Building Dovetail Drawers

Grabbed my ever present camera and took some shots.

Building dovetail drawers.

Building dovetail drawers is one of my favorite things to do in the shop. The base on this drawer is 1 4 sheet material. How to build dovetail drawers with a floating base. Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz.

Once you understand. Use a miter gauge to guide the cut. In wood magazine torture tests this drawer joint proved stronger than even dovetails. One way to identify a woodworker s skill level is to check and see how well they build the dovetail drawers in their projects.

The sides and the front will have a 1 4 groove cut near the bottom inside edge of each piece. On the interior surface of the drawer front scribe a line about 1 32 less than the thickness of the drawer side. Use plywood ideally i m using 1 4 mdf i had laying around. In this video wood magazine s bob.

With one table saw setup and a dado stack you can build drawers all day long. This amount makes for a good appearance and a strong joint. For years i thought the joints were for only the best woodworkers and would be difficult if not impossible to master. Learn all about mdf here.

Through dovetail joints are as beautiful as they are strong and work great for all kinds of casework including drawers. This drawer method is so simple it should be illegal. That way when the. If you were making an overlay drawer the front would need to be rabbeted for the necessary offset and the fence reset to run the drawer fronts.

Best of all this technique allows you to cut all parts of the joint with just a dado blade and a single setup on the tablesaw. A well built dovetail drawer is not only incredibly strong and long lasting but is aesthetically beautiful. After marking the tails on the drawer sides scribe the dovetail baseline onto the ends of the drawer front about 1 4 from the face.