Bill
I am making drawer boxes with dovetails front and back is there any disadvantage with this method I see a lot of
drawers with dovetails in front and rabbit or tongue and
groove in back is this for expansion and contraction or just
personal preference
Thank you.
Replies
For drawer-box construction, tight-fitting dovetails are the superior choice of joinery. It really boils down to how much time you want to spend on the process of making them. Also, the type of project you're working on and whether you're making the drawers out of lumber or plywood certainly factor into the decision about which type of joints to use. For instance, an 18th-cent. reproduction writing desk deserves dovetails made in solid stock (maple, pine or poplar). But for contemporary kitchen or bathroom cabinetry, tongue-and-groove (or tongue-and-dado, to be more precise) joints made with plywood (Apple-ply or Baltic birch) are in my opinion just fine.
Drawers made of solid lumber will swell and shrink with changes in ambient moisture, no matter which type of joint you use; so it is more a matter of personal preference.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled