Popular Woodworking 2006-04 № 154, страница 48

WOODWORKING

ESSENTIALS

BY DAVID THIEL

Casework Construction:

Doors and Drawers

Casework, by its very nature, exists for storage. That storage can range from china to rare books, or simply be a place for your children to store their puzzles or you to file your bills. Regardless of the ultimate purpose, casework storage frequently requires hiding the stored materials from view for aesthetics or need. That aesthetic leads us to the topic of this chapter: doors and drawers.

If a cabinet is shallow in depth, simple shelving is a practical method of storage. By adding doors to some or all of the storage areas in the cabinet, the storage is kept tidy to the casual view even if things inside the cabinet are anything but orderly.

If a cabinet is deeper it offers a greater capacity for storage, but the depth makes it difficult to access items

that are stored (or accidentally pushed) to the rear of the cabinet. This is when drawers can be valuable. They allow you to store items the full depth (and height) of the cabinet in a tidy fashion, but still allow access to everything with little fuss. Yes, building drawers does complicate the case construction process, but there's little doubt that the extra work is worth the effort.

Depending on the style of the case the doors and drawers can be complex, both in appearance and construction, or very simple. Most traditional case furniture designs involve frame-and-panel doors that are a small construction project in their own right. Add to that the edge profiles commonly added to drawer fronts and doors, and these storage accessories often carry the larger weight of the final design of the piece.

When a more clean, contemporary look is the goal, doors and drawers are usually required to essentially disappear and blend in to the casework with as little adornment as possible. That

Shown are a pair of inset drawers designed to close with the drawer fronts flush to the front of the cabinet. The top drawer uses traditional half-blind dovetail joinery to attach the front to the drawer sides. The lower drawer uses more contemporary and commercial rabbet joinery to attach the front. Both styles allow the primary drawer wood (walnut in this case) to be viewed, but the secondary (white pine) wood on the sides remains hidden.