Building Dovetail Drawers

In this article we take you step by step through the process of building dovetail drawers.

Building dovetail drawers.

With one table saw setup and a dado stack you can build drawers all day long. Through dovetail joints are as beautiful as they are strong and work great for all kinds of casework including drawers. If you were making an overlay drawer the front would need to be rabbeted for the necessary offset and the fence reset to run the drawer fronts. The base on this drawer is 1 4 sheet material.

After marking the tails on the drawer sides scribe the dovetail baseline onto the ends of the drawer front about 1 4 from the face. How to build dovetail drawers with a floating base. For years i thought the joints were for only the best woodworkers and would be difficult if not impossible to master. Best of all this technique allows you to cut all parts of the joint with just a dado blade and a single setup on the tablesaw.

A well built dovetail drawer is not only incredibly strong and long lasting but is aesthetically beautiful. Use a miter gauge to guide the cut. Building dovetail drawers is one of my favorite things to do in the shop. In wood magazine torture tests this drawer joint proved stronger than even dovetails.

That way when the. The sides and the front will have a 1 4 groove cut near the bottom inside edge of each piece. Grabbed my ever present camera and took some shots. Use plywood ideally i m using 1 4 mdf i had laying around.

Learn all about mdf here. Once you understand. This drawer method is so simple it should be illegal. This amount makes for a good appearance and a strong joint.

Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. Stopped by a fiends shop to see what was going on. While they do take some planning and careful setup they are achievable for the average home woodworker.