drawer construction

[Mark Rainey]

Making a small drawer 7 inches wide and 7 inches deep. Half lap dovetails on front of drawer but forgot to cut dovetails to hide groove on back/bottom of drawer front. Drawer bottom slides into grooves in drawer sides. As usual, free at back. So instead of the ugly groove showing on the side of my drawer below my dovetails, I glued the back of the drawer front to the front of the drawer bottom. Problem solved?

[Jim Koepke]

As long as there isn't to much movement during the changes of the season.

Another way to hide "the ugly groove" is to have made some small plugs from the scraps of waste from cutting out the pins or other scraps of the same wood as the front.

That was the method used in making my medicine storage box out of firewood.

jtk

[Derek Cohen]

Problem created! You cannot expect glue to hold in a situation where expansion-contraction occurs. There is a simple solution ...

I tend to build drawers mostly with slips. These take the place of the grooves in the drawers sides (because the drawer sides I make are too thin for a groove). The slips is a runner with an added groove, which is glued to the drawer sides, and runs into the groove in the drawer front ...




What you can do is reverse this: use a slip behind the drawer front. Imagine this was the case here ...



Now the problem is solved.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Mark Rainey]

Another way to hide "the ugly groove" is to have made some small plugs from the scraps of waste from cutting out the pins or other scraps of the same wood as the front

That is a good option Jim.

[Mark Rainey]

Derek, your slip behind the drawer front is a solution to my problem. However my drawer front to drawer bottom is a long grain to long grain joint so it should be as strong as it gets, correct?