Here is the original blog post over at Lumberjocks.com
Not a lot of progress since the last entry but I have decided to go with simple box drawers with lock rabbeted joints.
I watched a video from Wood Magazine where they conducted strength tests on various joints.
They concluded that the half lap, finger, and rabbeted joints were the strongest, stronger apparently than a dovetail for a drawer box. And it’s a lot simpler. So it may not be as cool as dovetails but I think it will be more than strong enough and will be quite a bit faster and easier to execute.
Here’s another quick video from Wood Magazine on creating lock rabbet drawers.
In this video they say explicitly that their tests show the lock rabbet is stronger than half blind dovetails. This video shows a pretty dirt simple method to setup and cut lock rabbet joints.
The drawers are all the same foot print and only vary in the height. All of the joinery can be cut with a single setup. Basically it’s a series of quarter inch grooves and dados in some half inch material. The joints can be cut on either the table saw with a 1/4 inch dado stack or on the router table with a 1/4 inch bit.
All of the drawer bottoms are identical. All can be cut at the same time with the same setup.