Solid drawer bottoms: bevel vs rabbet

Re: question for the Forum

Adrian Mariano

"Hand pane and gauge block with target groove in it."

I don't understand how this can work unless the panel is *exactly* the right width. Is that how you do it? It seems hard to ensure that the panel is exactly the right width and better to make it a bit undersized. But then the gauge block approach will lead to a loose fit. I guess one could measure how undersized the panel is and look for the fit in the gauge block to leave that much space. When I did my doors I believe that it was the use of a gauge block with an undersized panel that resulted in a loose fitting door where I had to shim it in the groove.

With a drawer you can assemble the drawer first and test fit the bottom in the actual drawer, so it seems possible to get a snug fit, but having to keep inserting the bottom into the drawer to test seems laborious.

With regards to groove sizing, Hack seems to advocate the 1/8" groove even on 28" wide drawers (which he beefs up with a central stretcher between the front and back. He says "The deeper and larger the groove, the more you weaken the side; the lower down it is, the less support it gives the bottom (this wood breaking away is another typical drawer repair). Beveling the bottom is an elegant solution which puts the groove high yet the bottom as low in the drawer as is practical. I use a fine bevel in a narrow groove; it's very strong"

Re: 1/8" big enough?

Adrian Mariano

I am working with uniform thicknessed bottoms (I didn't resaw by hand either) so I could just used a plane with a depth stop. I was speculating that maybe a historical craftsman wouldn't bother to thickness the bottom carefully, and that as a result, making a rabbet would be more trouble than cutting a bevel.

The idea of smoothing the rabbet transition with a molding plane is appealing.

Re: rabbets on the *bottoms* not sides

Adrian Mariano

The truth is, I haven't inspected antiques. I have no idea what they were doing back then. Drawers with rabbets could be all over the place for all I know. But articles in magazines always seem to suggest the bevel. My concern is really about current good practice. In other words, is it an arbitrary choice, do whichever one suits your fancy? Or is there some other factor that should affect the choice. Maybe the guys writing the articles have studied antiques and done tons of repairs and seen hundreds of broken drawers with rabbets? Or maybe they just think bevels look nicer. Or maybe they think it's more accessible for a magazine article because the reader doesn't need a specialized plane.

"The problems you've outlined in the original question are addressed by using a mulled when beveling and fixing a bottom with a screw in an oval hole at the back, so that expansion is always towards the back. "

Not sure what you meant about mulled...?

My shop is in a humid basement (where I run a dehumidifier to keep it below 55%), so I would predict wood movement in service to be shrinkage. It seems to me that in this case, the drawer is going to pull out of the front groove rather than moving from the back. Hack actually thinks screws in slots don't work at all. He says "Any weight in the drawer causes the screw head to dig in, preventing [the bottom from expanding out the back].... My method is to place screws in slightly oversize holes without slots. The deeper groove in the drawer front allows for shrinkage and expansion."

I wonder if this problem with screws digging in is less of an issue with hardwood drawer bottoms.

I suppose I could rabbet the front and bevel the sides.

Another thing that I thought of regarding fit is that you might be able to more easily create a tight fit with the bevel because the friction as you insert it into the finished drawer will be lower. If you make the bevel just a bit too thik it can compress as you assemble it to produce a tight fit.

Re: question for the Forum

John in NM

Would any one here use a 1/8" groove on a drawer 7"tall and 18" wide?

Nope. I might do it on a small drawer for something like a bedside table, but I really see little point to making things so thin.

In spite of my initial doubts that it would be durable, I don't doubt it if people report good results and historical dimensions, so I started wondering why antique drawers would be so light. Guessing that the lumber supply chain was different, supplying wood that was sawn (or riven early on?) very thin and then just planed in the shop for appearance and fit. These days the commercial bulk will use sheet goods, so those who make solid wood drawers are left resawing, planing off a ton of wood, or using much thicker wood. Thus the 3/4" bottoms so often seen make sense.

That understanding alone makes the discussion worthwhile for me though. If I have some particularly nice secondary wood I might just resaw and make 3/8" or thinner drawer parts rather than my usual 1/2". Its less wasteful than planing the excess off.

