Inset Drawer Gap Recommendation

[Bob Deroeck]

Hi,

I'm building drawers which will be flush with the face frame (inset drawer fronts, not over-lapped). The drawers will have a front piece applied to the drawer box. There's plenty of space between the box sides and the face frame edges, so I'm not concerned with the drawers binding in the face frame. I'll be using undermount slides. I'm wondering how "tight" to make the drawer front fit within the hole in the face frame. I'm thinking about cutting the drawer fronts with a 1/16" gap between the drawer front edges (top, bottom, and sides) to the inside edge of the face frame. Is that too tight? Or, too lose? What would you recommend?

Thanks.

Bob DeRoeck

[Max Neu]

for kitchens I usually leave 3/32" gap all the way around.You could go a little tighter for furniture, but I feel kitchen cabinets need a little bit more room because of all the use they get.

[Jim Dwight]

Max's advice seems sound. If the drawer fronts are solid wood and wide, however, you might want to consider the current and future moisture content. A wide (10-12 inch) piece of wood can move a fair amount (there are on-line calculators) although if it is finished on all sides with poly or another highly moisture resistant finish, my experience is it won't move much at all. Long way of saying you should think at least a little about across grain expansion.

[Peter Quinn]

The recommended gap is 3/32" by many slide manufacturers. I use two strips of laminate counter material as shims to set the gap, it's pretty much perfect.

[Robert Engel]

1/16 sounds good to me.

I don't know what the manufacture specs have to do with it the drawer front.

As far as wood movement you're more likely to end up with a bigger gap than a smaller after moving it inside.

In any case, that's what a hand plane is for!

[John A langley]

3/32 is good

[Jeffrey Martel]

I've used the penny trick. Shim the bottom with a penny and it should have about the same gap around all sides. Some research shows that it's a bit under 1/16". 0.0598" vs 0.0625".

[Max Neu]

Anything less than 3/32" in s kitchen is really pushing it, especially when you get into pots and pan drawers that get loaded down, along with pantry doors.Just too much abuse for super tight tolerances.

[Lee Schierer]

Don't forget to allow for the thickness build up of your chosen finish material. There is nothing worse than getting everything to fit up just right, applying the finish and finding out you have to tweak a dimension or two because the finish added to a critical dimension.

[Peter Quinn]

1/16 sounds good to me.

I don't know what the manufacture specs have to do with it the drawer front.

As far as wood movement you're more likely to end up with a bigger gap than a smaller after moving it inside.

In any case, that's what a hand plane is for!


Well...if the doors are on euro hinges, they do require a 3/32" gap to swing properly, and all the gaps in a run of cabs need to be equal to look properly. IME even blum slides dont travel "perfectly", they don't always land in exactly the same spot each time, if you cut it that close any variation becomes very obvious. IME the wood movement issue is highly dependent in my area on the RH of the season in which the cabs were made. Make doors in the winter, they will surely grow, make them in a wet spring, humid summer or rainy fall, they will surely shrink. Last shop I worked at did mostly brass furniture grade butt hinges, the gaps were kept tight, how tight depended on season.....a nickel in the winter, a dime in the summer...litterally we used nickles and dimes as spacers to fit doors/drawer fronts, actually worked pretty well.

Block planes? Customers really love it when you have to come out to their house to block plane a finished door on an installed kitchen so it can be opened, they love having to call the painters back to do more touchups, gives it that "real craftsman" feel......DAMHIKT Skip the plane and gap the doors properly.

[Robert Engel]

Well...if the doors are on euro hinges, they do require a 3/32" gap to swing properly, and all the gaps in a run of cabs need to be equal to look properly.His question was about inset drawer fronts so there will be a face frame under the drawer, too, right? Even if there is a door, this is not an issue.


Block planes? Customers really love it when you have to come out to their house to block plane a finished door on an installed kitchen so it can be opened, they love having to call the painters back to do more touchups, gives it that "real craftsman" feel......DAMHIKT Skip the plane and gap the doors properly.First, I assumed he was building it for himself. Second, I said 1/16" gap so you really think he'll need to do this? No...

[Kent A Bathurst]

The old tradition [at least, as explained to me] was to use dimes for spacers.

I updated that by using hotel key cards - uniformly 30-thou thick. Stacked 2-high is just under 1/16", or 3-high is just under 3/32". Plus - the cool bit is you can cut them with scissors to any size you need.

For me - 2 layers, plus Famous Blue Tape to hold them in place, sneaks right up on 1/16"

And - they won't damage the wood like pennies or dimes will.

[John TenEyck]

If using plywood you can make the gap whatever you feel comfortable with, taking into consideration requirements imposed by the slides, but if the drawer face is solid hardwood you should calculate what the proper gap is based on the actual MC of the wood when you build it and the expected RH swings during the year. This is explained in detail in Hoadley's book and by a not too old article in FWW by Christian Becksvoort. "Build tight in the Summer and loose in the Winter" is all well and good, but a few simple calculations will tell you how tight or how loose.

