How would this be for some drawerboxes?

[Gene Davis]

Picked up some cherry leg blanks at Frank Paxton today, and saw this in the sales office. Pretty big stack of it.

Was thinking it might make all the drawerbox sides I need to do for an upcoming project.

The screencap of the Sketchup model shows the array of three drawers behind each doored side of the project, an entertainment hutch. Drawers are 15 deep by 23-1/8 wide by 5-1/2 tall, and the size of the alder panels makes for an extremely efficient cutting. I will only need two panels, $40 bucks plus tax, for all the stock needed for the sides of all six drawers.

I might have preferred doing these in something harder, but this is hard to pass up. Will alder drawerboxes be OK?

[Jamie Buxton]

Sure, alder works for drawer boxes.
There's a long tradition of making furniture exteriors with the fancy and expensive hardwood, and interiors from a secondary wood -- pine, for instance. The secondary wood was less expensive, and usually softer so it was easier to cut joinery in. So you're building like an eighteenth-century furniture maker.

[Lee Schierer]

Alder should work just fine, but 11/16" thick drawer sides are going to make your drawers quite heavy. I usually use 1/2" Yellow Poplar for drawer boxes and have no problems with similar sized drawers being robust enough.