Nowadays we take drawers very much
for granted. They appear everywhere
in the house - in the kitchen, the
bedroom, the study and the workshop. They
come in different sizes and designs. Some
have mechanical slides and others run on
wooden supports (called runners). But they
all have one common feature: they are
basically open-topped boxes that can be
accessed separately and conveniently.
Drawers in history
It wasn't always this easy. Until the late
16th century, clothes, bedding and other
important personal items were all stored in
chests and coffers - large boxes with hinged
lids. They kept things clean and tidily out of
the way, but there was one big drawback. If
you wanted something from the bottom of
the chest, you had to take everything else
out fi rst.
Towards the end of the 16th century, this
weakness began to be addressed. It
occurred to furniture designers that if you
stack a set of smaller boxes inside a bigger
box, and make sure that they are accessible
from the front rather than the top, you can
go straight to the items you want without
unpacking everything.
To begin with, chests incorporated just a
single drawer in the base, but by around
1650, drawers had become a common
furniture feature and the chest of drawers,
as we would recognise it today, had arrived.
1: Check the fi t of the drawer front in its recess
2: Use a shooting board to plane the ends square
3: Mark up the depth of the front dovetails
4: Mark the dovetail positions on the sides in pairs
The traditional way
This article concentrates on the
construction of a conventional flush-fi tting
wooden drawer to be used in a small
wardrobe. Next month we'll review some of
the variants in drawer design - cock beads,
drawer slips, overlapping fronts, mechanical
runners and so on.
The drawer we're making here has a
traditional dovetail construction and a solid
timber bottom. The front is oak, to match
the wardrobe it will be part of. The sides
and back are ash - this gives a nice contrast
to the oak and shows off the dovetails. The
bottom is Cedar of Lebanon, which has an
aromatic smell when newly worked. The
handles are hand-turned knobs, made from
American walnut, giving a nice warm
contrast to the oak.
Front first
I always start with the drawer front. Make
sure it's not twisted or bowed, and trim it to
width and height to fi t the drawer opening.
It needs to be a loose fi t to ensure that it
doesn't bind in operation. Aim for 0.5-1mm
clearance at each side. The top-to-bottom
clearance depends on the depth of the
drawer. A shallow drawer can be a tighter fi t
to its opening, because any seasonal
expansion will be small. On a 200mm deep
drawer like this one, I aim for about 1-1.5mm
clearance. You'll need to edge towards the
correct fi t, particularly on width, and to
check the fi t in the cabinet regularly as you
work on it, photo 1.
Equal sides
It's important that the sides are of equal
length and that their ends are square to
their long edges. A shooting board is very
helpful in ensuring square boards,
photo 2.
The back also needs to be squared up. It
should also be the same length as the front,
though some choose to make it a touch
shorter so that there is no risk of the drawer
binding. I usually don't bother with this
refi nement. For reasons described later, I
usually start with the sides a couple of
millimetres wider than the front.
Mark up the tails on the sides fi rst. For
the front dovetails, the depth of the tail
needs to be marked up on the sides and the
ends of the front board. Do this with a
single setting of your marking or cutting
gauge, photo 3. Reset the marking gauge to
the thickness of the back and sides and
mark up the rear faces of these components
and the inside face of the front, to defi ne
the base of the joints. For a good balance,
the dovetail positions can be marked up on
the sides in pairs, photo 4. Mark up the
dovetails from these positions with a sliding
bevel. The tails are cut with a handsaw,
photo 5, and chopped out with a chisel - a
pretty quick job, photo 6.
5: Cut the dovetails on the sides with a handsaw
6: Chop out the waste carefully with a sharp chisel
Tail transfer
The next stage is using the tails to transfer
the dovetail positions to the ends of the
front and back. I use one of the sides to
support the other in this job. Set up the
front vertically in the vice and align its top
edge with the supporting board, photo 7.
Then place the other board on top of the
fi rst one, take care that it is centrally
positioned and mark the joints with a sharp
pencil,
photo 8.
My approach has the sides about 2mm
wider than the front, so there's a 1mm
overlap at each edge. I've found that if you
start with the boards exactly the same width
as the front, any imprecision in marking or
cutting can leave you with the boards
misaligned - an undershoot at either the
top or bottom and an overlap at the other,
which has to be planed off. But you can't
easily fi x the undershoot. So I aim for a
small overlap at both sides, which is then
planed back. Not only does it give a neat
job, but it's easy to ensure that the drawer
sits squarely on its runners. This isn't what
the textbooks say, but I fi nd that it always
works for me.
CRAFTY KNOBS
For this drawer, I wanted plain handturned
knobs, to emphasise its handcrafted
appearance. You could turn
knobs with fl at bottoms, for mounting
with screws, but I like turning a dowel
end. Each handle has an integral 12mm
dowel to slip into a mating hole in the
drawer front.
For a neat fi t, you need to be sure
that the dowel holes are drilled
perpendicular to the face of the drawer
front. This can be diffi cult to achieve
drilling freehand, so I use a simple
guide block drilled on my drill stand to
ensure right angles. If you use a lip and
spur bit, you can be sure you are drilling
in the right place. Position the bit on
the mark before sliding down the guide
block and starting drilling. A piece of
scrap clamped to the back ensures no
tear out where the bit emerges.