John

[Jeffrey Martel]

I think the PNW is the one area that's opposite of the rest of the country. Winter are the wet months, here. Summers are dry.

[John TenEyck]

I think the PNW is the one area that's opposite of the rest of the country. Winter are the wet months, here. Summers are dry.

You're right when talking outside RH, but the RH inside your heated house is still likely lower in the Winter than Summer months. But that's exactly why knowing the MC of your wood when you build a project and calculating it's movement over the course of a year where the piece will be located is important.

John

[Pat Barry]

You're right when talking outside RH, but the RH inside your heated house is still likely lower in the Winter than Summer months. But that's exactly why knowing the MC of your wood when you build a project and calculating it's movement over the course of a year where the piece will be located is important.

John
Normally the drawers are inset with the grain running left to right (horizontal), therefore the moisture based growth of the drawer will be vertical. If you use your dime spaced gap at the bottom then a dime at the top may be fine if building in the summer, but in the winter you need more than a dime, maybe a dime and a half (3 of the hotel cards referred by Kent above). Side to side a dime may be perfect

[Kent A Bathurst]

Normally the drawers are inset with the grain running left to right (horizontal), therefore the moisture based growth of the drawer will be vertical. If you use your dime spaced gap at the bottom then a dime at the top may be fine if building in the summer, but in the winter you need more than a dime, maybe a dime and a half (3 of the hotel cards referred by Kent above). Side to side a dime may be perfect


Good grooming tip, Pat. You are exactly correct - that's how I play it.

Also - the beauty of the hotel card shims - each one is just shy of 1/32", so you can stack as many as you need for any particular situation.

BTW - rumor has it that they can also be used for shims in non-visible situations - - such as a substructure not meeting precisely with a table top....a shim or two, cut narrower than the component, and impaled by a screw works great. Not that I have actually done that, of course. ;)

Also on shims - company I used to work for had wooden business cards for execs. I rotated through a number of assignments, and had 5 or 6 titles - never ran through a full box, so I have big inventory of them. Those critters are 2 very thin veneers sandwiching a loose-weave fiberglass center. Thickness varies by species, but 1/64" is nominal. Those suckers can be cut to the dimension of a too-thin tenon, stacked 2 or 3 thick if needed, glued up, and stuck in the mortise with the tenon.

[John TenEyck]

Normally the drawers are inset with the grain running left to right (horizontal), therefore the moisture based growth of the drawer will be vertical. If you use your dime spaced gap at the bottom then a dime at the top may be fine if building in the summer, but in the winter you need more than a dime, maybe a dime and a half (3 of the hotel cards referred by Kent above). Side to side a dime may be perfect

A dime in the Summer, a nickel in the Winter - that may work in moderate climates for fairly narrow drawers with woods that play nice. But if you have an 8 or 10" wide piece of plain sawn oak or hickory you may get an unwelcome surprise doing that. If you work in a shop with an uncontrolled climate you are taking an even bigger risk. I just repaired an old commercial dresser with 10" wide inset drawers - all stuck because the wood had swollen in a NYS Summer which is not terribly humid. I would rather spend a minute or two to do a couple of simple calculations and build knowing that I won't have any issues in the future.

John

[Kent A Bathurst]

J10 - Agreed.

I was only making the observation that season/climate dictates the reveal.......10" plain sawn is gonna go nuts compared to 4" QS, fer sure.............

[Justin Ludwig]

I tried 1/16" margin on some beaded inset cabinets that had mitered doors with reverse flat panel (3/8" solid). They rubbed in the summer, fit in the winter.

3/32 is the minimum unless you're building fine furniture IME.

[Pat Barry]

A dime in the Summer, a nickel in the Winter - that may work in moderate climates for fairly narrow drawers with woods that play nice. But if you have an 8 or 10" wide piece of plain sawn oak or hickory you may get an unwelcome surprise doing that. If you work in a shop with an uncontrolled climate you are taking an even bigger risk. I just repaired an old commercial dresser with 10" wide inset drawers - all stuck because the wood had swollen in a NYS Summer which is not terribly humid. I would rather spend a minute or two to do a couple of simple calculations and build knowing that I won't have any issues in the future.

John
Yeah, I agree there are plenty of factors to consider including the wood itself and the grain direction, ie: quarter vs plain sawn, and Obviously the problem needs to be scaled to be proportional to the width of the drawer (height) that you are working with, so doubling the width means doubling the gap (at the top) . But as much as I love calculations, doing them for the wood drawer still requires lots of assumptions to be made. DO you have an example of how you wood do this calculation John?

[Max Neu]

One thing to think about,is the big variation in sizes when dealing with kitchens.You could have anything from a 5" x 10" drawer front,all the way up to a 20"+ wide pantry door.You would have to use your biggest door to base everything on since they will all need to be gapped the same.

