Home Improvement Tips: How to Build Cabinet Drawers
Let’s build some drawers for your cabinets. There are several tools you will need to build your cabinet drawers. A decent table saw is a necessity in my opinion. There are ways around using a table saw, but even a decent bench top model table saw will suffice in building drawers. Other than a table saw these other power tools are optional and the operations they perform can be done with hand tools.
A router with a rabbeting bit and a round over bit will come in real handy. You will use the rabbet bit to cut the rabbet joints in the sides of the drawer. Alternately you could use a back saw and chisel to make the rabbet joints. You may even choose to use your table saw with a dado blade or a regular blade and make multiple passes to cut the rabbet joint. I would not suggest that you use a dado blade in a bench top table saw. It takes a lot of power to spin a dado blade which most bench top table saws won’t have. Other than that, a random orbit sander or sanding block with various grits of sandpaper and you are ready to build your drawers.
The first step in building your new cabinet drawers is to select the material you will use. I prefer using cabinet grade Ã?½” plywood for the sides, front and back of the drawer box. For the bottom of the drawer select cabinet grade plywood in Ã?¼” thickness. Plywood is a very stable material that will resist seasonal wood movement, is very strong and is easy to work with. For the drawers decorative front select a hardwood to match your cabinets doors and face frames. Often your doors and frame will be oak, birch or other wood. If you’re not sure what you need, just ask at the lumber yard and they will get you the right stuff.
Measure the opening that your drawer will go into and record the measurements. You will need the width, height, and depth of the opening. Once you have your measurements you will need to do a little math. Don’t worry; the math is easy.
For the overall width of your drawer you will simply need to subtract Ã?½” on each side to allow for a drawer slide. One note here, have your drawer slides before you start building your drawers, it is typical to allow the Ã?½” per side but some slides may be just a bit different.
As far as how deep the drawer is, I like to simply subtract Ã?½” from the height of the opening to determine my drawer’s depth. This will allow the drawer plenty of clearance as it slides in and out of the cabinet.
Now for the length of the drawer, most often I build my drawers to be 20″ long. You may have room in your cabinets for your drawers to be up to 24″ long. I simply choose 20″ most often as this is a nice size for storing most utensils and such items as you will store. Just make sure that you measure the depth of your cabinet so that your drawer won’t stick past the finished face of your cabinets. We have all of our measurements now so it is time to move to the table saw and begin cutting the parts.
Before you begin to cut the individual parts for the drawers it is often handy to cut the plywood down into more manageable sizes. If you purchased a 4′ x 8′ piece of plywood, I suggest cutting it down into a 4′ x 4′ piece. If you have a bench top saw you may want to cut it down to a 2′ x 4′ piece to make it even more manageable. Use a straight edge and a circular saw to cut the plywood down to these smaller pieces.
Take your careful measurements from before and begin by rip cutting your drawers front and side pieces. If you will be making several drawers with the same dimensions, it is easiest to make all the rip cuts first so you do not have to continually adjust the table saw fence. Now that those parts are cut lets rip cut the backs of the drawers. You will subtract 1″ from the height of the other parts to cut the backs. You will see why in a bit why we cut the backs differently.
It is now time to cut the drawer sides to proper length. If you chose to make your drawers 20″ long then cut all the side pieces to 20″. Each drawer will have two sides. Set these pieces aside, you will cut rabbet joints in them later. Lets move on to cutting the fronts and backs to length.
Since you will be cutting rabbet joints in the sides of the drawer to accept the fronts and backs you will need to be just a bit careful here with your math. Whatever width you decided earlier on that your drawers need to be you will need to subtract Ã?½” from that figure. So if your drawers will be 16″ overall you will cut the fronts and backs to 15 Ã?½”.
Now let’s cut the joints you will need to assemble the pieces securely. I like to use rabbet joints because it gives the wood more surface area for glue making a stronger joint than just using a butt joint. If you will be using your table saw with a dado blade to make the joints you need to get the blade now and get it set up. Set the dado blade to make a Ã?½” cut and install in your table saw. Adjust the saw blade to make a cut just slightly under Ã?¼” deep. Clamp an auxiliary wood fence to your table saw fence and slide the fence in just shy of touching the blade. Now hold the drawer slide secure against your miter gauge and cut the rabbet in both ends of the drawer side.
You can make this joint another way on your table saw using your regular table saw blade if you do not have a dado blade. Just set your saw blade to make a cut Ã?¼” deep then set your table saw’s fence Ã?½” away from the left side of the blade if your fence is to the right side of the blade. Now make your cut holding the drawer side firm to the miter gauge, reposition and make multiple cuts until you are at the end of the drawer side. Using a sharp chisel you can clean the rabbet and make the joint flat and smooth. If you have a router use a rabbeting bit of the appropriate size to cut the rabbet joints. Just one more joint to cut and you will be close to assembling your new drawer.
