Popular Woodworking 2006-04 № 154, страница 49
r Cabinet top Cabinet top Overlay door Lipped door Inset door Cabinet top The three illustrations at left show an overlay door, a lipped door and an inset door. The views are side sections of the cabinet top and face frame (shown in gray). The doors themselves are shown in white. The overlay makes the cabinet slightly more shallow, while the lipped door gains some interior depth. The inset door allows the most amount of interior storage and makes it possible to build without a face frame on the cabinet. sounds easy but in practice allows less room for error. We're going to discuss different types of doors and drawers used in case furniture, as well as take a look at the most common joinery methods to create both. We'll also discuss the proper fitting of doors and drawers, but we'll save the hardware used to attach them until the next chapter. Fitting the Cabinet Before we get into details on doors and drawers, let's take a look at a generality for both categories that needs to be addressed. Both doors and drawers can fit into a cabinet in three ways: overlay, lipped or inset. These fittings are a function of both design and application. But that's not to say that one style fits only one type of furniture design. Inset doors and drawers can be found on contemporary furniture as well as Shaker furniture. But their location does affect the appearance of the piece. The storage aspect is small, but interesting. Both overlay and lipped doors and drawers are designed for use with face-frame cabinets. The frame itself constrains the size of the opening for accessing the storage space. By using a lipped door or drawer you can gain about 3/8" of storage depth in the cabinet. Again, not huge, but it's extra storage. The inset door can also be used with a face frame cabinet, but its most significant advantage is obvious in contemporary frameless cabinets. The inset door allows full access to the top and bottom of the cabinet opening, and can offer a clean, finished look. Any type of drawer or door construction can be used in any of the three designs, so as we move on to discuss the different doors and drawers we aren't going to focus on that detail, but look more closely at the construction itself. Drawer Types and Joinery We're going to focus on three types of drawer joinery for this article: dovetails, rabbets and down-and-dirty butt joints. While there are probably dozens more to discuss, these three versions comprise 90 percent of the drawers used in case construction. The purpose of this chapter isn't to show you how to build each drawer, but rather discuss the benefits (and deficits) of each. We will drop a few hints we've learned over the years that will make construction easier. ■ Dovetails The first type of drawer is a dovetailed drawer. As mentioned earlier these drawers can be made as overlay, lipped or inset and except for odd occurrences the front joint is traditionally a half-blind dovetail, while the back joint can be either a half-blind or a through dovetail. Half-blind dovetails are more difficult to create because you're carving out a precise three-sided alcove rather than just cutting a two-sided channel. The half-blind type is necessary, however, if you want to see only the primary wood at the front of the cabinet. There's always more than one way to skin a cat, and the This drawing shows a typical dovetailed drawer, but with a twist. Through dovetails are easier to cut than half-blind dovetails. So in this case the drawer is made with through dovetails and a veneer front is added to make the front look like half-blind dovetails. Popular Woodworking |
