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Brass set-up bars help with drawer measurements

Ken St. Onge, Associate Editor

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Set up the drawer parts before laying out the joinery.

This bottom-mounted slide required 1/4 in. of clearance on the drawer bottom.

Set-up bars can be used to measure joinery, as well as set-up machinery.

Aligning the set-up bar with the edge.

Lining up the bar and the plywood sheet to measure out the joinery.

Marking the top edge of the plywood establishes the top of the groove.

Lining up the bar with the line makes quick work of laying out the 1/4 in. groove.

Marking the 1/4-in. groove ion the drawer side.

Using the marks to set up cuts for the grooves.

The set-up bars can be used to set the depth of cut, as well as distance from the fence.

Checking the dimensions of the grooves with a brass bar.

Checking the drawer assembly.

Set up the drawer parts before laying out the joinery.

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Rockler, Lee Valley and several other companies sell set-up bars for use on machinery like router tables and table saws, but there are some other great uses for these tools--including laying out joinery for drawers.

In this case, I used them while building new drawers for my kitchen that require bottom-mounted drawer slides. Because of their design, the slides needed to sit exactly 1/4 in. from the drawer bottoms, which in my case I made from 1/2-in. plywood, rabbeted to fit into 1/4 in. grooves.

Normally, one might grab a combination square for this lay out task, but I had temporarily "misplaced" mine. So to measure all the joinery for the drawer bottoms I used my set-up bars--it was just as easy as a square for aligning the parts.

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MACHINIST'S SECRET 

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Machinists have been using a technique similar to St. Onge's for decades. Learn their cheap trick for accurate measurements.

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To mark the location of the groove, I placed the 1/4-in. brass bar between the pencil marks, aligning one edge with the top mark, and then drawing a line on the other side of the brass bar to mark the bottom. I used the lines to set up the fence on the table saw, which was equipped with a 1/4 in. dado blade.

I used the 1/4-in. set-up bar to set the depth of the cut, too.

To lay out the rabbet on the plywood, I used the 1/4-in. bar again to measure down from the top of the plywood and also in from the edges. With those lines marked, I lined them up with the dado blade and rabbeted the edge.

I used the bars one last time to check my measurements at the bottom.

I won't be trading in my square any time soon, but in a pinch, the set-up bars worked well.

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UPDATE: Building Doors & Drawers by Andy Rae

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Comments (1)

pitbully writes: Sometimes in life you reach that "DOH!" moment,
my latest one just arrived. Thanks for the article
Ken, this is one i won't forget. :0)
Posted: 1:16 pm on November 5th

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