Plywood Drawer Boxes

Many woodworkers are uncomfortable making drawers. They’ll tackle just about anything else, but they shy away when it comes to making drawers or anything that requires drawers. Perhaps that’s due to the sheer monotony of making a bunch of boxes that are all the same, or it might be because they’re unsure they can make a drawer that will fit and look nice.

But making drawers doesn’t have to be complicated. They can be pretty easy to make, especially if you start with a drawer box kit. As for them being dull, kits can help out there, too.

One thing that people regularly make mistakes about drawers is not separating the drawer box and the drawer front in their minds. While there are exceptions, especially with small drawers, such as those in jewelry boxes and roll-top desks, the drawer front is not always part of the box. In the case of drawers that fit flush with the face of the cabinet, the drawer front will be part of the box. However, in the case of cabinetry and some pieces of furniture, where the drawer front overlaps the drawer frame, the drawer front is usually attached to the front of the box, making it easier to build.

For those cases, you can buy pre-made drawer fronts from companies that manufacture replacement cabinet doors. This allows you to keep consistency in your set should you be buying cabinet doors for a remodeling project or to make your cabinets.

Ready-made Drawer Box Kits

Buying a kit is the most straightforward way of making a drawer box. Kits come in various sizes and are available with the front included or without the front. Those without the front are less than $20 each, while the ones that contain the front vary considerably, depending on the style of the front and the material used.

A basic drawer box kit, without the front, consists of the four sides and the bottom. In most cases, the bottom is inset into the sides, in a track, much like the drawers with IKEA furniture and other assemble-it-yourself brands. Cheaper ones only have a 1/8” thick masonite bottom, so you want to check out what materials are used. That thin bottom won’t support a lot of weight.

On the good side, some better drawer box kits have dovetailed corners, making them as good as anything you could do yourself. I’m not good at dovetails, so I’d have to say those are better than anything I can do. With a ½” thick plywood bottom, they’re strong enough for anything I need.

Another option is to buy just the individual pieces to make the drawer any size you want. While not as common as the complete kits, some companies offer individual pieces, so this is still an option if you need an odd-size drawer.

Making a Simple Drawer Box

You don’t have to get fancy to make a simple drawer box. The whole thing can be made from ½” plywood without any unique cuts. To make a good drawer, I’d recommend using a quality hardwood plywood, like applewood or birch; but you don’t even need to have AB grade, a BC grade will do.

The drawer box consists of five pieces: the four sides and the bottom. For the most unadorned drawer box, the bottom doesn’t have to be inset into a track. It can be attached directly to the sides. Doing this also allows you to make the most profound drawer possible.

To start, you’ll need to figure out how big your drawer will be. If we’re talking cabinets, drawers in kitchen cabinets are usually 22” deep, and bathroom vanity drawers are generally 20” deep. Both of these dimensions leave some unused space in the back of the cabinet, but they must match up with drawer slides.

The width and height of your drawer will be determined by the opening you have available. Metal drawer slides are typically ½” thick, so you’ll need to make the drawer one inch narrower than the opening. Height isn’t quite as picky. Anything less than the opening will do, but it’s common to make the drawer box about an inch less than the opening. So, if you have an 18” W x 6” H opening, your drawer box will probably need to be 17” wide and 5” tall.

While the entire box can be made the same height, it’s common to make the sides of the drawer box shorter than the front and back. The main reason is that you don’t have to worry about aligning the corners precisely. The sides of the drawer box typically overlap the front and back so that when the drawer front is installed, no end grain is exposed.

Next, you’ll need to calculate the size of the drawer’s bottom. If you’re making the drawer out of ½” plywood, it would seem that you should be able to make the drawer bottom one inch shorter and one inch narrower than your overall drawer size. Unfortunately, that’s not going to work. The 1/2” plywood thickness is a nominal thickness; the actual thickness of a sanded sheet of ½” plywood is 15/32”, so you need to measure precisely how thick it is and calculate the size of the bottom based upon your measurements.

To assemble the drawer box, start with the bottom, attaching the front of the box to it with wood glue and finishing nails. If you have an air nailer, so much the better, as it makes it extremely easy to attach the pieces without any risk of them slipping while you are nailing them. After the front, attach the sides, then finally the back, nailing each piece to its neighbors and the bottom as you go. Allow the glue to dry before working further with the drawer box.

Stepping it Up a Bit

If you want to make your drawer box a little stronger and more secure, that’s quickly done by inserting the drawer bottom into a groove cut into the sides of the box. You’ll need a dado blade for your table saw to do this.

The slot is usually cut ¼” to ½” above the bottom of the drawer. This allows material from the sides, below the drawer bottom, to add strength to the drawer and make it possible to put more weight into it. However, you will lose that same amount of space in the overall height of the drawer’s storage space, which is not a problem in most cases.

You’ll also need to increase the overall size of the drawer bottom a bit so there is enough material to go into the grooves on the sides. Typically, these grooves are cut ¼” deep, so you’ll want to make your drawer bottom 3/8” to 7/16” broader and longer. The small amount of difference leaves room for expansion.

Putting Drawer Fronts On

Installing the drawer front to the drawer box is extremely easy. The drawer is set on the bench, with a spacer underneath it. This can vary, depending on the dimensions of your drawer box and the drawer front, but 1/2” is typical. That allows the drawer face to overhang the bottom of the drawer opening, hiding it.

You don’t want to glue the drawer front to the drawer box. Instead, attach it with nails or screws. If you are installing a drawer pull, the screws for the pull can also act to help hold the drawer front in place. By avoiding using glue when installing the drawer front, you save yourself from problems if you decide to replace the drawer front someday.

What About Improved Corners?

Finer quality furniture doesn’t just use squared corners, as we talked about making above. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I wouldn’t expect to see a piece of furniture where the drawers are made like that, lasting 100 years or more. For that, you’ll need some better corners.

Dovetail Joints

In olden times, drawer boxes were all assembled using dovetail joints, even simple furniture. While dovetail joints are challenging to make by hand, they become easier with practice.

The significant advantage of dovetail joints is that they interlock, so they can’t be pulled apart. While taking a dry dovetail apart is possible, it’s tough once glued. The glue holds the wood together and the wood of the separate parts, pulling against the wood in adjacent parts. This makes for a considerably stronger joint.

There are two keys to making good hand-cut dovetail joints: having a dovetail marking gauge to lay out the dovetail and cutting accurately. This gives us trouble, as we are not accustomed to cutting things with hand saws but rather with power saws.

A more straightforward way of making dovetail joints is to use a dovetail jig and a router. The router would have to have a dovetail routing bit installed. The router bit uses a bearing, which rides on the jig, controlling the positioning of the bit and preventing damage to the jig. It is essential that the correct size bearing is used to provide the proper spacing for that jig.

Dovetail jigs vary considerably from company to company, but they provide the necessary pattern for laying out a consistent dovetail joint. These differ somewhat from the dovetails you would cut with a saw and chisel, as they are intended to be cut with a router bit. Even so, once assembled, you really can’t tell the difference.

It is possible to make a homemade dovetail jig. But unless you are an excellent woodworker, I wouldn’t recommend it. The key here is accuracy, both in the layout and the cutting. Any errors in the jig would show up in every drawer you tried to make.

Finger-joints

As time went on, furniture factories needed something more straightforward to use for assembling furniture than dovetail joints. This was still before the time of dovetail jigs and the router. Cutting dovetails required skilled craftsmen to make. Finger joints could be accomplished by less skilled craftsmen, saving time and lowering labor costs.

The finger joint or box joint is a modification of the dovetail, in which all the cuts are made perpendicular to the end of the board. Since the cuts aren’t angled, like those of a dovetail, they are easier to cut by hand. They’re also easier to cut with a table saw.

Using a dado blade, the easiest way to cut finger joints is on a tablesaw. Basic finger joints have all the fingers the same size, on both pieces to be joined. To stagger them, they are cut from one end on one board and reversed on the other.

To maintain the spacing, some sort of jig is useful, specifically, a replacement for the miter gauge that will index the board the proper distance to equal the size of the data being cut. With the board mounted vertically to the jig, cuts can be made, and the board can be indexed to the next position and ready for the next cut.

While basic finger joints are consistent in size, they don’t have to be. The simple design of the finger joint and the ease of cutting them allows for an infinite variety of spacing. One side could have wide fingers and narrow slots to match up with narrow fingers and wide slots on the connecting board. This flexibility of design can make the finished project more attractive.

Assembly

The assembly of drawer boxes with either dovetail joints or finger joints is essentially the same as that of a simple drawer box. The one difference you’ll find is that applying the glue to the joints takes longer. You’ll also need some hammer or mallet to drive the pieces tightly together when joining them, as the little bit of space that the glue takes up will make it difficult just to push them together.