Would anyone here think there was any significant difference between a bottom with a rabbet vs bevel?

No. I am a lot more careful with the fit of door panels than drawer bottoms. Rattly doors closing annoys me, but I never notice loose fit in drawers.

This discussion also got me wondering about the raised panel look on drawer bottoms - a look I have done myself so I must have seen it in a magazine (as I said, real antiques are notoriously thin around here). I wonder if that practice owes it's fashion to the expediency of quickly beveling a panel to fit the groove in old commercial shops. A few swipes with any old plane is quicker to me than running a rabbet (I don't do rabbets by hand though so perhaps that is quicker than I think). Those old builders would have probably only been sizing down by 1/8" though and the angle would be a lot flatter for easy fit. And again, I'm just speculating, this should not be taken as knowledge so much as hunting around among theories to explain some otherwise very odd building choices.

For those that have made Period frame and panel doors and case sides would it take more than a few minutes to fit the panel to the groove?



Can't answer that one really.

I've only built one piece like that in my own shop, and in the shop I worked for panel raising was done on the shaper. Practices varied but the way I did it was to waste off the bulk of the wood at the table saw with a right angle jig I made (like a huge plywood tenon jig), then one pass on the shaper so the stub on the panel is near 1/4", then rip grooves to match the stub. Alternatively I might bevel the back to fit an existing groove, but I don't think I knew about that back then, and the boss would grind his teeth whenever you picked up a hand plane in that shop. I think I figured out beveling the back on the piece I built after leaving that job as I was approaching the problem and order of operations very differently.

Tight fit

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

After you have made a few dozen drawers you will be more concerned about getting it to slip in easily than about it being glue joint tight. You must be an engineer to be fretting about the parts of a drawer that don't matter a bit.

150 year old example

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Rabbeted drawer bottom on a mid 19th century case piece made in New York State.



So there you go. Go make a drawer bottom any way you please. It will work fine. If you have problems completing a smoothly working drawer it won't be with the drawer bottom. There are a dozen other drawer details that are important.

Re: rabbets on the *bottoms* not sides

Sgian Dubh

I say make contemporary drawer bottoms for contemporary furniture out of whatever material suits you and similarly get it to fit the groove however best suits your work methods. I can't see much reason to become overly concerned about the topic unless you're trying to accurately replicate in every detail a historical piece or pieces of furniture.

I've made and make drawer bottoms out of veneered man-made board, e.g., plywood or MDF which go into a groove that suits their thickness, therefore most commonly ±6 mm, and not always fitted to a slip. I've also made and make them out of solid wood, and in this case they're anywhere between ~3 mm thick for very small drawers (no slip for this type), and then for standard drawer box sizes (sock type and bigger as Bill might describe them), they're usually anywhere between about 6 mm thick and up to about 12 mm (~1/2") thick dependent upon the load they're expected to carry, and fitted into a 6 mm groove, which I usually work in a drawer slip for this type of drawer - in my case drawer sides are most commonly on the delicate side, e.g., ±7 mm thick for smaller drawers, and ±10 - 11 mm thick for heavier drawers, e.g., the full length drawers that might fit into a longish chest of drawers, hence the slip. The thinnest bottoms (6 mm) go straight into a +6 mm groove, and thicker bottoms I've made fit using either a rebate, or similar, or through bevelling the bottom face as the choice either suited me or to meet a client requirement.

The only real variation to this arrangement and way of working is where a flush slip is employed which requires a drawer bottom approximately 12 mm thick in order to work a 6 mm groove in the drawer front which is offset upwards by half the thickness of the drawer bottom from the bottom wall of the 6 mm groove worked in the slips.

Over the years I've worked on quite a number of antiques and old furniture, including fixing drawers and drawer openings. I've seen in those old bits I've worked on pretty much every arrangement I've described above. If pushed to choose the most common solid wood drawer bottom fitting method I've seen in old stuff I'd say it's probably where the underside of the drawer bottom was given a shallow bevel with a plane, but I wouldn't want anyone to hold me to that. Slainte.

Shoulder plane

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

The perfect plane for tuning the rebates around a drawer bottom is a shoulder plane ...

Regards from Perth

Derek