails.
that movement in check. A nice flush
and even gap probably won’t stay that Rabbet cuts into Top and bottom
the thin tips of the beading, glued on
way, especially on inset drawers. Cock dovetails.
beading distracts the eye from the gap,
and by helping to break up large, dor-
mant surfaces, adds visual distraction
and consequently a little life. It can be
used on many different styles of furni-
ture, requires no special tools, and is a
technique well worth acquiring.
I won’t cover beading that is incor-
porated into the case, but rather the
method where the bead is applied
directly to the drawer itself. If the front
of the drawer happens to be veneered,
as in this table, the beading does dou-
ble duty by helping to protect the edge
of the veneer.

Steve Latta is an instructor at Thaddeus

Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, Side beading,
Pa., and a frequent contributor. ⁄ in. wide,
38

attached with
glue and nails Drawer face can
be veneered.

FineWoodworking.com
Stopped
Visit our Web site to see the author miter Width of top and bottom
demonstrate how to apply cock beading. beading stands slightly
proud of the drawer front.

44 FINE WOODWORKING Photos: Mark Schofield; drawings: Heather Lambert

 1. Make the beading
I always apply cock beading to a
drawer after the drawer has been
glued up and fitted to the opening.
Sometimes the drawer dividers have
a little twist or bow and the drawer
front must be planed to fit the open-
ing. If the bead was already on, it
would lose a bit of its profile.
It’s a good idea to make the bead- OR
ing before you trim down the drawer
front to receive it. This way, you’ll
know the exact thickness.
There are a couple of ways to make
the beading. If you need beading for
several large drawers, take the time
to set up a bullnose bit (Amana part
No. 51540) in a router table. For just
Router-cut beading. The fastest way to cut A low-tech method. A scratch stock
a couple of drawers, a scratch stock
large amounts of beading is with a bullnose made from a block of wood and a piece of
makes quick work of the job and can bit in a router table. Set the bit within a sac- scraper blade is an efficient way to create
produce thinner, more delicate bead- rificial fence. small amounts of beading.
ing than a router bit. The
wooden body of the scratch
stock is shaped like an in-
verted “T” with a handsaw
kerf across the top to hold
the cutter. I made mine from
a piece of an old scraper
and shaped the profile with
a small, round, needle file. A
2-in. C-clamp holds the cut-
ter in place and doubles as a
handle.
I bead opposite edges of a
1-in.-thick board (with jointed
edges) and then rip away the
bead on the tablesaw fitted
with a combination blade, a
zero-clearance insert, and a
stub splitter. I use a long push
stick and run it right through
the blade. The low splitter
stays out of the way and
keeps the stock from twisting
into the blade and getting
unsightly burn marks.

Rip the beading. After the bullnose profile has been routed or scratched, rip the beading to width
on the tablesaw. A splitter prevents saw-burn marks on the sides of the beading.

www.F i neWoodwor k i n g.com MARCH/APRIL 2006 45

 2. Prepare the drawer front
M A R K T H E FAC E , B AC K , A N D S I D E S
With the drawer bottom removed, mark the drawer front: Set a slicing gauge to the thick-
ness of the beading (about 1⁄8 in.) and score a line along all four edges of the face. Since
the bead stock will completely cover the top and bottom edges of the drawer front, I also
Top and bottom are
score a fairly deep line along those edges on the inside of the drawer front. Here an old
fully recessed.
plane iron serves as the perfect tool for extending the lines into the corner where the slic-
Sides are rabbeted ing gauge can’t reach. Reset the gauge to about 3⁄8 in. and, referencing off the front, score
to conceal tips of
the dovetails. a line across the sides of the drawer, making sure the ends of the dovetails are included in
what will become the rabbet for the bead.

2 Mark the
drawer front. Use
the slicing gauge to
mark all four edges
of the drawer face.

1 Set your gauge. The slicing

gauge should be set to match the
thickness of the beading. Unlike a
marking gauge, which uses a pin
to scratch a line, the blade of a
slicing gauge cuts a clean line.

3 Mark the back, too. Because

the beading will extend the whole
thickness of the top and bottom
of the drawer front, don’t forget to
mark the inside edges, too.
4 Cutting corners. Because the slicing 5 Mark the drawer sides. Reset
gauge can’t reach into the corners, extend the the gauge to about 3⁄8 in. and scribe a
line with a plane iron tapped by a hammer. line on both drawer sides.

