Synopsis: This set of drawers is like a loose pair of jeans: made for comfort and use, not for show. Gary Rogowski explains how to build a set of simple plywood drawers with a tablesaw, a router, and your choice of two basic joints: the rabbet or the tongue and dado. He spline-mitered the carcase, but it could easily be rabbeted and screwed together. He describes in detail how to build it using spline miters and also shows how to do tongue-and-dado joints and rabbet joints. Detailed drawings of both joints show where all the parts come together.

Some drawers are built with great care, hinting at the treasures hiding behind their polished faces. They have the look and feel of a crisply tailored suit. But plywood utility drawers feel more like loosefitting jeans: They’re made for comfort and use, not for show. Utility drawers are the perfect receptacles for those minor tornadoes of odds and ends.

You can build simple plywood drawers with a tablesaw, a router and your choice of two basic joints: the rabbet or the tongue and dado. For ease of construction, build the drawers with -in. plywood (I use 9-ply Baltic birch) or a high-density particleboard. Just make sure your sheet goods are flat and of consistent thickness. Millwork then simply involves cutting the parts to length and width. Use -in. plywood for the drawer bottoms, which also serve as the drawer runners.

Construct the cabinet carcase out of the same -in. plywood used for the drawers. For a clean look, I spline-miter my cabinet sides together, as shown in the drawing at left. I rabbet the rear edges to accept a flush-mounted, -in. plywood back, but you could rabbet the sides together and simply screw on the back. Before glue-up, dado -in.- wide grooves into the cabinet sides for the drawer runners to rest in. Make sure the case goes together square by checking the diagonals across the face and back of the cabinet. Pull the cabinet square by clamping across the longer diagonal. Squaring the cabinet will make fitting the drawers much simpler later on.

Both the rabbet and the tongue and dado are excellent joints for plywood construction because they help line up the drawer parts when gluing. The difference between these joints is partly structural and partly visual. The tongue and dado shows the ply edge on the face of the drawer, whereas the rabbet keeps this edge hidden from sight. But the rabbet needs fasteners such as dowels or nails to resist being pulled apart every time the drawer is yanked open. Because the tongue of the drawer front is secured by the dado of the drawer side, the tongue and dado naturally resists this same movement.

From Fine Woodworking #131

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