Building a Wooden Baby Crib

Copyright Randy Melton 2005

Section 4 - Drawer Construction

I designed the whole thing to work with or without a single large drawer mounted beneath the mattress. The frame was pretty solid without the drawer assembly butdefinately a lot stiffer with the drawer frame installed. I started by sizing up the drawer that would fit, building the actual drawer then making a frame to hold it. The drawer front is single peice of 7-inch poplar that runs the width of the front with a 1/2 inch gap between it and the 2 corner posts. The 2 sides and back are cut from 6-inch cedar boards 1/2 inch thick with a 1/4-inch groove routed a 1/4 inch from the bottom of the three sides. The sides and back are joined by a half-blind dovetail joint. On the front the drawer sides slide into dovetail slots routed in he back of the drawer front. They are roughly centered with a 1/2 spacing on the top and bottom. The drawer front has a 1/4 inch slot routed 3/4 inches from the bottom between the 2 dovetail slots. This 1/4-inch slot holds the drawer bottom which is made of 2 1/4-inch oak plywood panels with a poplar stiffner in the middle.


You have to work quickly here. The glue will swell the joint and make sliding it together very hard. You can compensate by cutting the joint a little loose (not much!)	I used masking tape to hold the first side square while the glue was drying.


Using the same tape method to glue the second side.	Gluing the center spline in place. Note that it is glued on the end, but not to the panels. The panels are not glued at all. They float within the slots cut for them.


Applying glue to the blind dovetail (back left)	Applying glue to the blind dovetail (back left)


gluing the back in place. The glue holds in three places: left side dovetail, center spline and right side dovetail.	You can see the sliding dovetail slot, the drawer slot on the back of the drawer front, and the slot and half blind dovetail on the right read side panel.


Here you can see the drawer sides. One end has a sliding dovetail, while the other end has a half blind dovetail. If you look closely near my thumb you can see the slot that will hold the drawer bottom.	Here you can see the sliding dovetail cut in back of the drawer-front and the end of the drawer side. Notice also that I routed a cove on all 4 sides of the drawer front to act as drawer pulls.


Somehow the box I made to hold the drawwas not perfectly square with the drawer. after i assembled it with the slides it had a slight bind as the draw was closed. here you can see me cutting the biscuit joint on the drawer side support.	After I cut the side that was binding I reglued it (perfectly parallel this time) and added an small glue block to add strength to the joint.

drawer box -
drawer
half-blind dove tail
sliding dove tail
drawer slides
getting it all parallel

Crib Design / Crib Components / Crib Frame Construction / Crib Drawer Construction / Crib Painting & Finishing / Crib Picture Gallery
Back to Woodworking Projects / Sawbee Home page

I can be contacted at: