I’m preparing the pieces that will be needed for the drawers in the lingerie chest I am making. The drawer sides are very thin and to cut a drawer bottom groove in it would make it very weak. Instead, I’ve opted to include drawer slips – a piece of wood glued to the side to effectively thicken the drawer side where the grove is located.
I began with a board just longer than my drawer sides and wide enough to cut 12 drawer slips. For each slip I completed the following steps:
- Plane the board flat.
- Create the groove (I used a Record 043 plow plane with a 1/4″ blade).
- Marked the thickness of the slip and the chamfer limits with a marking gauge.
- Chamfer to one side of the groove – this will be the side seen in the drawer bottom in use.
- Riped the slip from the board with a big rip saw.
- Planed away the saw marks to leave a good surface to glue to the drawer sides.
Further reading: Popular Woodworking has two articles available that cover drawer slips by Chris Schwarz and Glen Huey.
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