Piston fit drawer in August.

It seems that woodworkers are a group of folks that generally revere the days of old. Remember this past August? Man, that was so yesterday that I feel I can talk about it with appropriate woodworking reverence.

I built a “sofa end table,” for want of a better term, smack dab in the midst of rainforest heat and humidity. If you’re going to fit a drawer with as little slop as possible, that would seem the logical time of year to do it. I’m curious to see if it will rattle around in February when every last bit of humidity has evaporated from our dwelling and the humidifiers will exhaust themselves in trying to keep our skin from cracking like dry leaves.

 

 

 

 

The quartersawn White Oak drawer material and the Cherry had been in my shop for more than two years. They knew the routine by then.

This method of fitting drawers I’ve gleaned from cabinetmakers in the UK and come up with my own method for preparing the carcase. The premise is that each component gets fit exactly to its corresponding space in the drawer pocket, which is not assumed to be perfectly square, and that the back will be a template, once exactly sized, for the front.

The first order of business, once the table was together, was to glue on, then screw, the runners. In this photo the table is upside down on a flat surface and ply spacers (Maple) determine their position fractionally above the plane of the lower front rail. That way the drawer sides will clear it and not rub.

Following that it was necessary to fill the space between the side panels and the leg posts, about 1/4″. This process of establishing parallel and straight interior walls is critical. The sides were not straight, to begin with, deflecting inward about three thou. Cross rails mid span between the drawer runners and between the kickers pushed the bow out adequately. A carefully shot “fit stick” told me, eventually, that the infilled sides were parallel top and bottom, front to back.

One fine point of this method is to make the side to side dimension in the back about 1/32″ larger than the opening in the front. I did this after establishing parallel. What that means is that the drawer is easy to push home, but gets tight as you are about to open it all the way out. I’m sure this has saved many a drawer from careening to the floor.

Fitting the drawer members begins with making the back to fit the front opening snug and gap free on all edges. It is a time consuming process where the shooting board is indispensable. I made a template for each side, using paper shims on the fence until the angles were just right (and keeping track of the shims for the front). The pieces were pushed back into the opening to rest on the runners, which I mentioned before were a hair above the front lower rail.

Next, one template was marked off, knifed, onto an end of the drawer back, and, using the appropriate shim(s), shot to the line. The length of the piece was next taken and the opposite template laid alongside the line.

Here is my method to save time on the shooting board. After all, shooting quartersawn White Oak takes a toll on the cutting edge and there’s no point in trying to plane more material than needed. I set the workpiece against the miter gauge with the blade ready to cut to the knife line (the longer of the two distances if it is not square) and have the opposite end butted against a paper shim next to the stop block. Before cutting I remove the shim and shove the piece against the block. There will still be a substantial amount to plane and this is the most slow going part, to achieve a very tight and accurate fit left to right.

Then the back is the template for the front and marked onto its inside face and the fitting process repeated. Much quicker this time around!

The sides are shot to finished width and have no vertical play. They are fairly tight.

I prepared a sample side and front to get the hang of sawing the Oak and to practice dovetailing, which I enjoy doing but have little call for these days.

 

Gluing up and final fitting.

The idea is that you know that the front and back fit the opening and the sides of the opening are parallel. This accounts for the method of marking for the thickness of the sides so that they are proud of the pins and once the drawer is glued and the glue cured, you have but to plane the sides front to back until you reach the end grain on the front and back pieces. At that point you should be ever so close to the right fit. Then it’s one shaving at a time.

The result is a really sweet working drawer. I took this table to a show at the International Yacht Restoration School and was asked by students who had never experienced that level of drawer action what kind of wax I used. Grease, lots of elbow grease.

Recommended reading and viewing.

David Charlesworth’s “Furniture-Making Techniques. Volume Two.” His article “Gliding Silently.”

Rob Porcaro’s article in Finewoodworking Magazine issue 224 “4 Steps to a Sweet-Fitting Drawer” plus his blog post “It’s August. Are your drawers up too high?”

David Savage DVD “Drawer Making, How to make ‘The piston fit drawer’”