Drawers - any advice??

[drumpriest]

I am building a couple of large drawers, these are the first that I've ever made. I'm using 18" slides from rockler, joinery will be reinforced rabbets with blocking under the bottom panel.

Anyone use these slides before? Any advice?? I've already cut the sides and joinery, just have to cut the bottoms and assemble, but now is the time if I need to adjust the width.

thanks all,

http://www.rockler.com/findit.cfm?page=1507

[Tom Hintz]

It looks like these slides use a standard 1/2"-clearance on each side of the drawer so following the instructions and making sure you have that clearance should produce nice operating drawers.
You can run into to problems if the cavity that accepts the drawer or the drawer itself have a taper to them, in or out as that can cause a bind in it's operation.
Measure up the drawers and where they go to be sure you have the 1/2"-per side clearance and all should be fine.

[drumpriest]

Thanks Tom. I tested with a scrap of plywood, and all of my math is correct. Now I just have to get the drawers glued up square, then I think everything will be fine.

thanks again,

[Tom Hintz]

Check the drawers again after assembly. I have made the occasional error in squareness (hard to believe, but true...) and had to sand the drawers square so they would work in the cavity correctly.
I also made a sufficient error once that required shimming the cavity-side drawer guide piece out so the drawer operated smoothly. Let's keep that error to ourselves though....

[drumpriest]

I finished the drawers, havn't mounted them yet though. They are about 18"x35". Braced in the middle and at the front corners. The use reinforced rabbet joinery. The dark bits are black walnut dowels, about an inch in length.



Thanks for the advice.

[JR]

Looks good, Keith. I really like pegging joints like that. It's relatively easy to do, and should reinforce the joint very well. And it looks cool, too.

JR

[drumpriest]

Yeah, I agree. I like the look and the added strength. I've found dowelling to be useful on this project, a first really. I never had a jig, but I've found that they are REALLY easy to make if you have a drill press. I ran these 3 off for this project. The one on the left is what I used to pin the drawers, it's a "one off", meaning that I basically wore it out while pinning the drawers, it'll be discarded after this.



The thing is that I easily made it the perfect setup, then it was trivial to clamp it down and drill away. made it from offcuts from the project.

[charliex]

Nice job Keith. Great work with the fixtures too.

[FRT]

Nice Drawers (can I say that!!!)[:0] Oh well! From experience, don't ask[V], I have found the most difficult part is the mounting of the hardware (setback, level, ect) especialy the half that mounts to the carcass. Spend some time reading and understanding the mounting instructions for your type of hardware and you should be ok. As with anything the more you do the easier it gets. Good Luck!
FRT

[JimD]

It looks like you are in good shape. The only thing I would add is the comment that most drawer slides require 1/2 inch clearance per side +1/32 -0. In other words, it does not hurt to have a little bit too much clearance but too little will result in a binding drawer. It is also relatively easy to insert a piece of cardboard or other thin shim behind the slide to reduce the clearance a little bit but it is much harder to increase the clearance by the same amount. My motto is thus to aim for an extra 1/32 - not on each side but overall. I thus aim for 1 inch + 1/32 total clearance with slides rated for 1/2 inch clearance per side.

Jim