Fast, Inexpensive, Strong Drawers

When my dad set up his garage, he came a cross some used approx, 12"W x 18"D x 6"H fiberglas trays*. He probably got then for nothing. He built a wooden frame about bench height and about 15ft along the wall, it was 4 maybe 5 drawers tall and guessing, 12 across. The trays were removable. The trays looked something like this, although not the same size or material.

• I think they came from an animal research facility and they were used as mice cages. But that's educated but still a bit of speculation.

How do you rout a 9" thick stack?

Answering a question with a question?

Simple. You have 16 3/4" thick baltic birch plywood pieces, say 12" x 18". Stack them one atop the next; now you have a stack of plywood 12" thick. (Assumption: The drawers are 18" square with 12" high sides; the number of sides in the stack must be congruent to zero modulo four).

Split the stack in half (because you need two different crenellation patterns for them to join correctly). Now you have two stacks 6" thick.

Set the stack on end. Clamp the stack to prevent the boards from shifting. Clamp it vertically in the face vise (or clamp it to a vertical surface such that the end you're routing is horizontal).

Place your homemade box-joint jig[*] over the end, clamp and rout away. Offset the jig by the width of one crenellation for the other stack to cut the matching joint.

Voila, one now has the sides for four drawers. Glue, assemble and clamp.

You must have a very nice router if you can cut the edges of a 6" thick stack without chatter or deflection.

I once ran a 15 HP pin router that could eat wood very fast. It took that monster at least a minute to come up to speed IIRC.

...

Stack thickness makes no difference -- router bit stickout is just over 3/4", regardless of thickness.

Then what's the point of stacking the boards, and having to avoid the clamps?

I think you have a very different idea of how this is done from that of the person proposing it. There's no need to "avoid the clamps", you just place them far enough from the edge that they don't interfere with the operation.

And the purpose is to minimize the setup time. You have a hundred pieces to cut, clamp them together, set up for the cut, cut. Not "take a piece, set up, cut, repeat" a hundred times.

I suspect he's not familiar with box joints or the normal shift & cut methods used by off-the-shelf (or typical home-made) box joint jigs.

Indeed.

Can you post a description of it?

First off, the objective is to make box joints. To be clear on the definition, this is a box joint:

Here's a nice howto on making a jig for a handheld router:

He doesn't show it with the pieces stacked, but the principle is fairly straightforward. Same technique but clamp together all the pieces that get the same cut and do them at once.

On 10/12/2019 4:00 PM, J. Clarke wrote: > On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 14:50:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins" > snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: >

The objective is to make drawers strong enough, fast, and cost effective. In that order of importance.

Board lumber (other than general rough construction lumber) is expensive locally so it could be self eliminating over ply. There are no "real" lumber yards left around here. Just construction lumber yards who, "can get that for you, but it will be expensive." The last guy with tons of good stuff actually was across the street from my old office. About the same time I went over to see him about some stuff for a big job he retired and liquidated everything. He didn't have anything I needed left. Just my luck. LOL.

Not sure who made the comment about gluing end grain on plywood, but um... only half of the end is end grain.

One thing I noticed is a lot of the guys (on YouTube anyway) doing pocket joinery don't seem to be using glue. When I have glued and screwed ply in the past (not pocket joinery) I used lots of glue. The combination is pretty darn strong and doesn't seem to shift, tweak or flex much. Ply is also pretty stable.

By the way I do know what a box joint is, and I got the message about stacking the first time. Jim is more of a metal worker than a wood worker like myself. You are more likely to see him hanging around R.C.M than R.W