White Oak Console Table: Drawers

There is something wonderful about opening and closing a handmade drawers that has no metal slides.

I chose to complete the drawers with a pinned rabbet design, after reading an article by Hendrik Varju.

After choosing a single board to complete the drawer fronts and sizing the drawer front blanks to be tightly fit, it was time to accomplish the joinery for all the parts.

The sides fits into a rabbet cut into the front:

Notice that the sides stand proud of the sides, part of the finally fitting will involve a pass on the jointer to ensure a nice flush fit.

The carcass of the drawer is glued up, using a piece of scrap ply that matches the thickness of the bottom.  A diagonal clamp helps ensure square.

With the drawer carcasses glued up, I do the initial fitting by one quick pass on the jointer for the sides and a fine tuning with a smoother:

To increase the strength of the rabbet joinery, pins are driven thru the sides into the edge of the fronts

With the joinery finished, I size the ply bottoms, fine tune the fit of each drawer, wipe the interiors with a spit coat of shellac and set the drawers aside.