jimi43":1lpsl0qa said:
...are there more elegant ways of construction? Jim
There are different ways certainly Jim. There follows some images of typical drawers using quadrant style slips.
1. An underside view of a typical slipped drawer construction with bottom partially inserted.
2. Looking down into a front right corner.
3. A low level view into the front left hand corner of a slipped drawer. Note the tenon on the end of the slip to ensure the grooves of the slip and the drawer front line up.
4. Low level view of left rear corner of a drawer showing how the slip is notched at the rear end to fit under the drawer back.
5. Sketch of typical quadrant slip.
6. Sketch of typical quadrant slipped construction viewed towards the rear right corner of a drawer from the outside.
7. An under drawer low level overview of a slip fitted to a drawer.
8. A further sketch of the rear end of a quadrant slip and drawer corner showing typical construction. The top edge of the drawer back is normally set a little lower than the drawer sides, and frequently rounded over. This, I was taught, is supposed to allow air trapped at the back as the drawer closes, and therefore become compressed and preventing easy closure, to escape over the back top edge and pass towards the front of the drawer and out of the cabinet. (I'm not fully convinced the reasoning for this 'premium' configuration taught to me always hold water, because surely it depends on the configuration of the cabinet and the configuration of the runners and kickers, ie, where else could trapped air escape to?)
A better quality slip form?
The sketches below are for an alternative flush style slip-- this is where the top face of the drawer bottom sits flush with the top edge of the slip. Many consider this to be superior because of the flush appearance on the inside of the drawer, but you do lose a little storage space because of the thicker drawer bottom required. Unfortunately, I don't have an example to hand to photograph, and I didn't photograph the construction of the last drawer I made with this configuration. But hopefully you'll be able to get the general idea from these sketches.
A. With the flush slip the drawer bottom is thicker. With the quadrant slip illustrated above you would use, for eaxmple, a 6 mm thick bottom, in this case you'd use a bottom about 12 mm thick. A tongue is worked on the bottom face of the drawer bottom at either end where they fit into the slip grooves. At the front edge, the tongue is worked into the top face of the drawer bottom, and this tongue fit into the groove worked into the back face of the drawer front. The idea here is that if there's any shrinkage in the width (front to back) of a solid wood bottom it doesn't show as a gap (when viewed from the inside) on the back face of the drawer front.
B. Finally, here is a sketch of the rear view of a drawer constructed to set the top face of the drawer bottom flush with the top edge of the slip. The little bead and quirk detail on the top inside corner of the slip is just one decorative option to disguise the intersection between slip and drawer bottom. Slainte.
