Drawer Fronts

[Kris Cook]

Question about solid wood drawer faces. I know its a little overkill but I have some leftover quarter sawn African Mahogany from trimming out the living room and was thinking of using for drawer faces on my router cabinet.

Bottom left drawer face would be about 14-1/2" high so would be two pieces edge glued.

The wood I have is 4/4 and I would like to leave the faces rather thick (around 3/4") because I would plan to rout the bottom inside edge with a cove to form a pull.

Drawers are plywood.

I guess I am mostly worried about the larger drawer as far as wood movement. With the wood be quartersawn I don't know how concerned I should be.

[Nick Lazz]

I've done this with large drawers and have had no issues. I can't speak to the species, but I would think you would be just fine...especially for a router cabinet. Sounds fancy!

[Mark Gibney]

I think you'll be fine, whether the faces are inset or overlay.
The holes you drill in the front of the drawerbox will be larger than the diameter of the screw shaft to allow you to position the drawerfront, so there will be room for any slight expansion and contraction.

[Lee Schierer]

According to the Shrinkulator your drawer front should be okay. Changing the moisture content of the wood from 7% to 10% a 10" board should only grow by 0.050", That's a pretty extreme moisture change.

Put the fasteners that hold the drawer front to the plywood about 1-2" down from the top. Put thee fasteners near the bottom in slotted holes. That pushes all the seasonal change in width to the bottom of the piece.

[Kris Cook]

Well - I should have just looked at my kitchen drawers before asking the question; they are flat sawn oak and much wider than these and have been in place for at least 20 years.

Anyway, I got the top six done and I think that was the easy part. I was originally planning to put the edge pulls on the bottom and relieve the top of the next drawer but it got to complicated. I put the pulls on the sides and that should work fine for the small drawers. It did require me to rout across grain which was a little nerve racking without a sled/hold-down.

Here are a couple of pics.

Drawer Fronts 1.jpgDrawer Fronts 2.jpg

Thanks all for the input. This was a good learning exercise for me. The reveals aren't perfect and I should have made the fronts a little wider but hey its a router cabinet.

I need to figure out how I am going to do the bottom three drawers as I have clearance issues. Likely will cut the bottom right drawer down to increase clearance for bottom pull on the drawer above and then bottom pulls on the other two.

[Kris Cook]

Just finished up the bottom drawer fronts. This wasn't meant to be a build thread but thought I would post the result anyway.

Drawer Fronts 3.jpg

Hydraulic cart was very handy for this process. I haven't used it since I got it but it was very helpful to keep from kneeling down to measure and fit the fronts and then was able to lower the cabinet down to actually mill the finger pulls.

[Frederick Skelly]

That looks great Kris!

[Kris Cook]

That looks great Kris!

Thank you. Just posted the finished product in the shopmade tools forum.