Inset drawers and doors

[woodmats]

I'm making 2 hutches with inset drawers and doors and the hutches have face frames. Inset drawers/doors is new to me so I have two questions:

What is an appealing size of the reveal? For the doors, I'm using face frame mounted euro style hinges  and they allow down to .060" but I was thinking to make it .100". 

How do you best accomplish the reveal at the bottom of the drawers? I'm not planning on using metal slides and with the face frames, I'm not sure how best to accomplish this

Mats

[paarker]

I use penny's as spacers when needed.

[jteneyck]

Some folks use a penny, some use a nickel, still others use Hoadley's book, "Understanding Wood", and calculate how big to make the top/bottom reveals so the drawers won't bind, assuming we are talking solid wood fronts.  Take your pick, but if you use some arbitrary reveal, like a penny or nickel, make sure you build loose in the Winter and tight in the Summer. 

If you are not using metal slides, and the drawers are going to ride on runners by the bottoms of the drawer sides, then the bottom of the drawer front needs to be cut away by whatever reveal you want, or sized that way before building the drawer which is the method I prefer.  

I'll pass along a tip I read in FWW several years ago that has proven to make fitting traditional inset drawers much easier.  Cut the drawer front to fit the opening before you build the drawer.  It was such a stupid simple idea but I had never thought of it, proving how stupid I can sometimes be I guess.  Anyway, it's much easier to fit the front to the opening before building the drawer.  Once that's done, you just build the drawer sides and back to fit the front and the depth of your cabinet.  If you do it this way, then the bottom reveal is easily controlled, too.  Make the sides a little too wide at the bottom, then hand plane them down, carefully, as you test fit the drawer in the opening, until you get the reveal you established when you sized the front to the opening. 

John

[woodmats]

Thanks John!

I was planning to leave the drawer front blanks a little oversized and fit them to the opening, just as you suggested. If you leave the reveal as small as a penny and elevate the front of the drawer to get the reveal, the drawer sides will then be the thickness of a penny less than the opening. That means I better fit the whole drawer to the opening in case I did not get the box perfectly square.

Mats

[Steve N]

I use penny's as spacers when needed.

Pennies get used for woodworking more than change. I have a cup of them in the shop...

[jteneyck]

Mats, there's no saying your drawer openings are square front to back.  But drawer runners and guides generally allow enough latitude so you can adjust the fit of the drawer in the opening w/o that being an issue.  It's better to build in adjustability than have to build something perfect and come up short.  

John

[woodmats]

John, I'm learning about adjustments. My personality is to do a lot of planning and try for perfection but things never work quite as planned.  For this project, two 40 inch high hutches, in the same style but not identical, I re-acquainted myself with Sketchup and went through the chiefwoodworker tutorials that I saved from years back and that helped to avoid a number of mistakes already. I based my design on the TV cabinet from the Woodsmith shop (the one that has a lift for the TV) where I like the leg design and how the legs wrap around the corners of the carcass. The legs are two pieces glued up as an L and the plan calls for one 3/4" piece and a 1/2" piece but since I don't own a planer, I used 3/4" stock for both pieces, then cut a 1/4" off one side. I'm using hard maple and cutting off 1/4" worked surprisingly well. After the legs are on the carcass, I will make both doors and drawers to fit the openings. I'm especially challenged to get things square so I made the simple squaring jig from the Woodsmith shop and made the guides high enough so I can use it for the carcass and drawers, not just doors. We'll see if it helps well enough to make the inset drawers fit with less adjustments.

Mats

[Hank Knight]

Mats,

The size off the reveal isn't as important as consistency. A nickel, a penny, I've seen reveals as small as the thickness of a dime. But the reveal needs to be the same for each drawer and the spacing consistent all the way around the drawer front. If not, you'll be surprised how noticeable it is. Same with doors.

Hank

[jteneyck]

Hi Mats,

Yes, strive for perfection, but have a plan for how to deal with it when the result isn't perfect as it almost never is.  Some designs allow for that more easily than others.  

John

[woodmats]

Hank, I'm looking forward to that phase of the project. I will definitely make the drawer guides adjustable to assist there. For the doors, I'm going to practice on scraps to get the location of the door hinges correct when I get there.

Mats