46 FINE WOODWORKING
C U T AWAY T H E WA S T E
Fitting the drawer to the opening some-
times leaves edges that aren’t perfectly
straight, and the recess for the bead must
match this profile. A handheld router with
1 Saw away most of the waste. Use a 2 Cut almost to the line. Removing the
a short fence works well. Because I tend
tablesaw to cut the sides of the drawer front bulk of the waste on the tablesaw makes
to use small routers that can’t take a lot
and then the top and bottom. Leave a 1⁄8-in. lip the final cut with the router easier and
of load, I remove much of the waste on the on the latter two edges for the router fence to cleaner.
tablesaw first. This extra step takes just ride against during the next step.
a minute but greatly adds
3 Finish cut with a router. Use
to personal safety and radi- a straight bit buried in an auxiliary
cally reduces the possibility fence to cut the sides. Then rout
that the router will grab the the top and bottom rabbets to their
final depth, leaving the small lip at
stock and chew up the front.
the bottom.
Having gone to the trouble of
building the drawer, it would
be a shame to wreck it at
this point.
The sawblade must be
partly buried in an auxiliary
fence and set so that the cut
is just a hair away from the
scribe lines in both width
and height. Rabbet both
sides using a miter gauge to
guide the drawer. Reset the
blade height and groove the
top and bottom edges of the
drawer front, leaving only
about 1⁄8 in. of stock for the
router fence to ride along.
Set a straight bit to the
width and depth of the side
rabbet and bury it into an 4 Remove the lip. Use a
auxiliary fence clamped to the plane iron or wide chisel to
remove the lip on the top and
router base. After rabbeting both bottom rear edges.
drawer sides, reset the depth
of the bit so that it matches the
depth of the sawcut, and with the
router fence riding against the lip
you left when sawing, rabbet the
top and bottom edges. Place the
drawer on its face, and with a cou-
ple of hammer blows on a plane
iron, make short work of the lip.
5 Clean up the lip. Use the
same iron or chisel to pare away
any remnants of the lip.

www.F i neWoodwor k i n g.com MARCH/APRIL 2006 47


Top and bottom beading
fully covers the drawer front. where the stopped miter needs
Side beading covers half of
the drawer front.
1 Mark the miters’ depth. Use a plane
iron resting on the bottom of the side rab-
bets to mark where the miters stop.
4 Clipped brads prevent sliding dur-
ing fitting. Tap three brads into the top
and bottom of the drawer front, and then
remove the heads close to the surface.
48 FINE WOODWORKING
3. Miter and apply the beading
D R Y- F I T A L L T H E P I E C E S
Square an end of the top bead stock and
line it up with the end of the drawer.
Referencing off the side rabbet, mark
to end by slicing in carefully with a plane
iron or a chisel. Cut the miters on both
adjoining pieces using a guide block with
45° corners. Repeat this process at the
diagonal corner of the drawer front. With
AN GLED CUTTIN G BLOC K
FOR MITERIN G THE BEADIN G
2 Slice the miters.
Use an angled cutting
block (see drawing,
right) to guide the plane
iron or chisel when cut-
ting the stopped miters.
5 Fit the top and bottom beading. Press
the beading onto the headless brads, starting
in the middle and then at either end.
these two mitered corners properly fitted,
cut the top and bottom pieces to length
and miter the other two corners, fitting the
side pieces last.
To keep the bead from sliding around
during final fitting and gluing, tack three
or four brads into the top and bottom edg-
es of the drawer front, and clip the heads
off close to the surface with the jaws of
Use a wide chisel or plane iron to
cut the miter on the beading.
Block of wood with two
corners cut at 45°,
glued to wooden base
Place beading
against the side
of the angled block.
6 Fit the sides. With the top and bottom
beads dry-fitted and clamped with cauls, fit
the side beading.

