Back of Chest of drawers questions

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

Lee Schierer in McKean, PA

I make all the back panels of furniture removable for the just in case future. Screws holding the panel make the carcass rigid and keep stray contents in place.

I generally use 1/4 inch plywood it serves the purpose of stiffening the cabinet perfectly. Making the back thicker adds extra weight with little if any gain in stiffness.

Lee

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Barry, I screw a 1/4" back into a rebate. The back is usually solid wood, but I have no problem with ply - we just do not get anything furniture-worthy in Oz.

There should not be an issue with tipping, unless all the drawers are full and opened at the same time. That would be unusual! The weight of the remaining drawers should balance the single open drawers.

Stay well.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

JL

The backs aren't weight bearing - they just add stiffness. 1/4" will do.

I typically do a 3/8" rebate and nail the back on - but if you have enough small screws....

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

Hank Knight

A fourth vote for screws. The last three backs I've built were frame and panel. All were screwed on and made a very rigid case.

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

Clint Searl

A finished back, frame and panel or lapped, allows open use. Plus, it feeds the maker's vanity.

I knew someone.....

Barry Irby

would chastise me for not using a frame and panel back. My vanity is such that they are lucky to get a back at all. I am using Baltic birch plywood, clearly an upgrade.

My son got an Ikea chest of drawers and put it together. Mine is fabulously well built compared to that. The wood I used has not been reduced to sawdust and reassembled. They used Waswood and I used Iswood.

Re: Barry!

Hank Knight

I wasn't chastising you. I've used plenty of plywood backs. I was simply commenting on my experience with screwed-on backs and that it has worked well for me using frame and panel backs.

Just giving you grief Hank....

Barry Irby

I thought about using a frame and panel back, but my son is in the military and this chest will get moved more times than I care to think about. I think plywood will be tougher than the frame and panel. I put reinforcing "skids" under the bottom assuming someone will haul it around on a dolly.

I like to learn from antiques. Only the good ones survived. The poorly built and maybe the ugly ones got trashed. There is much to learn there. OTOH, maybe they did not use plywood because they did not have it and certainly not of the quality of Baltic Birch. Excellent quality plywood drawer bottoms seem to solve a lot of problems related to expansion and contraction with the seasonal moisture change.

I earned money in highschool and college repairing furniture. (Thomas Johnson's videos bring back a lot of memories, not all good. He is a master) I got to see what worked and what didn't.

I am considering using mechanical drawer runners on future pieces. Yeah I know the purists will point out that antiques don't have them and some of those pieces have lasted two hundred years. Can't tell you how many drawers I have repaired. Someone here would say if you use hardwood for the runner and softer wood for the drawer the wear will occur on the drawer and the repair will be trivial. Not as trivial as replacing a set of runners.

Thanks for reading my post and giving me the benefit of what you thought.

Re: Just giving you grief Hank....

Hank Knight

I think today's antique furniture would be a lot different if the ancient's had had BB Plywood. Drawer construction would be a lot different and case backs, bottoms etc., would all be plywood. The ancients didn't build stuff the way they did because they were following their predecessors, they built it the way they did because the materials they had required it. BB plywood would have been a game changer. The Shakers would have jumped on it for sure.

I agree with you too about using drawer side material that is softer than the divider. It's a detail that is easily overlooked until you've repaired a divider that is so worn the drawer bottom scrapes. Repairing a worn drawer side is so much easier.

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

AZ in Colorado Springs

Barry mentioned his son is in the service. I was on active duty for 24 years. Many times nailed or stapled backs of bookcases bc and other pieces "popped off" in the moving van.

Re: Back of Chest of drawers questions

Barry Irby

Many years ago (50 +/_) I did furniture repairs to make money while in college. (Think Thomas Johnson, but not as good) I got contacted by moving companies to make repairs. It could be good money but they were horrible people to deal with. They wanted me to repair smashed furniture the equivalent of Ikea (worse) and turn it into fine furniture. Then after the repair, they would ignore the quote and try to tell me what they were going to pay. The worst part was I went to the house of the owner of the moving company to make some repairs. I slowly realized nothing in the house matched anything else. Each piece was a very fine piece of furniture but not any two were part of a set. It dawned on me they had stolen whatever they wanted out of peoples shipments and let the insurance pay for it.

The same happened to my son. I made him a pair of nightstands and one of them disappeared. I pointed him to an online source for very high end stuff that was similar and he told told them his was worth about $3200 but he wanted them to get him two so they would exactly match. Mysteriously, they found his and returned it.

Thomas Johnson ...

Michael Farinella

is a remarkable man with the patience of Job. He's at the top of my list for YouTube subscriptions.

Not all thieves

kneale brownson

There's a moving company in our town with a store side business. We've bought a couple pieces from them. They tell us their source is from when homeowners tell them to not move this or that piece, so they take it to their store.

The one I heard of...

John in NM

Shop I worked for in the late 1990's used to ship custom furniture via moving companies (blanket wrap rather than crated). An expensive mesquite table went missing at one point, the moving company looked and looked, couldn't turn it up or find anyone who knew anything about it. Then about a month later, it was quietly delivered to the customer, who was appalled to find a beautifully refinished table top with a big bondo ( !) patch on one side. Once the item turned up the company leaned on the driver and discovered that while unloading at another stop, someone had put their cigarette on the table top, hanging over the edge (smokers and former smokers like me will recognize the habit of placing them that way when you need both hands and no smoke in your eyes for a minute or two). Trouble was, the smoker forgot all about it, cigarette burned back and into the packing blanket, leaving a rather large burn in the top. So the driver took it to a friend who could refinish furniture, but apparently they knew the big sanded out low spot where the burn had been wouldn't fly, so they filled it with bondo and refinished.

The really amazing part of that story is that the shop kept using blanket wrap shipping!