Kitchen questions!!

1/29/07, 9:51 PM #1

lee beeden
Guest

Kitchen questions!!

lee beeden

>First question is about pocket screws. When it came to attaching my 3/4" drawer fronts to the 1/2" baltic birch boxes i realized I had no 1 1/4" screws and i'm 1 hr from town. However I realized I had a bunch of 1 1/4" pocket screws. So i drove theses in at a slight angle so they would'nt poke through and they seemed to pull everything together nice, and no pre-drilling!! what do you think of this?

After attaching the drawer fronts I realized I needed to finish both sides of the fronts and so will have to take them off again! Re-using the same screws in the same holes, is this gonna work?

And finally my drawers range from 7" wide to 10 1/2" wide, solid wood. What about movement? There are some old drawers here in our kitchen that are about 8" wide, i looked inside the drawers and they are screwed with no allowance for movement. Its been years and there as flat as a pancake!!

A big thanks to anyone who responds, I very much appreciate the wealth of knowledge to be found on this site!!

cheers

Lee

Re: Kitchen questions!!

1/29/07, 10:50 PM #2

Barry Irby
Master Craftsman
Offline
13,125 posts

Registered: 1/27/05

Re: Kitchen questions!!

Barry Irby

>I think you are OK. Just don't crank down on those screws too hard or they may poke through. On the wider drawers put the screws closer to the center than the edges so that less wood is "captured" between the screws and the expansion will be less of an issue. If you have a bunch of small washers, you could put on under the head of each screw. Then you could make one row of holes snug and the other row slots to allow for movements. The washers would "shorten" the screws.

Re: Kitchen questions!!

1/30/07, 12:10 AM #3

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach
Guest

Got a grinder?

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>I've encountered that little pit fall myself. My solution was to grind off about 1⁄8" to ¼" of the pointy ends of several screws. So long as you drill pilot holes, you don't even need to do anything special. Just drive the modified screws in. That way you can drive them in flat which will look a whole lot better.

Rod

Re: Kitchen questions!!

1/30/07, 2:52 PM #4

Tim Greif - West of Chicago
Woodwright
Offline
704 posts

Registered: 1/1/70

Washer head screws.... *LINK*

Tim Greif - West of Chicago

>I've used washer head screws for this same thing. They're made for drawer fronts. I attached solid oak fronts to baltic birch drawer boxes using washer head screws that were 1-1/8" long. See the link below.

With these, you can drill an oversize hole for adjustment. Plus, with the oversize holes, you can put two screws on each side of a wide panel and it allows for wood movement. I had file drawers that had 11" wide solid fronts that I attached that way. It's been years and everrything's still flat.

Drawer Front Screws at Rockler

Kitchen questions!!

Posts