the cutter parallel to the edge.
Positioning the jaws this way gives
you a little sideways movement when
fitting the bead.
Press the beading into the brads
and test-fit it. Then fit the side beading,
and secure its location by attaching
the pieces to the drawer sides with
clear tape.
3 A perfect fit. The miters on the top
and bottom beading should stop where
the rabbets on the drawer sides end.
7 Secure the location of the ends. To
keep the final location of the side bead-
ing, attach the pieces with clear tape,
then proceed to gluing.
www.F i neWoodwor k i n g.com
AT TAC H W I T H G L U E A N D B R A D S
Apply a thin film of glue and then press on the top and
bottom beading, working from front to back. Apply 1 Minimize squeeze-out. To
reduce squeeze-out on the front
pressure using two pieces of 3⁄4-in.-thick stock trimmed
face of the drawer, roll on the
about 1⁄8 in. shorter than the length of the beading. top and bottom beading from
Run the clamps under the drawer front so that the side front to back.
beads can be clamped across the face.
Apply a thin coat of glue to all the end grain. This
will prevent the end grain from absorbing the main
application of glue and starving the joint. Then glue
on the taped side beading. As cauls I use two blocks,
each cut with a small groove to straddle the joint. The
groove helps provide even pressure, even if the bead
stands a little proud of, or shy from, the drawer side.
Let any squeeze-out dry about 20 minutes and then
carefully peel it away with a chisel. After everything is
dry, unclamped, and cleaned up with sandpaper, I use 2 Glue the sides. Pre-glue the
a few small Tremont brads (www.tremontnail.com) to end grain on the miters, glue the
secure the side beads in case the glue lets go due to whole surface, and then flip up
the taped side beading.
seasonal movement.
3 Clamp the beading. Place the clamps for the
top and bottom beading around the back of the
drawer front and place the clamp for the side beads
across the top. A block of wood supports the clamp
while it is being fitted.
4 Nail the side beads. To reinforce the cross-
grain glue joint, use a couple of brads to secure
the side beads. Predrill the holes to avoid splitting
the thin stock.
MARCH/APRIL 2006 49
 Center
Shopmade guides
ensure smooth action
for wide drawers

B y M a r k E d m u n d s o n

L et’s be honest. An occasional bind-

ing drawer is an ugly fact of life in
woodworking. We’ve all knocked
our heads against the wall trying to get
a drawer to run straight and smooth. But
center guides can relieve a lot of the pain,
while solving the binding problem.
To steer a drawer in the center, you
need to build two parts: the guide and
the slide (see drawing, facing page). Make
both parts of quartersawn hardwood to
minimize seasonal wood movement. The
guide is secured to the rails of the drawer
pocket and mates with the slide, which
is mounted underneath the drawer. The
guide also serves as the stop for an inset
drawer, allowing you to fine-tune the de-
sired reveal at the front, and it works as the

A range of uses
Cases with Drawer in a Runners
Back rail
Wide drawers demilune table
When used on wide Center guides are
drawers, center guides a great solution for
keep drawers from steering drawers in
racking. irregularly shaped
pieces, like this
demilune table.

Guide is screwed Front rail is

to front and back screwed to
rails of web frame. apron.
Slide

72 F I N E w o o dw o r k ing Photos, except where noted: Thomas McKenna; drawings: John Hartman

COPYRIGHT 2007 by The Taunton Press, Inc. Copying and distribution of this article is not permitted.
Guides for Drawers
anatOmY: the sliDe anD the GuiDe
kicker for a drawer below. The system is The slide is grooved and mounted underneath the drawer bottom; one end sits in
dirt-simple but very effective. With it, you a shallow mortise in the drawer front and the other is screwed to the drawer back.
can make any drawer run straight and true, The guide mates with the groove in the slide and sits in
with no binding—ever. notches in the rails of the cabinet or table.
Although center guides work with al-
most any type of furniture—tables and
both solid-wood and frame-and-panel
cases—they are especially effective at
guiding wide drawers. Installed correctly,
center guides will allow you to open a
drawer from either corner without fear of
binding. Center guides also work well on
small drawers, where they can take the Slide is mortised
place of side runners. What’s more, they into drawer front
are a great solution for guiding irregularly and screwed to
back. Guide is notched
shaped drawers, or normal drawers in an to fit rails.
irregularly shaped cabinet or table—basi-
cally anywhere the sides of the case can’t
guide the drawers. The system even works
with overlay drawers.

Notch rails to hold the guide

The construction sequence for center-
guided drawers differs a bit from tradi-
tional methods, in that the web frame
that supports the drawer (two rails, two
runners) will need to be notched for the
guide before it is glued into the cabinet.
But the drawer bottom should be the type
that can be slid out the back. once you

Guide acts as drawer stop

at front and can serve as Front rail
small Drawers
kicker for drawer below.
When using center
guides with small
drawers, you SLIDE AND GLIDE DETAIL Tenon at front
Slide
can eliminate
2¼ in.
runners
altogether.
½ in.
¼ in. Rail height
¾ in.
Guide plus ¼ in.

