Making drawers - Baltic Birch Ply or Solid Wood

[Richard A. Rivera, M.D.]

I am in the process of making a chest of drawers for the daughter. I was going to make the drawers using a lock miter router bit on my router table. There will be three sets of three different depths of drawers, 24 X18 and then 8in.,12in., and 16 in deep (nine total).

I have the Incra system on me router table and have made several dove tail boxes...but none these large. My frist thought was to use sold stock of beech or ash, but now the Baltic Birch Ply has come up.

Question...Has anyone routed 1/2in Baltic Birch Ply...especially with a lock miter bit? The ply would save me time rather than resawing--gluing up panels--thickness planing--final cut to size--and build the drawers....now this is my only daughter...so it will be a labor of love....but time is time..

The case work will be of ash and stained very dark cocoa...Her choice, not mine...

Help...Richard

[Mark Carlson]

Richard,

I spent the last couple of weekends building shop cabinets with 1/2 baltic plywood drawers. On the first cabinet I dovetailed the drawers on an akeda jig. I got a lot of tearout but figured out how to get good results using backing boards. The 2nd cabinet I used a locked rabbit joint on the table saw with a dado stack. With this I needed to use 3/4in fronts and 1/2in sides. This was much easier to do and I got good results.

If I was creating a chest of drawers I would use a hardwood like popular or maple for the drawers and would probably dovetail. Another option is to use a sliding dovetail for the fronts and a dado for the back. Lonnie Bird showed this technique in Fine Woodworking magazine.

~mark

[Doug Shepard]

That lock miter bit can be a real challenge on BB ply. I did a couple drawer that way about 7-8 years ago and they came out well but not without a lot of trial and error. Cut the ply at an angle on the TS as close as you can to the router bit profile. The less material the bit has to remove, the better. Getting the bit height set just right was also an exercise in frustration. I'm sure somebody that uses one a lot has an idiot proof method for that, but this idiot never saw it prior to my project.
I'm in the planning stages of some shop cabinets with drawers from BB ply. I haven't decided whether I'm going to use BB for the fronts or real wood but I'm planning on just using dados at the back and sliding DTs at the front. I've got some 20+ year old cabinets made by a local cabinet shop that used BB ply and sliding DTs for the front and they've held up extremely well. Figured I'd go with the same method.

[David Giles]

In our area, baltic birch is about the same price per SF as hardwood. BB looks easier to use at first. Cut to width, cut to length, rout, assemble and it's done. Then my problems begin. If the sides are even a little off, too bad. Hardwood could be planed to fit, but not ply. Finishing takes so much more time to achieve comparable results. At least 3-5 shellac coats with multiple sandings to get a smooth surface. And the box still has ply edges and maybe some voids.

I have decided to spend the extra time up front gluing up the hardwood. Fitting and finishing are much easier. Wipeon one coat of shellac and one coat of wax. Same price, same time, better result.

I feel the same way about Incra dovetails. It seems like such pain to set everything up and make one cut at a time. But the dovetails bang together at glueup with just a minor adjustment to ensure square and no clamps required. More time making the DT, less time in glueup.

[Ed Peters]

for drawer boxes. The uniformity of the plys is really a striking feature under several coats of lacquer. My preferred joint is the drawer lock joint (don't confuse this with the miter lock joint which can scramble your brain). I still get many requests for dovetailed corners but I do enough of the lock joints that the tool stays mounted in it's own router. I must say that I did not find the setup to be all that taxing. Pretty straight forward actually. Start to finish, you should be able to dial in the height setting in about 20 minutes or less.

Ed

[Jim Becker]

My first choice for drawer stock is solid wood with plywood bottoms. When I make my own, I use yellow poplar. When I source the drawers (knock down, but ready to glue) they are soft maple. I have used BB plywood for drawers for in the shop, but don't prefer the look in cabinetry and definitely not in furniture. Personal preference.

[Chris Padilla]

I'll joint Doug's "Idiot Club for Lock Miter Bit" as being painful to setup. I've read and tried just about every method I could find on the WWW but I just have difficulty with this bit.

On plywood, when routing in the upright position, you might get terrible tear-out on the plies of the plywood. I never tried BB but it might be better. I also never tried removing superfluous material via the TS but I imagine that might help.

The size of your drawers leads me to think you might want the stability of BB for the boxes.

[fRED mCnEILL]

I a bedroom wall unit I made drawers out of Baltic birch and did box joints. They turned out well and look good.

I n out kitchen cabinets(birch) I used solid wood for the drawers- some apple wood and some were cherry. The drawers are stunning especially with undermount slides so you can see the whole drawer. The cabinets look good but in my mind the drawers look better. The joints are dovetail.

Fred Mc.

[Robert Meyer]

I have used 1/2" bb plywood with a lock miter bit (Amana) and had problems until I increased the height of my router fence considerably. I can see you would encounter difficulty with a poplar or ash glue-up with your great side depths - unless you have a really big planer or thickness sander. How will you ever find anything in such deep drawers? Which ever you use you might want to add some contrasting Miller hardwood mini-pegs to the side to front joint. They add a little more beauty to the drawers.

