Replies

1. 
   user-148830 | Apr 27, 2007 05:35pm | #1

   Hi there,
   I try to use a secondary wood that closely matches the shrinkage value of my primary or drawer face wood. Check out the chart in my Router Joinery book or in Bruce Hoadley’s Understanding Wood or look up the USFS shrinkage value charts. All these charts speak to the various shrinkage values for plain sawn or quarter sawn lumber.

   Which leads us to the questions: what is your primary wood? Is it quarter or plain sawn? How wide is the drawer face and where do you live? The last question asked not for reasons of random curiosity but to determine what kind of humidity shifts your drawer wi ll go through seasonally. This will make a difference too in the kind of wood chosen.

   For instance if you use flat sawn hard maple for your slips and your drawer sides and you live back East I suspect that come summer time you’ll have some issues opening your drawer if you haven’t allowed for enough movement in your drawer height. Plus maple likes to move around
   some. You also need to match your drawer side to your front in terms of movement. So I like to use quartersawn drawer sides and faces to minimize these movement issues.

   The maple choice leads to yet another issue. If your drawer support system, your runners, are soft maple or basswood, and your sides are hard maple, and you load your drawer up with ball bearings or hammers or even pencils, you’re going to see some hard wear on your runners. I use a secondary wood that matches throughout the piece. So if I’m using soft maple for the runners, then I’ll use soft maple for the drawer sides and slips. This way I hope to minimize wear on a softer wood.

   With all these issues on the table, the short answer to your question then would be soft maple. That’s my preference although I like sycamore too and sometimes alder. Bass is too soft for my taste. Good luck. Gary

1. 
   wad | Apr 30, 2007 06:17am | #2

   Gary,

   Thank you for the information. The primary wood in my chest is cherry with a T/R of 1.9 and I see from Hoadley's book that red maple has a T/R of 2.0. I hope the two woods are a close enough match as far as movement. By the way I live on the east slope of Colorado and we don't get a lot of moisture change from summer to heating season. I like the idea of using quartersawn soft maple for the drawer sides but I'm not sure I can fine any out here in the back-woods. I would have to mail order to get any quartersawn wood other than oak.

   Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.