Put a smear of glue around the inside
of the hole and press the knob home. I
drive a wedge into a slot cut in the
dowels, to ensure a really tight fi t that
won't work loose over time. Make sure
that the wedge is at right angles to the
grain of the front to avoid the risk of
splitting. When the glue is dry, cut off
the excess dowel with a sharp chisel
and sand it smooth.
Image descriptions from left to right:
Use a guide block to drill squarely
Tap in a wedge to lock the dowel
Trim the dowel and sand it smooth
7: Use one drawer side as a support for marking up
8: Mark the joint positions with a sharp pencil
9: Define the dovetail angles with a handsaw
10: Chop and pare out each of the joints in turn
11: Assemble the drawer box and clamp it securely
Chopping time
After you've squared the dovetail positions
down the rear face of the front, you can
start chopping out the waste. Be careful to
cut on the waste side of the lines and aim
for a bit of trimming to get a tight and neat
final fit. Define the angles with a backsaw,
photo 9, and set to the chopping. This is a
fairly slow job, especially working in a tough
timber like oak. It took me up to 10
minutes for each of the dovetail recesses,
photo 10, so around 80 minutes in all.
You could speed it up by using a router to
remove the bulk of the waste, but it's very
easy to make a costly mistake, especially as
you're cutting freehand. In this case, a bit of
tough handwork was good therapy. Apply
the same process to the dovetails on the
rear panel. As they are through dovetails,
and in an easier timber, this is a much
quicker job to carry out.
12: Plane and sand the drawer sides to a clean finish
13: Fit the drawer, mark the high corner and plane it flush
14: Screw the bottom on through slots to allow movement
Testing the fit
You'll need a bit of fi ne-tuning to get a good
fi t on the joints. Once you're happy, trim
back the sides and back to the correct
width, making sure that you are maintaining
a right angle between the bottom edges of
the side and the front of the drawer. When
you're happy with that, rout the grooves for
the bottom, taking care that you've got the
right position relative to the rear lower half
dovetails - see the Drawer details panel on
the previous page again.
A drawer is born
You can then glue up and clamp the drawer,
photo 11. Make sure that the diagonals are
equal as a check that you're gluing it up
squarely. When the glue is dry you'll need to
plane and sand the sides to a
clean finish,
photo 12.
With the drawer assembled,
check the fit in its opening. If
all has gone well it should fit
first time, but don't be
surprised of there is a bit of
trimming needed to get an
easy sliding fit.
For example, the opening
might be slightly narrower at
the back than at the front.
Once it's sliding nicely, push
it fully home and check that
the front is flush with the face
of the drawer opening. In my
case, it stood a bit proud at
the bottom left corner.
If this happens, mark the
corner with a pencil where it
stands proud, photo 13.
Remove the drawer and plane
back the drawer front to your
pencil lines. If you've taken
care that the front panel was
flat, any adjustments you need
to make will be only minor, as
it was in my case.
DRAWER DETAILS
The joints at the front of this drawer are
straightforward half-blind dovetails, so
that the drawer front appears unbroken
when closed. At the back you can use
through dovetails, which are much
easier to cut.
However, the layout at the back needs
a bit of thought, because it's central to
the structure of the drawer. The base
fi ts into grooves cut in the inside faces
of the sides and the front. The dovetail
design needs to accommodate this. The
diagram (left) shows the side and rear
aspects of the back dovetail joints. The
bottom rear joint is a half dovetail,
sitting immediately above the groove for
the drawer bottom. The back of the
drawer is not as deep as the sides, and
butts against the upper surface of the
drawer bottom.
If you plan this carefully, you can rout
the grooves in the sides and front
straight through, without stopping. This
makes the job very easy and neat. The
pictures show the groove geometry I
used for this drawer and demonstrate
the construction principles. The grooves
in the side run through the bottom front
dovetails and are hidden in the
assembled drawer. On the drawer front,
the matching groove runs into the
dovetail cavity, also hidden. At the back
of the sides, the groove lies directly
below the bottom half dovetail.
Image descriptions from left to right:
The groove at the front of the drawer side
The groove at the rear of the drawer side
The groove in the drawer front
Back to front
Finally, slip the back panel in. In a
traditional drawer, the grain in the bottom
runs from side to side, so any seasonal
movement will be experienced in the backto-
front direction. If the grain ran back to
front, seasonal contraction and expansion
could either pull the bottom out of the
groove, or put pressure on the sides so that
the drawer locked tight in its opening.
The drawer bottom needs to be screwed
in position to the underside of the back
panel through slots, photo 14, to allow for
this potential movement. Take care that the
back is square and that it fi ts easily into the
groove. If it doesn't, you'll run the risk of
forcing the drawer out of square and
jamming in the opening. If there's any
tightness in the drawer at this stage, take
out the bottom and do a little fi ne tuning.
That's it, ready for fi nishing and
polishing. There's a lot of work in making a
drawer. It needs careful measurement and
planning, and a lot of handwork. But if you
do it well, you know it's going to last for
years, and your hand-cut dovetails will be
proudly on show every time it's opened.
Brenda Clough
