Preferences / recommendations for drawer lumber

[travis howe]

Starting the wrapup the face frames for the wife's desk. I hadn't yet mastered the pc dovetail jig yet before I put it down but I think I'm pretty close.

What do you all generally use for the lumber type for the box? The face frames and drawer fronts will be red oak / natural.

Cheers!

Travis

[David DeCristoforo]

I like to use plain hard maple for drawers.

[frank shic]

i like unfinished pine because of the scent althogh the knots are a pain sometimes.

[guy knight]

maple makes nice drawers i use allot of popular it is cheap the project i am just now finishing i used sycamore got it for a good price and love the figure in it

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Pine, poplar, one of the maples, oak, aromatic cedar, basically whatever is around, and looks ok.

[Brian Peters]

1/2" soft/hard maple

[Vincent Nocito]

I like to use 1/2" ash with flat sawn oak faces. I can find wide ash boards for not too much $$ at a local boutique sawmill. It avoids having to egde join pieces.

[Mike Wilkins]

If I am using anything other than solid wood, 1/2" Birch plywood from the big box stores is my go-to material of choice. Stable, holds screws well for mounting drawer hardware, looks good and takes a fine finish. New Yankee Norm recommends prefinished plywood, but this material is difficult to find in places other than major metro cities.

[David Keller NC]

Travis - Depends on what the drawer runners are to be made of. If it's metal drawer slides, it doesn't matter what wood you use for the drawer sides. If you're making wooden drawer runners, then you've a decision to make as to how the piece will be repaired years from now. If the runners are easily removable (i.e., screwed to the sides of the case with slotted screw holes), then I would choose a fairly soft wood for the runners and a fairly hard wood for the drawer sides. An example would be poplar for the runners and plain soft maple for the sides (there's very little difference, by the way, between hard and soft maple, except that hard maple's a lot more expensive in certain areas of the country).

If the runners are to have tenons glued to the front drawer divider and floating at the back, then they may be difficult to replace, in which case I'd use a hard wood for this and a (fairly) soft wood for the drawer sides. A future repairer will be able to rabbet the bottom of the drawer side when it wears to the point where they don't close smoothly, and insert another piece of wood. Bob Flexner described this repair method in a previous issue of Pop Woodworking (I think).

[Clifford Mescher]

For the last 15 years or so, I have been making my drawers from poplar. Fairly stable and inexpensive. Clifford.

[travis howe]

Awesome, thanks all! I'm leaning to poplar as this is my first set so I don't want to spend too much on my waisted test pieces... Of course I can always get the dovetails right w/ one and then switch to another.

There is actually a mill near where I work that does beatle kill pine (blue pine) that I might look into for this. As, this is going to be under the desktop with inlayed turquoise so it might look nice this way.

[Jim Becker]

I use yellow poplar most of the time for drawer boxes I build, especially since I get it off our property, but also like the soft maple drawer boxes I buy when the job is large enough to justify buying the components for time savings. But any hardwood is appropriate...I'd cheerfully use ash or even cherry if it was appropriate for the piece.

What I don't like is plywood for drawer boxes and only use it for shop storage.

[Todd Bin]

How about Aspen, very light color, nice tight grain, light weight, fairly cheap.

[David Freed]

There are 60 cabinet shops within 20 miles of my house. Only 4 or 5 use poplar for drawer boxes in their cabinets. The rest say it works well, but they do not like the green color that poplar has. The majority use soft maple, but I agree that any mentioned above will work. When I was selling cabinet parts, I had a few of the shops buying white ash drawer material. Here in southern Indiana it is very hard to find good soft maple trees. Almost all of it is wormy.

[John Keeton]

How about Aspen, very light color, nice tight grain, light weight, fairly cheap.Todd, where are you located? I would like to find some aspen, but haven't seen any around here. I am sure it is prevalent in the west. I believe that Cosman used some aspen in some of his videos if I am not mistaken.

[Kevin Groenke]

Alder is another relatively in-expensive option for drawer boxes. It's a bit softer than Poplar, but it's stable, mills well and has nice color.

Aspen and Soft Maple are both available in MN and are good alternatives.

-kg

[Chip Lindley]

I have glued up off-rips of the same lumber the job are made of for drawers. (usually in summer when I don't need to feed the stove!) Some customers have been wow'd that they got *real oak" drawers too!

I enjoy sycamore for a nice cheap drawer stock! It is light colored with a small feathery grain. Adds quite a touch! Soft maple is nice, light AND cheap also.