Fast, Inexpensive, Strong Drawers

Bob La Londe · 2019-10-04T20:24:29+00:00

This might be metalworking or wood working. I'm seriously thinking about removing the work benches from along the back wall in my shop and replacing them with a single continuous monolithic steel plate top work bench. Beveled, welded, and ground flat at each joint. Apx 54' long. Ok, that part is definitely metalworking. Here is the part I am undecided about. I want drawers from the bench top to about 3 inches above the floor from end to end. No. not a 54' long drawer. LOL. Banks of drawers, to eliminate all my roll away tool boxes and sort a lot of tools with their related parts. ie: Snap rings with snap ring tools, etc... Appearance is a non issue for me. Strength and speed of assembly probably rank 1 & 2 for importance with cost coming in at number three. Not all drawers would need to be super strong of course, but I would like to make them all the same. Right now I am thinking about wood drawers or folded/welded sheet metal drawers. I have a decent finger brake and various metal cutting processes in my shop. I also have all the wood working tools I could need for making wood drawers. No matter which way I go I'd want to make them all the same way. I looked at roll away bottom cabinets as an option under the bench, but they are either way to light duty, don't have drawer configurations that I like, or way to expensive.

Oct 04, 2019 45 Replies

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Scott Lurndal 6 years ago

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.

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Jim Wilkins 6 years ago

Can you post a description of it?

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Scott Lurndal 6 years ago

formatting link

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J. Clarke 6 years ago

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.

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Bob La Londe 6 years ago

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

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