# Kitchen Cabinet drawer thickness and wood type



## zort (Jul 31, 2017)

I just finished building my first frameless kitchen cabinet carcass. I used 3/4 birch plywood. 

Moving on to constructing the drawers. I am looking for recommendations on drawer thickness. My largest drawer is 11 x 36 x 22. I was thinking about using 1/2 birch plywood for the drawers. Is that a good thickness? I don't want them too heavy. Also since I am using plywood I will need to edge band them. Will the edge banding stand up to every day use? 

Please share any thoughts or tips you may have.

Thanks!


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

1/2" Birch for drawer sides, 3/16" or 1/4" for drawer bottoms.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

I'm with Toolman on this, 1/2& 1/4 for bottoms

Iron on edge banding works pretty good it you aren't too rough with it, if it is getting severe duty I would use a 3/4 edge band


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

I don't know of anyone that edgebands drawer sides. I just sand the edges and let the plywood edge show. Assuming you mean baltic birch plywood, the thin layers of veneer don't look bad at all. 

On your big drawers that will be used for heavy stuff I put the bottom of the drawer 1/2" up from the bottom of the side and put a couple pieces of 1/2" hardwood from front to back under the bottom to re-enforce it. This helps prevent the bottom of the drawer from sagging enough to be a problem.


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## David_Siebert (Nov 15, 2016)

For a 22x36 drawer bottom 1/4 3-ply is not something that we do. 3/16 should be fine. 

If you can, dovetail the box corners. Kinda depends on the plywood whether you need to band the top edge. You might also consider something like poplar for the drawer boxes. We also use the face frame off cuts glued with biscuits and planed to 1/2 inch for drawer boxes. ...just some thoughts...

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## zort (Jul 31, 2017)

Thanks all for the responses. I'll be edge banding the top of the sides where the plywood would show. 

I also think that adding the extra hardwood under the big drawers is the way to go.


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## zort (Jul 31, 2017)

Not very keen on dovetails they look a bit time consuming to me. I've setup a box joint jig with a dado stack. I would think that glued box joints will also be fairly strong?


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## David_Siebert (Nov 15, 2016)

zort said:


> Not very keen on dovetails they look a bit time consuming to me. I've setup a box joint jig with a dado stack. I would think that glued box joints will also be fairly strong?


Before we bought a dovetailing machine we did finger joints with a pin nail to hold the joint until dry. That works well too.

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