¼-in.
projection
Guide does above rails ⁄ in.
38

double-duty
as runner.
Length depends on
Flush to bottom of rail drawer reveal at front.

www.finewoodworking.com JULY/AUGUST 2007 73

COPYRIGHT 2007 by The Taunton Press, Inc. Copying and distribution of this article is not permitted.
 Rout notches for the guides Make the guide,
Frame-and-panel cases usually use web frames to support drawers, while
solid-wood cases often use separate back and front rails to allow for wood
movement. Either way, the notches for the center guides must be perfectly
aligned, side to side and front to back.

Mill the guide. After planing the width to fit

IN WEB FRAMES tightly in the notches, cut the half-lap joint
using a dado set.

have completed this and glued up the car-

Router-cut notches are quick and precise. If you have a few web frames to
notch, use a jig like this, clamped flush with the edge of the frame. The fence on
top aligns the notches front to back, and stops keep all notches the same length.
IN SEPARATE
RAILS
T-shaped jig aligns notches. Clamp the two rails
together and make a T-shaped fence from plywood
scraps. First, rout a test slot into the “T” of the fence
to help align the path of the bit with the marks for
the notch.
The router-bit flaw.
The ¾-in.-dia. straight bit
leaves a rounded notch
that needs to be squared
up with a chisel.
case, you can build the drawer box and
put the bottom in place. once the drawer
has been fitted into the opening, the guide
and slide can be milled and installed.
The guide is typically 3⁄4 in. wide and
sits in 1⁄ 8-in.-deep notches centered in the
front and back rails of the web frame. The
length of the notches in the rails depends
on whether the drawer is an overlay or
inset type. If you’re using overlay drawers,
which don’t need a drawer stop, simply
end the notches 3⁄4 in. from the outside
edges of the rails.
An inset drawer requires a little more
finesse. The guide will act as the drawer
stop. So if the drawer front is flush with
the front of the case, mark the end of the
notch based on the thickness of the drawer
front (for a 3⁄4-in.-thick drawer front, the
notch stops 3⁄4 in. from the front of the
rail). If the drawer front is set into the case
to create a reveal, add that inset to the
equation. In either case, make the notch
on the rear rail the same length to avoid
complication when notching the guides.
You can chop out the notches using a
chisel and a scrap of hardwood as a guide,
but this can be slow going and inconsis-
tent. For this guide system to work well,
it’s critical that the guide run parallel to
the case side (or side of the web frame).
That’s why I prefer to cut the notches using

74 FINE WooDWorkING Photo, bottom left: John Tetreault

COPYRIGHT 2007 by The Taunton Press, Inc. Copying and distribution of this article is not permitted.
then the slide

Get a groove in your slide. Cut the groove in the drawer slide using a ½-in. dado set. Cut the stub tenon on the front of the slide. Use
To ensure a centered groove, make two passes, rotating the slide 180º after the first the same dado-blade height as you did to cut the
pass (left). When the groove is almost the right size, stop shifting the fence to adjust the center groove.
groove width. Instead, put masking tape along the fence to dial in the width (right).

a router and a plywood jig (see photos,

facing page). The jig ensures that the cuts
Fine-tune the fit
A slide that glides. You
are parallel to the edges and makes it easy
want the slide to move
to bang out all of the notches for a chest without sticking and
of drawers in minutes. without noticeable side-
to-side play. If necessary,
Fit the guide to the rails take a couple of light
and the slide to the guide plane strokes off the
once you have the web frame notched, guide to fine-tune the fit,
but don’t go overboard.
mill the guide so that it fits tight in the
notches. Then lay out and cut the half-
lap joints on both ends so that the guide
is flush with the bottom of the rails and
projects 1⁄4 in. above them. If you’re doing
more than one drawer, cut all the guides
at the same time. You are now ready to
mill the slide, or slides if you have more
than one drawer.
In most situations, a 1 ⁄ 2-in.-thick by
21⁄4-in.-wide slide is sufficient. To cut the
groove down the center for the guide, use
a 1⁄ 2-in.-wide dado setup on the tablesaw.
Make the cut in two passes, rotating the
piece 180° after the first pass. Check the fit
of guide to slide often. Shift the fence to
make heavy adjustments, but when you’re
close, attach masking tape to the fence to
Kiss the edges with
shim out the cut in small increments. a file. Ease the blunt
You don’t want a loose fit, so once you edges of the guide
have a tight fit, it may be better to fine- and slide to make
tune it with a handplane along the edge it easier for the two
of the guide. Take light passes. This step parts to engage.
also cleans up any rough areas that could

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 Final assembly requires careful layout
interfere with the drawer run. once the piec-
es fit nicely, cut the stub tenon on the front
of the slide.
To make the parts engage more easily, ease
the edges on the front of the guide and the
rear of the slide using files or sandpaper. If
you are making more than one pair of slides
and guides, be sure to mark mating pairs that
have been fitted to each other. Now screw
the guide to the web frame and install the
frame in the case.

Mount the slide underneath the drawer

ATTACH SLIDE Install the guide and wedge the slide. Put mask-
TO DRAWER ing tape over the guide to wedge the slide on top,
with the tip of the slide sticking out about 3 in.
Center the drawer in the
opening. Place the drawer
on top of the slide and push
it in until the underside of the
drawer front touches the front
of the slide. Add paper shims on
both sides to keep the drawer
centered as you work.
With the web frames installed, glue up the
drawer box and add the bottom. Be sure
that the drawer is square; if it’s not perfectly
square and the slide is centered, the drawer
front will not be parallel in the opening.
To fit the slide to the drawer, begin by plac-
ing a couple of pieces of blue tape over the
guide inside the case. Now place the slide
on the guide, with the slide protruding about
3 in. out front; the tape will wedge the slide
in place for marking.
Push in the drawer until the underside of
the drawer front touches the front of the
slide. You want the drawer face centered in
the opening. To center it, add paper shims
between the drawer and cabinet sides. Now
mark the mortise for the slide on the back
of the drawer front. remove the drawer from
the opening, take out the drawer bottom, and
then chisel out the mortise for the slide.

Mark, mortise, and

check the fit. Knife
in the edges of the
mortise for the stub
tenon (right). Remove
the drawer, and chisel
out the mortise for the
slide. When checking
the fit, insert a scrap
piece of the drawer
bottom to ensure align-
ment (far right).

76 FINE WooDWorkING

COPYRIGHT 2007 by The Taunton Press, Inc. Copying and distribution of this article is not permitted.
 ADJUST FOR A
PERFECT RUN

Almost there. With the slide fitted into its mortise in front and Does it work? Push in the drawer and pull it out to test the run.
cut to length, place the drawer back into its opening. Push it all If there’s any binding, adjust the slide to the left or right, depending
the way in and pencil in the outline of the slide on the bottom on where the bind occurs.
(top). Next, remove the drawer and attach the slide to the
bottom using double-sided tape, aligning the slide at the rear
with the layout marks (bottom).

Fine-tune the fit—once the slide fits
snug in the mortise, cut it to length and
screw in the drawer bottom. Place the slide
into its mortise, then put the drawer and
slide over the guide. Push the drawer all
the way in, and then scribe the outline of
the slide at the back of the drawer. Now
remove the drawer, and temporarily at-
tach the slide to the drawer bottom with
double-sided tape, aligning the back of the
slide with the scribe marks. Slide in the
drawer to test the run.
If the drawer binds on one side, shift the
slide at the back of the drawer closer to the
side that is binding. If the drawer binds at
the front, you may need to lengthen the
slide mortise a bit away from the side that
binds, then glue in a shim later to fix it
in place. When the drawer runs smoothly
and the drawer front is parallel to the cabi-
net, screw the slide to the drawer back on
each side of the groove. If the drawer runs
smoothly but the drawer front is a bit out
of alignment with the cabinet, you’ll have
to plane a bit of the drawer front to cor-
rect the reveal. Countersink the screws so
they don’t rub the front rail. Add a bit of
wax, and you’ll have a drawer that will run
smooth and straight for its lifetime. • Screw the slide to the drawer back. Once
the drawer is running straight and smooth,
Mark Edmundson is a furniture maker and permanently attach the slide. Use an offcut
teacher based in Sandpoint, Idaho. from the guide as a clamping caul.

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