Master Bathroom Cabinets – Building Drawers
I planed a bunch of maple to 5/8″ thick my drawer thickness. I went with 5/8″ instead of 3/4″, since my top drawers should appear more “dainty” as they are small. I should have done 3/4″ for my larger bottom drawers, but it is too late for that decision.
I used my Leigh dovetail jig to cut the dovetails:
Since these drawers are small, I used 1/4″ maple ply (with a MDF core) for the bottom. My larger drawers will have 1/2″ ply bottoms.
The larger drawers I had to biscuit joint smaller pieces of wood together to get 9″ sides (they are tall!). I should have jointed them together before planing them; then I could have planed them together. Or maybe doing it this way was good and allowed me to work around tearout. I’m not sure what the best approach is. This worked pretty well…but I had to use a lot of clamps to get them aligned really well:
The drawer dovetails weren’t as tight on these…I must have messed up the jig a bit, or not done enough practice cuts on it. They did turn out pretty well, and I can clean them up.
I now have to get more maple for two more large drawers, and then I’ll be done building them all.