[Larry Edgerton]

Anything less than 3/32" in s kitchen is really pushing it, especially when you get into pots and pan drawers that get loaded down, along with pantry doors.Just too much abuse for super tight tolerances.

Max, I only do furniture grade cabinets, always inset, and they like nice tight fits to show off to their friends. Especially as I use that as a selling feature.;)

What I do when I fit fronts is load the drawers with sand bags. I have six ten pound bags and load them with what I guess will be their eventual load in actual use, then fit the fronts. This trick has stopped any callbacks to adjust after the cabinets are in use. I also taper from the face to the back of the drawer front a touch just in case the drawer is pushed in sideways to give it a little extra. About 2 degrees is all.

Like this: http://crookedtreejoinery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/FireplaceCabinetCloseup.jpg

Larry

Post Script: Had a brain fart and read the fraction as 3/16, not 3/32. I have no problem with that.:o

[Max Neu]

3/16"? That will definitely be trouble free for several years!:)

[John TenEyck]

Yeah, I agree there are plenty of factors to consider including the wood itself and the grain direction, ie: quarter vs plain sawn, and Obviously the problem needs to be scaled to be proportional to the width of the drawer (height) that you are working with, so doubling the width means doubling the gap (at the top) . But as much as I love calculations, doing them for the wood drawer still requires lots of assumptions to be made. DO you have an example of how you wood do this calculation John?

Sure, using Hoadley's book, page 120, there is the case for a piece being built with an inset 9" tall, flat sawn, sugar maple drawer front @ 8% MC (which you would know either from using a moisture meter or looking it up on the RH vs. MC chart if you know the wood to be in equilibrium with your shop) that is expected to go as high as 12% MC in the Summer. Flat sawn sugar maple has a tangential expansion/contraction of 9.9%. The formula used to do the calculation is:

Delta D = Di x S (Delta MC/fsp), where

Delta D = change in drawer height,
Di = drawer opening,
S = shrinkage of wood species, which is 9.9% for flat sawn sugar (tangential) sugar maple (page 117)
Delta MC= change in moisture content, and
fsp = fiber saturation point = 28% for most woods.

So, Delta D = 9 x (9.9/100) ((12/100 - 8/100) / (28/100))

Delta D = 0.1273 or just about 1/8"

That means that the drawer front would expand about 1/8" as the MC increased from 8% to 12%, so it should be built a finished height of no more than 8-7/8".

Pretty simple to do, and shows that if you built this drawer using the dime or nickel spacing method you would be headed for trouble. I hope this helps.

John

[Kent A Bathurst]

Thanks for the specific example John - -

One thing, though: Translating a nickle to 3/32" on all 4 sides, with 1/8" expansion, you might sneak through.....with 1/32" to spare. ;)

[Jeff Duncan]

A dime in the Summer, a nickel in the Winter - that may work in moderate climates for fairly narrow drawers with woods that play nice. But if you have an 8 or 10" wide piece of plain sawn oak or hickory you may get an unwelcome surprise doing that. If you work in a shop with an uncontrolled climate you are taking an even bigger risk. I just repaired an old commercial dresser with 10" wide inset drawers - all stuck because the wood had swollen in a NYS Summer which is not terribly humid. I would rather spend a minute or two to do a couple of simple calculations and build knowing that I won't have any issues in the future.

John

Best bet is to avoid using wide solid lumber in this situation to begin with. Wood moves, so unless your building something that's going into a precisely controlled climate, say a museum, your better off avoiding enclosing really wide slabs, which 10" would be. (Of course museums usually won't have much in the way of solid wood either….unless it's the piece being displayed;)) Hence the inventions many, many, many years ago of veneer and then the 5 piece door/front. Two unique ways to NOT try and keep wood from being wood. A 5 piece drawer front or veneered slab w/ 3/32" gap are pretty much standard in custom kitchens. Furniture guys will tend to go for a more precise fit, but then again I've encountered a lot more stuck drawers in furniture over the years than in kitchens:rolleyes:

Anyway that's just my opinion for what it's worth. One can either go with the consensus established by craftsmen over many generations and hundreds of years. Or try and re-invent the wheel and see how it goes:D

good luck,
JeffD

[Jim Becker]

The best answer is "it depends upon what species of wood and what season you are building and what your local weather is like"... :) Why do I say that? Because wood movement is what it is. If you build in the drier, colder time and leave too narrow a gap, things will get tight during the warmer, wetter times of the year. If you build in the warmer, wetter times, the gap you leave is going to get larger during the colder, drier part of the year. :) And the species of the wood matters, too. I shoot for a 1/16" average and honestly, I guess at it. But one can get all fancy and scientific and actually do math to calculate based on the species of wood and temp/humidity variations for a given area....