Inset drawers and doors

I did my first insets a few months ago and it sounds like our experiences were similar. I used false drawer fronts so that there was complete separation between fitting the drawers themselves, then fitting the drawer fronts to the face frame openings. I used shims as you did, and double-sided tape secured the false fronts long enough for me to slip in a couple of screws. I’m sure you agree that they really do look slick. Well worth the trouble!

-- Paul, Clinton, NC

We do overly, but occassionally have req for inset and we are always successful. Now I am no pro @ all with inset but we manage.

First, i subtract 1/4” from opening height/width. That gives me 1/8” gap all around. I fear any variation in size would be much more discernable if I went with 1/16 gap.

When building anything from doors to drawer faces the most important thing is saws being set up to perform perfectly square cuts. For exame the miter saw must make a perfecy square cut on your rails to make assembling a perfectly square door easier. Ensuring everything is cutting square, I then find efficiently and paitiently assembling doors without rushing allows for good square assembly. Of course the face frame members must all be straight and square @ the corners. When all things are dimensioned correctly and are perfectly square and “flat”, then inset works flawlessly.

Aside from these things, using the card scraper as you described is a good technique for any minor adjustments.

-- Jerry Nettrour, San Antonio, www.topqualitycabinets.net

we use 1/16th inch gap at work, and sand/scribe to fit for any variances. some woods work better than others, dont use hickory it shrinks and swells way to much, doors will rub and you will trim to fit then when it shrinks you will have huge gaps

While I don’t claim to be an expert, here is how I did the inset drawers on this project, using false fronts. http://lumberjocks.com/projects/54707

Jerry’s advice to make everything square is great, but with my present skill set, it’s impossible. While the openings on the above project are almost square, they are not perfect, the fronts had to be fine tuned to fit the openings.

1. The gaps are about 1/16 inch.
2. I used a hand plane to adjust the fronts to the non-squareness of the openings with the plane blade set as thin as possible (probably taking about a half a thousandth off with each stroke. I would mark the side of the front where material needed to be removed (with a pencil) and very carefully plane away. For example, if I needed to remove 0.010 from one end, I’d start planing about 2 inches from that end, and then work back until the fit was perfect.
3. This results in each front being mated to a given opening, so it’s important to mark the back side so you don’t forget where it goes. In my case this needed to be done anyway since the fronts were all grain matched and cut from a single board.
4. I used these draw front adjustment screws http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=10898&filter=drawer%20screws to mount the fronts to the drawer box. So, I then drilled 4 quarter inch holes in the drawer box. (I used four holes in the large drawers to make sure the fronts would not warp.)
5. With the drawer box installed I put a 1/4 inch dowel center in each hole.
6. I taped a shim to the bottom and one side of the drawer front, and then inserted the front into the opening and pressed it against the dowel centers, making a mark on the inside surface of the drawer fronts.
7. Then I drilled the pilot holes for the screws and attached the fronts to the drawer boxes with the screws just tight enough to allow the front to be adjusted. When the adjustment was to my satisfaction the screws were tightened the rest of the way. (I drilled these holes on a drill press because I didn’t want a hand drill to get out of control and drill completely through the front.)

-- Joe

Everything is fitted to my satisfaction but I haven’t attached the fronts to the drawers yet. Question… is there any reason why I can’t glue my fronts to the drawers? I’ve pre-drilled my holes for the drawer pulls on the fronts and I was going to temporarily screw my fronts to the drawers. I see everyone is screwing their fronts onto the drawers. Nobody has mentioned glue. Is there a reason for this?

-- Bernie: It never gets hot or cold in New Hampshire, just seasonal!

If you get it wrong, or if something changes in the future, you’re totally screwed.

-- Joe

I agree. I use screws just in case I later need to make an adjustment. By the way, my preference is to place the screws near the middle of the vertical dimension so that there can be slight movement with moisture changes, especially when the species are different.

-- Paul, Clinton, NC

DON’T GLUE!!!! Did ya get that? Big Vice has the reason. Rember that the wood will move. An applied drawer front, either overlay or inset, wil “wiggle some over time. I also allow the wood to equillibrate to the environment as best I can. Either in the shop or some other controlled temp/humidity situation. Kinda like letting the flooring stay indoors for a couple days.
Oh, I use applied drawer fronts all the time. Much easier to get ‘em right.
Bill

-- bill@magraphics.us

I’m glad I asked… I WILL NOT GLUE. I might even wait and get some of those drawer front screws. Thanks for the info and interests. Folks like you make this forum.

-- Bernie: It never gets hot or cold in New Hampshire, just seasonal!

For me, the key to a successful inset application is tolerance. If each step in your process is “sloppy”, the tolerances will usually add up to something inadequate for inset applications.

Running a tight ship is important—meaning all the tools are cutting true and square and all the small numbers are accounted for, e.g. Realizing the shaper head is cutting 0.425 instead of 7/16” tenons resulting in slightly larger doors than the cutlist indicates.

If tolerances are properly accounted for, an inset job goes together with very little manual adjustment after the fact.

I also tend to utilize 6-way adjustable hinges and drawer glides with adjustable clips to ensure the fitment can be made quickly and easily. (Though some repro pieces require old-time finial hinges, etc.)

I’ve been criticized by fellow woodworkers saying, “This isn’t Rocket Science, you know.”
For them, I say, keep building sloppy work and leave the insets to me.

Mel Gibson had a line in the movie “The Patriot” that has stuck with me: ”Aim small, miss small.”
This is good advice with inset jobs.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

@ maljr1980—we are planning on using hickory to make inset drawers/doors—any advice other than “don’t”, as we’ve already gotten the lumber??? would it work to leave just a slighlty larger gap? building in the winter/spring, will the wood be at it’s smallest? how much expansion is to be expected in the summer humidity? any advice you can offer would be most welcome.

I have done both false fronts and dovetailed fronts. If all the drawers or doors are the same size, make one out of mdf or inexpensive anything. fit it tightly but do not glue it – this will be a template for cutting after you have it fit together.

If you ever watched New Yankee Workshop, Norm always made a “model” that he used to make the final pieces. THis way all your mistakes are inexpensive and the material is stable.

Wood moves – how much depends upon the grain, the cut, direction, moisture content, and if the material next to it is moving the same or counter to what you are doing. Did I mention the size? THere are charts for this but I can’t remember where I saw them. I am sure there is someone here that has the charts or formulas.

-- David in Damascus, MD

Project is almost done but I do appreciate and thank you all for your time. David, I don’t watch much TV but did have a few scarps of wood laying around and figured using them as prototypes. It was a great method in figuring what was wrong with the final fit. As stated, I used my card scrapers to make some final adjustments.

All comments have been appreciated. Thanks for teaching things I didn’t know and thanks for steering me in the right direction. Even Sarahss has reminded me the of the great benefit of belonging to this site (hope you get your answer).

I will post a picture of this project when I’m done. The only problem is that my sister is a very fussy person and I had her pick and stain the cabinet. The doors have flat panels and I had her stain the before assembling the doors so no white lines will be showing in the future. As you will see, she chose to stain this beautiful maple wood with a redish stain.

Another thing… I assembled the carcass using half blind machined dovetails. I didn’t pay much attention to the joints as long as they were tight and strong. I had intended adding molding to hide the minor imperfections. She liked them so much, she asked me to leave them be. Had I known this, I would have made my dovetail joints a more natural look besides bveing more careful to minor details. – Thanks again LJ

-- Bernie: It never gets hot or cold in New Hampshire, just seasonal!