The next joint you will cut is called a groove. The groove you will cut will accept the drawer bottom. You can again use the dado blade to make this joint or a regular table saw blade and make multiple passes. If you use the dado blade you will only have to make one pass. Set the dado blade to make a cut Ã?¼” wide to match the thickness of your Ã?¼” plywood. Set the height of cut in the table saw to Ã?¼”. Now set the table saw fence to 1″ from the right side of the blade. Use push blocks to keep your hands from passing directly over the blade and feed the 2 drawer sides and the drawer front lengthwise over the blade to cut the groove. Continue this with all the sides and fronts; you will not need to cut this groove in the backs of the drawers.
Sand all the surfaces with 120 grit sandpaper until nice and smooth. Sand the edges as well making sure to ease the sharp edges at the top of the drawer with sandpaper.
Now that the joinery and sanding is complete we still need to cut the drawer bottoms. Once again cut the Ã?¼” plywood into more manageable sizes before moving to the table saw. The math for the drawer bottoms is easy as well. For the width of the drawer bottom simply subtract Ã?½” from the overall width of the drawer. For the length of the drawer bottom take the overall length of the drawer and subtract Ã?¼”. With these measurements in hand cut the drawer bottoms on your table saw. Now its time to assemble the drawer pieces into a drawer box. You will need a few bar or pipe clamps, some wood glue and some 4d finish nails or 18 gauge wire brads for your pneumatic finish nailer.
Take your parts to the workbench; you will need a nice flat surface to work from. Get your clamps ready. Apply a bit of glue to the rabbet joints and spread the glue with a small craft paint brush evenly across the surfaces of the joint. Making sure that the groove joints you cut line up, clamp the drawer front into place between the drawer sides. Now insert the drawer bottom into the groove joint making sure it is seated firmly into the joint. You will not need to glue the bottom in. Now spread glue on the other rabbet joints in the same manner as before and clamp the drawer back into place. Be sure you do not over tighten your clamps as this may warp the pieces or knock them out of square. Allow the drawer to sit for at least a half hour before doing anything else with it. Now is a good time to make the decorative fronts for the drawers.
Just a bit more math again and we can get back to the table saw to cut the decorative fronts. Remember way back when we measured the opening for the drawer? You will need those figures again. Generally you will want to cut the decorative front to Ã?½” larger on all four sides than the opening if you will have overlay drawers. Flush drawers will of course be cut just slightly under the measurements of the opening. Most often we will be building overlay drawers so let’s concentrate on that.
The decorative fronts will be cut most often from a hardwood that matches the rest of the cabinets. So let’s assume that you are using oak. Take your oak board and make sure it is Ã?¾” in thickness. If you bought rough lumber the mill or lumber yard you purchased from can plane and surface the boards for you for an additional charge. Get this done at the time you buy the wood if you do not have a planer or see if they have S4S (surfaced 4 sides) lumber available.
Cut the board into manageable sizes by cutting to approximately 1″ longer than will be needed for the finished piece. Now rip cut the decorative front to the proper size determined earlier. Then cross cut to final size on the table saw. Remember do not use the table saw fence when cross cutting solid lumber, it will bind and kick back possibly causing serious injury. Now that we have our decorative fronts cut lets look at some options to dress them up a bit.
I like to use a 3/8″ round over bit in my router to dress up the edges of my drawer fronts. Other options you may like are a concave edge or an ogee edge. Whatever you choose make it match or compliment your cabinet doors. Now it’s just a matter of sanding the surfaces of the decorative fronts. Generally you will start with 80 grit sandpaper and progress to 120-grit until you get the desired finish. Don’t get into the bad habit of rushing the sanding phase; it is one of the most important parts of woodworking that will really show if you do a good job or a bad job.
We can go back to the drawer boxes we assembled earlier and finish up with them. Remove the clamps. As an added measure to keep the boxes together securely I like to drive 18 gauge brads into the ends with my pneumatic finish nailer. You can use small finish nails for this also. You will also need to turn the drawer box upside down and make sure the bottom is still firmly seated in the groove joint. Now nail the bottom of the drawer into the back with 4 or 5 brads or finish nails.
Remove any glue squeeze out with a sharp chisel and touch up all the surfaces with 120-grit sandpaper. To finish the drawer boxes I prefer to use spray polyurethane such as made by Minwax. Spray 4 or 5 thin even coats of clear satin polyurethane on all surfaces of the drawer box allowing the finish to dry completely between coats. You may have to lightly sand between coats with 150-grit sandpaper to achieve a smooth finish.
Back to the decorative fronts you will want to stain them to match the rest of the cabinets. Once the stain has dried, glue and clamp the decorative fronts to the drawer boxes leaving an equal amount of overlap all the way around. When the glue has sufficiently dried remove any squeeze out with a sharp chisel and apply polyurethane finish in the same manner as you did with the drawer boxes.
It is time to install your new drawers in your kitchen cabinets. Install the drawer slides as directed in the instructions that came with your drawer slides. Attach the drawer pull to the front of the drawer and install the drawer. You did it! You have built your own drawers for your kitchen cabinets, congratulations. Now stand back and admire your work. Do you feel that satisfying feeling of a job well done and done by you?
