Back to Building Furniture

Underbench Cabinet: Preparing for the drawer dividers

After making dados, and drawer blades, and then fitting them, comes the vertical drawer dividers. I consider that these are the make-and-break of a chest of drawers. It is tough to get a case square. It is tough to get the dados positioned correctly. The drawer blades are simple. But then comes the dividers ...


Drawer dividers are needed when there are more than a single drawer in each row. In this cabinet, there are two rows of three drawers and two rows of two drawers. Care in aligning the dividers at the front and rear is necessary to ensure the drawer case is parallel and square if the drawers are to run smoothly.


It is easy enough to attach the dividers with dados. However, this is a less-strong design than attaching them with sliding dovetails. Building sliding dovetails is more complex, but the advantage here is that they tie the drawer blades to the case, making the case more rigid. That is a good thing, especially for a tool cabinet.


This article is about the preparations for the dividers, and the next article will be about making them - there are just too many photos for a single article.


Issue: drawer blades flex and bow. Accurate marking out needs a stable foundation.


The first step is to make spacers to keep the height even. Start with the ends …

.. and then move them into the centre ...





The second task is to make templates for spacing out the drawer dividers, similar to the heights for the dados ...





Later, I made these thicker so that they could also aid in ensuring that the dividers were plumb when marking out.





Lastly, for now, the drawer dividers were cut ...





The dovetails will be 3mm deep at each end ...








Onward to the dovetailing .... 


Regards from Perth


Derek

January 2021