Recently I was tasked with adding drawers to a couple of tables that were commissioned. This is not a difficult task to complete, but does require a good bit of planning. First, you have to decide what type of joinery you are going to use. Then, you have to figure the size of you opening, so that you can buy the appropriate slides. Once, you know all of that information you then have to decide what type of slide that you want to purchase... Like I said, there is a lot of planning that goes into this rather simple build process. So, I decided that I would make the process simpler by creating a calculator that would take all out all of the math and just leave me a with few questions to answer.
This calculator has multiple different sections in it for multiple different joinery techniques. The techniques included are Single Rabbet's, Double(Locking) Rabbet's, Butt Joints with Floating Panels, Regular Dovetails, and Half-Blind Dovetails. Now, I am sure that there are more ways to construct drawer boxes, but I noticed while writing all of these different equations that some of them overlap when it comes to final sized pieces.
That aside, all of these sections work in the same way. There are only a few columns that you have to input your information into. Those columns are Opening Width, Opening Depth, Opening Height, Drawer Sided Width, Slide With Deduction, Bottom Panel Thickness, PD Distance from Bottom, and only on the Half-Blind section you will have to insert the distance between the edge of the board and the start of the tail. Also, you'll have to input is how many drawers of that size you'll be making, and you can find that to the right of the "# of Drawers=" box. Each of these are self explanatory except for the Slide Width Deduction and PD Distance from Bottom. Slide width deduction is the distance that your slides' instructions says that the drawer box should be away from the inside of the piece. I wrote the equations to where you just have to input the distance of one side, but this value will be doubled when it figures how big your pieces will be. In the picture of the calculator it says 1/2", because that is the what I have found to be the standard when working with full extension slides. PD Distance From the Bottom is even simpler, it is just how far you want the floating panel raised from the bottom.
Once you input all of that information, it will give you all of the information needed to make your drawer boxes. It will tell you the dimensions for each piece of the drawer box, how many of the pieces you'll need, the total board footage of all the pieces, and sizes of the joinery that you will need to cut. For example, the Single Rabbet calculator pictured below says that the width of the groove for the panel needs to be 1/4" deep, by 5/16" wide, and it also says that your rabbet should be 5/16" deep. It also then gives the name of the part, how big it should be, how many you need, and the total board footage of the parts.
Remember though that each of the sections feature slightly different calculations so you won't be able to use the calculations from one calculator and expect them to work for a different joinery technique. Lastly, with all the information here you will no doubt be able to use these calculators to the fullest of their capabilities, and I hope they make your next project that much easier!
This is pretty cool! How many times have you used it already?