How do you "fit" a drawer?

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Hi Todd,

I don't have an article or anything and I don't know how guys did this in the 18th century either.

What I do is fit the drawer front after the carcass is complete. I do the drawer height first (which is the width of the board) then I fit the width (by sawing the length accurately. I've been leaving about 1/8" gaps on sides and top. I find I need that much with my materials/climate.

Last thing I do is take that drawer front and push it all the way into the carcass. If it fits I make the drawer without any worries. I probably won't trim again. If it doesn't fit, I worry a little bit then decide what to do. Sometimes I end up making the drawer back a little narrower. If the drawer blade/runner has twisted or bowed or gone wacky on me, I'll try running a rabbet plane in there to clean it up (this never works but I always try). As a last resort I touch up the drawer sides somehow.

I don't look for piston fits in drawers. I read that as arrogance. Piston fit today is stuck hard tomorrow. My goal is to get off center and get those drawers done fast. Eliminating trimming at the end is a real benefit. Its best to fit that drawer front then be done.

Looking forward to other answers.

Adam

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Frank Mutchler in Colorado Springs

>I agree with fitting the front and then using that as the reference for the rest of the drawer. Everyone has to decide for themselves how much clearance is appropriate for your given climate. I like a snug fit. If it gets too tight you can lightly plane the swollen parts.

Interesting Response, Adam

Bob Hutchins in central Texas

>Do you leave 1/8" on each side or split 1/8" leaving a 1/16" on each? Seems splitting it would not give enough tolerance for climate change effects.

Do you have any hints for making too-small drawers work better? I made a tool chest some time ago then decided to turn it into a cabinet. Originally the drawers were intended to slide from a side to side in the chest and I left lots of (~1/2") 'slop' in the fit to make lifting them out of a chest easier. Now that they have been shifted 90 degrees and pull out of a cabinet, that 'slop' just creates binding. The drawer bottoms ride on aluminum angle and there are no drawer guides. What would you do to address this problem?

Regards,

BobH

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Jim in Burlington Ontario

>I know that Rob Cosman is going to teach a course on Draw making and fitting so maybe there's a video on the way. In Frank Klauz video on Dovetails he makes drawers for a desk then planes them to fit if that's of any help.

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Jack Guzman from Maine

>Try the fit,plane it where it's tight,repeat til you're happy with the fit.---Jack

I'll take a stab at this one

Tom Sontag - St. Louis

>I am not sure what "no drawer guides' means exactly, but couldn't you glue a strip of wood along the drawer sides to fatten them up and make the drawer wander less when pulling or pushing on it? I am not sure what to do about the front being too small if you are concerned with that too, but fitting the bottom onto the aluminum angle runners and against the sides of the carcase seems fairly simple. I must be missing something I guess.

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

paul womack

>I don't look for piston fits in drawers. I read that as arrogance. Piston fit today is stuck hard tomorrow.

I've seen plenty of Victorian furniture (my local auction house does antiques as well as tools), and the Victorian guys achieved piston fits that still work today. And not just in high, high end furniture either.

If they were arrogant, I guess they earned the right.

BugBear

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Planing a finished drawer to fit can be a problem. I choose not to bother.

Adam

Re: Interesting Response, Adam

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>1/8" on each side- keep in mind this is an "1/8". I don't measure it. I stick the drawer font in the hole and scratch its back with an awl. I guess I should have said that a finished carcass does not include its backer boards. That's the last thing I do.

As to your other question, I'm with Tom. I'd glue on some strips somewhere.

Adam

Sorry long response

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Bug,

I guess I'm thinking of crafstmen I've met. One guy's piston fit was such that when he slammed one drawer all the others would pop out. He bragged arrogantly about that. I guess I shouldn't say this too loud, but there are guys out there who really think they can machine wood to aerospace tolerances as if its aluminum and it will stay there.

Contrast that with Jefff Headley. Jeff is the brother of Mack Headley the Master at Williamsburg. Jeff owns and operates a small and successful reproduction furniture biz called Mack S Headley Sr. and Sons.

