Cabinet Drawer Joints

Although not as strong as a dovetail joint a well made lock rabbet joint will hold up fine unless the drawer takes heavy regular pounding.

Cabinet drawer joints.

The front and back pieces are the captive pieces locked into the sides. Learn how to build a clean strong and beautiful half blind dovetail joint and when to use this type of wood joinery. Do screw add any strength to a joint. Although you can build drawer joints using any number of methods we think lock rabbet joints like the ones above make sense for attaching the sides fronts and backs of most drawers.

Dovetail joints are the most durable. For the wood joint torture test in wood magazine issue 173 they created and then destroyed more than 100 joints. Just because a cabinet includes dovetail joints doesn t mean it s a great quality drawer. A perfect example is a drawer front where you don t want to see the end of the through dovetail on the face of the drawer.

However they can also be the most difficult to make. There is a certain amount of skill and special attention required when constructing a dovetail joint. The grooves used to make up the locking rabbet drawer joint are 1 4 deep. For this type of joint the best choice is a half blind dovetail.

With 1 2 drawer material you simply subtract 1 2 from the desired drawer width.