[Jim Andrew]

I prefer solid wood for drawer sides. In school we used aromatic cedar as it protects your clothes from bugs, but now I think that oak makes a very good drawer side. I groove the sides and front, then rip the back down and let the bottom cover the back and staple it to the back. That way your bottom is only fastened at the back and floats in the front and sides.

[glenn bradley]

Like Robert I made a couple high fence boards for my router fence before trying this. Controlling the vertical panel is probably the biggest challenge but not too tough with a tall fence and proper (stacked) feather boards.

One tip I can share is to make your sides oversized. I generally cut the profile on large pieces and then rip the drawer sides to height out of them. Another trick if you have trouble is the same trick I use for most plywood cuts; scribe the line with a razor knife first.

Sorry for the bad pic but I'm on my way out the door . . .

[Rick Fisher]

There are different grades and mfg's of Baltic Birch. If your buying it from a Borg, dont expect it to be the "better" stuff.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

For asthetic reasons, I'd avoid ply of any type on drawers. They just look a little cheap, unless a really good edgeband job was done. For practical reasons, I hate applying edgebanding, so I usually go with solid. Now, to break my own rule, those are some deep drawers, and ply is tempting for the ease of use. I'd dovetail rather than the lock if you do go with the ply. Not much help, sorry...

[Mark A Johnson]

Hard Maple sides w/ ply bottoms. Maple is very stable and good for runners as well.

[John Stevens]

Question...Has anyone routed 1/2in Baltic Birch Ply...especially with a lock miter bit? The ply would save me time rather than resawing--gluing up panels--thickness planing--final cut to size--and build the drawers....now this is my only daughter...so it will be a labor of love....but time is time..


Hello, Dr. Rivera. I've only made a single drawer from solid wood, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment. Nevertheless, I have an opinion about everything...:rolleyes:

In terms of aesthetics, hard wood has ply beat, no question about it. So if you think your daughter is going to spend a lot of time with the drawers open, looking closely at the wood and viewing the choice of wood as a measure of your love for her, then you may want to seriously consider using hard wood. Otherwise, ply is the clear winner here.

In terms of how the drawer works and how it will last over time, I'll bet on ply every time. First, it doesn't expand and shrink like solid wood, so it's easy to cut it to the proper dimension so it opens and closes without difficulty in summer or winter. Not only does this make the drawer easier to use, it also takes stress off it.

Second, an edge-to-edge glue joint in ply is incredibly strong. Don't take my word for it: make a small, four-sided box with edges beveled at 45 degrees, no top no bottom. Glue it together by laying the pieces in a line, taping the edges together and then folding to make a box--no clamps. Let cure 24 hours. Now try to break the box. Wow! See, you don't even need a lock miter joint to get a joint that's more than strong enough.

But you can do even better in terms of saving labor.

If you go with ply, you're going to have to do two other things: (1) put a false front on the drawer; and (2) use ball-bearing drawer glides (under-mount, of course). These two construction techniques allow you to use simple butt joints fastened with biscuits that run perpendicular to the direction the drawer travels. I've used these for drawers for DVD and paper file storage, and they're more than strong enough. They also allow you to run a groove from end to end across the bottoms of all the pieces to accept the drawer bottom, without worrying about how it will look, because the only exposed edge will be at the back.

And finishing? Before assembly, sand with 150 grit. Yes, start at 150 and end at 150. One round, that's it. After you glue the drawers together, use a pad to apply one coat of 2lb cut shellac. After the shellac dries, brush the drawer lightly with 320 grit paper. You're done with the finishing. Now mount the drawers on the slides, and that's it.

Regards,

John

[Matt Meiser]

For me, the decision comes down to what the piece is. For cabinetry I've been using baltic birch with pocket screw joinery. Same for the entertainment center I'm building right now because I expect electronics changes will make it obsolete long before it becomes a family heirloom--like the entertainment center I built 6-7 years ago. Any piece of furniture I expect to outlive me gets poplar with dovetails or recently I tried some Domino drawers and like the results there even though its a little non-traditional.

[Richard A. Rivera, M.D.]

Thanks for all the advice...I knew I would get some response.

When this beast gets finished (she is waiting on her Tax refund to buy the materials) I will post some photos, maybe even work in progress..

Thanks again, and every one wear a dust mask...Dr. R...

[Joe Chritz]

I have a bunch of shop cabinets from BB with a lock miter and a lot of kitchen drawers in the last few years with 1/2 BB and half blind dovetails. The top is rounded over with a round over bit and a trim router.

It looks decent but not what I would consider heirloom furniture.

It really doesn't save money since I get poplar for about the same cost as BB but it does save a lot of time, especially with deeper drawers since there is no prep work.

I would likely use a lot more BB for drawers if it was available in 5/8" locally.

Joe