Anyway, we were talking about some little chest he built. The drawer was beautifully fitted, not piston-like but close. He had made the drawer the previous night. As I eased the drawer out Jeff said something to the effect that the drawer would have to be planed before the piece was sold or after. Either way he'd be "back there again".

I don't know what your definition of piston fit is. I know my projects will close a 1/16" gap or more overtime. This is not a magic number, just my observation given my climate and my materials.

I can't explain your observations. It would be interesting to look again if you were able. English furniture often has oak drawer sides which may help. The auction house may have touched something up? There may be some plywood content in late victorian. I forget where you live, but generally England's climate is a bit easier on furniture than Philadelphia's.

I've found a satisfying drawer feel comes from drawer height not width. In general, making a drawer as wide as possible does little to improve the subjective feel of a drawer. You could try fitting the drawer front, then leaving the sides extra tall, then plane to fit later as others have suggested. I don't do this, but it makes sense.

One more thing: In an effort to decrease wear, and increase stability, I make drawer sides out of quartersawn material as they did 275 years ago here. One furniture expert called the material "striped pine". I would prefer to make drawer fronts 1/4 sawn as well, but I don't always/often have the material.

Adam

Consult R. Bruce Hoadley for fit

Greg B�tit, Vergennes, VT

>In his book Understanding Wood, R. Bruce Hoadley discusses how to calculate drawer clearance. It is a good discussion of relative moisture content and the characteristics of different species of wood. Takes the guess work out of it, for those of us without years of experience.

Greg

Re: Sorry long response

paul womack

>I can't explain your observations. It would be interesting to look again if you were able. English furniture often has oak drawer sides which may help. The auction house may have touched something up? There may be some plywood content in late victorian. I forget where you live, but generally England's climate is a bit easier on furniture than Philadelphia's.

I suspect the lattter may be an important part of the reality. As to materials, the furniture I've seen is sometimes made of oak, very rarely walnut but mainly Satinwood and mahogany; the Englsh Victorians dearly loved mahogany.

As a sidebar, it is furniture from this period that often has the show-off super-narrow "London pattern" dovetails that most definitely need dedicated bevel edged chisels to create.

BugBear

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Paul In NJ

>Todd,

You will save yourself a lot of head aches if you glue up your drawer square and level. On a nice piece I shoot for a 1/32 gap on both sides of the drawer as you won't see much movement in that direction. You need to allow for more space in the height of the drawer since there is more movement cross grain. How much room you allow depends on your climate. I'm sure I will see more movement here in the east than you will in San Jose. I size my drawer front and back components a hair less than the opening and plan to plane them to fit after glue-up. Remember to plane the sides from the ends toward the middle so that you don't blow out the edges.

Paul Dzioba

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Wiley Horne--Glendora CA

>Hi Todd,

I'm in an inland valley in So. Calif. and close-fit drawers are not seizing here. By close, I mean 1/64" clearance, more or less. This is with a shellac finish on the drawer sides, back, and interior.

There is some useful advice IMO on drawer fitting by Ian Kirby on p. 27 of an article "On Dovetailing Carcasses' , in the Taunton paperback 'Fine Wood Working on Boxes, Carcases, and Drawers". He suggests three things if you want to make what he calls a "traditional fit", by which he means a minimum-clearance, planed fit:

1. Cut the drawer front and back to the exact measurements of the opening--you will later plane to make the final fit.

2. When you make the carcase, arrange for the interior to be 1/32" wider at the rear than the front.

3. Do the dovetailing so that the drawer sides are even with the pins, or slightly proud. Don't leave yourself with proud pins.

What I have found following this advice is that it all works, except that you can dovetail the drawers so that they are pretty much 'on the money', and you don't have to actually make the sides proud of the pin ends. On a big drawer, you don't want to plane off 1/32" from each side, for instance.

If you're going for close-fitting drawers, you can make your own luck if you spend time getting the carcase right. If an internal partition or a drawer runner or some other control surface has say,1/32" of bow or cup in it--it's way easier to plane that true before the case is together, than after. The same goes for care taken in layout and cutting dados for positioning the internals.

