Best Wood To Make Cabinet Drawers

Make a no fuss case using your tablesaw.

Best wood to make cabinet drawers.

Due to its unique construction plywood has the highest strength to weight ratio of all of the best cabinet materials. Traditional drawers have through dovetails at the back of the box and half blind dovetails at the front. Everyone wants to know that the home improvements they re making are durable and add real value to the property. For the sake of showing you how to build a simple cabinet drawer we ll be talking about attaching an overlay drawer front.

Our favorite technique is to make the drawer sides front and bottom using 1 2 thick stock and then glue on a 1 4 thick piece of veneer for the front. Whether it is a new build or you are remodeling a kitchen choosing quality parts such as drawer boxes is important. If you re searching for the best wood for drawers you might be a homeowner new cabinet installer or a general contractor trying to make decisions about what drawer boxes to order. Inset drawers are more difficult because of the precision required to get perfect lines around the drawer front.

Start by ripping two side pieces to the. This is the traditional and many would argue the strongest way to make a drawer. Use a strong plywood with a 5 ply minimum on the drawer sides. Read this post to understand more about choosing inset or overlay doors.

Drawers call for a different type of construction than cabinet boxes and while you may use the same type of face plywood for the drawer fronts your box construction and lining may differ. Hardwoods like cherry or fine maple are expensive. For a base cabinet less than 4 wide you can cut all the parts except the back and toekick from one 3 4 4 8 sheet of plywood or mdf. It is very strong and resilient as well.

It is certainly the best material for cabinet sides backs shelves and drawer bottoms cliq studios. Plywood is easily repairable and replaceable. If you re using 1x material that is a full 3 4 then just subtract 1 1 2 but if you are using plywood it gets a little tricky since plywood isn t really 3 4. Plywood thicknesses vary though so make certain your material thickness measures a true 3 4 or adjust your part dimensions to achieve the final cabinet width.

On a big project like a full wall entertainment center the added cost of building solid cherry drawers could add up to hundreds of extra dollars. Using a less expensive but equally suitable wood won t affect the look of the finished piece unless you like to leave the drawers open for some reason. Which solid wood type is best for a specific project depends on budget if the cabinetry will be painted and personal preference.