[wilschroter]

I noticed on a nice dresser I have that the drawer fronts were actually integrated with the drawer box versus being separated. I really like this design, and I happen to have a CNC machine that I could use to do a custom dado in a drawer front.

Am I going to run into problems when I go to actually install this drawer (final alignment) or is this something I can make adjustments with at the drawer slide level? This "seems" like a good design and of course my furniture is perfectly aligned, but I'm wondering if I'm creating problems for myself with having the drawer face "hard coded" to the drawer box.

 

[wilschroter]

@ajosephg do you think with wood glue that would be a long term issue? I only ask because we're talking about a 5/8" drawer front end grain going into a 1/4" deep dado. These are clothing drawers not utility drawers so probably not an insanely heavy load but I'd like to be mindful.

I've seen this same design done with a dovetail groove going from the bottom part of the drawer front to the upper part but creating dovetail grooves and shaping the drawer sides to fit just felt like way more work for a simple design.

 

[wilschroter]

@bondogaposis How weak are the glue joints really? I'm not married to this design at all but every demonstration I ever see around wood glue is that it's "as strong as wood". I can definitely see glue failing in theory but in practice do we see a lot of this happening?

 

[wilschroter]

OK definitely enough signals here to suggest it's not worth cheating on that last step re: holding the front together.

However my other question was how much trouble do I get myself into with attaching the drawer face to the drawer itself versus having a drawer face independent of the drawer box? Can I make the adjustments at the drawer slide level, assuming I have something like a Blum under mount drawer?

 

[wilschroter]

I'm not a fan of the "double front" design which is what intrigued me about this. The dresser that I mentioned looks incredibly clean from a design standpoint and of course it loses some of the weight which is always a plus.

 

[wilschroter]

I'm planning on using Blum undermount slides which are new to me. I understand that they have a fair bit of micro-adjustment which I thought could potentially offset any discrepancies in my cabinet dimensions, either through poor workmanship on my part or just the material shifting with temperatures and such.

The whole "this is how to align drawer fonts" process to me seems bizarrely complicated/tedious for what it is and I keep thinking there is a way to "out engineer" the process through a different approach to engineering and construction.

Aside from the look of an integrated drawer front I also liked the idea that I could get all of my alignment between the drawer and the front done at the construction level and then isolate adjustments to the drawer slides.