Because once you've got the case together, and the drawer made, and you start the fitting, it's not obvious where the drawer is binding once you get it pushed halfway back into the compartment. In fact, it's pretty easy to be planing the wrong surface until you figure out what's going on--and I'm talking about with the back still removed, as Adam said, so you can look from both front and back. For example, you may be planing the right side of the drawer when you should be planing a bowed-in left wall of the compartment (which is less easily detected). Also, the point that Adam made about exploring the compartment up front and figuring out where it's going to bind is really important.

There are designs where the drawer is bearing laterally against a lip on the divider, not against a case side or an internal vertical divider--this is going to make fitting easier, but again, time spent truing the bearing surfaces is better than time spent planing the drawer to fit an irregular compartment IME.

Paul Dzioba's advice about planing the sides from the edge inward will save you a lot of misery.

Wiley

3.

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Greg B

>One of the best articles I've seen on drawer fitting is in FWW #125. It is by Alan Peters and is entitled something like, "The Classic British Method". Among other things, he writes of fitting each drawer BACK to its opening and using it as a template for fitting the sides and then front. There is more. It's a very good article.

Cheers,

Greg

British method?

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Fit the drawer back first? Do you have anymore information on it? I'd be curious to learn.

British furniture I have seen have short backs. That allows the bottom to be slid in from the back. I make drawer backs out of the worst stock I've got. Since the back does nothing whatsoever for the drawer motion, it seems strange to use it as a gauge for other parts. It literally sounds like the tail wagging the dog.

I'm not saying you are incorrect. But I can think of a half dozen reasons why this is a bad idea and not a single reason to recommend it.

If you can enlighten me, I would appreciate it. Anybody clued in about this? Are we talking about iKea drawers?

Adam

enlightment

Andrew F in Australia

>Adam,

The drawer fronts are fitted to the drawer opening so there's not even a cigarette paper's gap in the opening.

As the drawer sides cannot jam in the opening, the back has to mirror the front.

So, therefore, the back has to be fitted to the opening to keep the sides parallel to the front and avoid the drawer jamming.

Sorry guys, I haven't had time to read the other replies here so I don't know if I'm duplicating info.

CHeers,

Andrew

(Apologising for the point form reply as his two kids have gotten up while he was answering and he's toilet training one of them)

Hi Todd...

Scott Burr Ben Lomond,CA

>This months FWW has a nice documentry on fitting.

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Jim Crammond in Monroe, Mi

>Wiley,

Great information, I wish this thread had come up about 3 weeks ago. I just finished fitting the drawers for Adam's hand tool challenge and I spent way too much time doing it because the back of the carcase was just a little narrower then the front. I also made the pins proud so I spent quite a bit of time planing the sides.

I should get out my copy of that book and reread that article.

Jim

spelling - enlightenment

Andrew F in Australia

>

Tapered drawer sides??

fmutchler@adelphia.net

>Todd, in "The Workbench Book" by Landis (sorry, Adam) on pg. 41 there is a picture of a drawer the author refers to as, "the Fruitlands drawer". The author speculates that the drawer may have been tapered, bottom to top, to lighten it without compromising the strength of the bottom groove. It may be that, as some posters to this thread have implied, the tapering was to facilitate an easy fit or possibly at a later date to correct a binding problem??

Looking at the layout line for the dovetail suggests to me that the tapering was done following assembly. He doesn't show the front of the drawer which is a shame because I'm wondering how that joint was handled.

Re: Tapered drawer sides??

Alan Bierbaum

>A fair amount of Shaker drawers had tapered sides. One of the speculated (is this a real word?) reasons was that they simply used left over shingle material for the drawer sides.

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Alan Bierbaum

>How about some pictures of your challenge project?

Re: How do you "fit" a drawer?

Jim Crammond in Monroe, Mi

>Alan,

I've taken some pictures but haven't gotten around to writing a narrative and opinions about the project. I'll try to get something posted this week.

The chest is done, just waiting for milkpaint and hardware to finish it.

Jim