How to Make Dovetail Drawers – DIY Kitchen Cabinets Ep 8
I’ve been pretty busy lately, but I am still working on my kitchen cabinets whenever I have time. I just finished the stage of making the drawers. My island only needs two drawers, so it was pretty quick.
If you want to learn how to make dovetail drawers, then check out the video! I use the Leigh D4R jig. My jig is pretty old, but it still works well and I don’t see any reason to get anything else. Hand cutting dovetails would take way too long for this type of project, and wouldn’t be worth the effort.
I use Blum tandem drawer runners. They are completely hidden under the bottom of the drawer, extend to the full length to get stuff hidden in the back, and have an awesome soft close feature. It is sometimes tricky to design drawers for these runners; if you have questions on it, let me know, and maybe I’ll make a video showing how to design them. For now, just look at my plans to see what I did for my kitchen.
The drawers are made with 5/8″ solid maple. The Blum hardware can also support 3/4″ drawers, and I did my upstairs built-ins with this size. I feel like 3/4″ is too thick; they look too beefy, and the added strength isn’t at all necessary. 5/8″ also gives you 1/4″ more space on the interior width of the drawers, which is nice to have. I also feel like they look better with this size. The drawer bottoms are 1/2″ maple plywood. I glue the bottoms into place. A lot of people seem to frown upon gluing drawer bottoms; this is definitely a no-no if you are using solid wood, but plywood is dimensionally stable and will never expand.
Watch the previous episode where I made the inset doors and drawer faces: Making Inset Cabinet Doors and Drawer Fronts.
Watch the complete playlist: DIY Kitchen Cabinet Playlist.
Download the SketchUp file for my kitchen here: Kitchen SketchUp File Download.
Check out all my Kitchen Remodel posts: All Kitchen Remodel Posts.
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