Can anyone offer me advice on a better joint for a drawer front?
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I am designing a chest of drawers that features some very nice curly walnut veneer on the drawer fronts. The edges of the veneer are protected by walnut cockbeading glued to the edges and ends of the drawer front and mitered at each of the four corners of the drawer front. The cockbead will be thin (3/16”) so as to not distract from the curly walnut pattern. In order to protect the miters from coming apart from seasonal humidity fluctuations, the drawer fronts will be Baltic birch plywood ½” thick, backed with a complementary veneer. For consistent dimensional stability, the rest of the drawer is also Baltic birch plywood. Another design feature is ball-bearing slides, so the drawer sides are set inside the drawer front ends by ½”.
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The attached diagram may help to explain. It is a cross-section of the front right drawer joint as viewed from above. The cockbead is the right hand brown rectangle. The veneer is the bottom orange rectangle. The drawer front is the amber rectangle. The drawer side is the red rectangle. The ball-bearing drawer slide is the gray rectangle.
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Here are the various joint options and a brief description:
- A simple dado joint (shown). Since the joint is small (1/4” deep by ½” wide) and partly end-grain, I am concerned that it will be weak to resisting the jerking movement of opening a drawer that is jammed-full beyond its top.
- Reinforce the above joint with Miller dowels set into the drawer sides through the front. I have used this joint on two previous chests of drawers and covered the dowel head with a veneer panel set into a frame glued to the drawer front. But if the thin cockbead (3/16”) is grooved to hold the panel, its front edge will be weak.
- Same as #2 but glue the veneer panel to the drawer front, rather than set into the cockbead frame. If glued after the panel has finish on it, will it stick? If glued before the panel has finish on it, will I have used the best-figured parts of the veneer? The grain, curly “flame,” and chatoyance often look different after the finish is applied.
- Discard the ball-bearing slides, let the drawer sides be the slides, and dovetail the sides into the front. This is the classical method. My experience with 150 year-old antiques is that wood-on-wood slides wear out and are often not repaired. So I would like to keep the ball-bearing slides.
- Use ball-bearing slides that mount under the drawer. These usually require a support strip across the case. The strip will break up the curly walnut pattern.
- Pin the joint with a thin dowel from the drawer end, parallel to the drawer front, and through the drawer side. This is a variation on the pinned mortise-and-tenon joint. Would the 1/8” of stock at the end of the drawer side and at the back of the drawer front be strong enough?
- Instead of a dado with straight and parallel sides, make the joint a sliding dovetail, with a slight angle on the side mating with a reverse angle for the groove in the drawer front. Sometimes this joint is made even stronger by a taper from top-to-bottom of the drawer front and side, sort of like a tapered plug in a tapered hole. This will be strong and invisible. Is there an easier way?
- Keep it simple #1. Glue blocks to the inside corners. The joint will be face grain to face grain and quite strong. But it will be ugly.
- Keep it simple #2. Make the drawer box out of plywood and any convenient joint. Put the fancy woods on a false front and glue it to the drawer box front. But the extra thickness of the drawer front will be ugly.
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I would greatly appreciate any advice you may have.
Replies
Reconsider option 4. Yes, wooden drawer sides may need to be repaired in time, but so will metal drawer slides. But the metal slides brings the whole affair down to the level of kitchen cabinets. Functional true, but hardly furniture, in my opinion. Even the commercial market reflects this esthetic choice. How are drawers made on the high price lines such as Thos. Moser, Stickley, Baker, etc.? Perhaps some wooden center guides, but never metal drawer slides.
Dovetails have passed the test of time as the drawer joints with the greatest longevity by far. Everything else is just "good enough", in my opinion.
Drawers, even made of solid wood, are relatively stable dimensionally since they are framed on all four sides with the long grain of the boards which changes insignificantly over the seasons. You can even glue in plywood drawer bottoms and make the drawers bullet proof. The only seasonal wood movement occurs with the smallest dimension--the height.
Only on the very deepest drawers will cockbeading be at much risk of having miters open significantly even crossgrain on the solid wood. By the way, 3/16" is a relatively thick cockbead I would think.
Glue a strip of maple on the bottom edge of your drawer side, make the corresponding slide part in the case from maple, sand both very smooth or just wiped them both with a good sharp hand plane. Once waxed this slide will probably out last you and whoever has the piece after you.
Ron
Think dovetails. But not through- or half-blind.
Whenever you have a drawer front that overhangs the sides by 1/2 in. or more, it's a great opportunity to use sliding dovetails. There's no problem using them in a quality hardwood plywood. You can choose to make the dovetails go all the way through the front, or stop them before they reach the top surface of the front. It's a simple set of router-table setups, using the same dovetail bit to plow the socket in the front that you use to cut the tail in the side. Pre-cutting a groove in the front on the tablesaw is a good idea to limit cutting stresses to the dovetail bit.
One bit of advice: Unless your drawer is jewelry-box size (think: really small), I would use thicker ply than 1/2 inch for the front, while keeping the 1/2-in. ply for the sides. Or use a thick (1/8 in. or so) veneer on both sides so your front ends up at around 3/4 in. thick. This way, your tails can go about 1/2 in. deep into your front for strength. Plus, the proportion of a thicker front to thinner sides is more pleasing to the eye when you pull out the drawer.
—Andy Rae
Just a thought. Instead of mitering full depth of cockbead (if that is what you intended) why not mitre just the front that protudes and otherwise overlap top and bottom strips over side beads? Less likely to open to reveal a gap and easier to cut and fit!
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