Thread: Putting a drawer into a table apron.

You may get away with a very shallow drawer seeing as the apron is quite thick. About 65mm so you have about 20mm left top and bottom. A bit of reinforcement above and below the drawer opening at the back would be good also. The structural strength will be reduced a bit. It is a case of how much you can get away with. Something I have never done but with due regard for what the apron is required to do I think it could be done.
Regards
John

Paul Sellers has a video where he puts a drawer in his workbench apron, might give you a start ?

i like drawers in table aprons - they’re so handy

Bit of a pain doing it after the fact, rather than during construction, but it should be no problem at all.

If you have the drawer in the short rail, you can just add a stretcher rail between the long apron rails behind the drawer.

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

Bit of a pain doing it after the fact, rather than during construction, but it should be no problem at all.

If you have the drawer in the short rail, you can just add a stretcher rail between the long apron rails behind the drawer.

thanks Elan. I didn’t build this. The wife bought it some 20 years ago.

thanks for the suggestion of doing it on the short end. The wife wanted it on the long side but I see the sense in doing it on the end. There goes my holiday

You can do them on the long side but Ive seen plenty done that end up with a decent sag .
Whats on your side here though is the 45mm thick top . 45 is a bit thicker than the 19 to 25mm old ones Ive seen with a sag so its going to help.

I do plenty of tables with drawers in the end. Normally one at each end . What allows them to be done and sat at is the overhang of the top being 245mm or more. You could do it without overhang , or a small 40mm one my way but sitting at the end would be harder. Or to hard to get your legs under.
When I'm doing a drawer in the end, the best ones have a lower stretcher rail 80 mm off the floor each end and another rail 45 to 50mm thick directly under the drawer, sometimes with a 19mm rail on top as well under the table top. The lower short stretchers are joined to one long one down the middle.

The minimum rails Id do for an end drawer or 2 would be one full depth rail in the middle , and one 45 to 50 mm under the drawer at each end . The other benefit of this way is the drawer front is the full depth of the side rails . 118 mm .

Edit . Easier to chop it in like EJ said for the end and add a rail behind.

Lappa, it should be a fairly straight forward task, however there are a couple of issues. These are my ideas, and reflect how I would do it. Others may disagree - that would make good discussion.

Firstly, start by deciding whether you want an inset drawer front or lapped drawer front. Then remove section of the rail where the drawer case will be. Note that it is possible to re-use the removed section as an insert drawer front, but this is tricky work and requires very careful sawing with a fine-toothed and thin-kerfed handsaw. You will find a demo of this here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMad...eview2009.html

Next add stretchers across the table, and decide how you will do this - dovetailed or laps. These will be on the outside of the drawer case, and therefore there will need to be a drawer blade extending into the case area. You likely will need to support the stretchers at the centres.

Thirdly, keeping in mind that you are building into the long side of the table, the width of the drawer must be narrower than the length of the drawer .. otherwise it will rack or be vulnerable to racking.

Regards from Berlin

Derek

Originally Posted by Lappa

We have a pine sunroom dining room table 2400 x 1100. The top is 45mm thick and the apron is 118 x 30. The wife posed the following question “can you put a drawer in the apron to hold place mats etc?”
Is it possible to add a drawer into the apron on the above table without reducing the strength of the structure?

hi Lappa

you have 118 mm to play with.
inserting a shallow drawer -- no more than 80 mm high is doable. Arrange the apron so that you keep at least 25 mm of meat on the BOTTOM of the apron, which leaves about 13 mm above the drawer.
At 80 mm high, your drawer will loose about 20 mm in depth for drawer slips leaving about 55 mm (just over 2") for the place mats. If. each place mat is about 5 mm thick that should be deep enough for about 10.

In your situation, I would look to make two shallow drawers so the place mats can be cycled between them.


Now for the real challenge ...
Normally the shallow drawers would be created before the table aprons were inserted into the legs -- typically by ripping the top and bottom of each rail and gluing the rail back together minus the drawer fronts. You will likely find this a major challenge given the table is already constructed as it would mean you would need to recreate at least two apron to leg joints.

What I suggest is you use an oscillating saw to cut the hole needed for the drawer fronts -- I doubt that you can cut neatly enough with the oscillating saw to make the fronts reusable, so budget on sourcing the drawer fronts as a separate piece of wood.
Use a chisel plane and a wide chisel to smooth the cuts in the apron.

Then build an over-long drawer -- one where the drawer sides are about twice the depth of the drawer itself. This will really help with potential racking.
The drawer runners and kickers will also need to be appropriately sized to run the full width of the table between the long aprons.
Essentially, the drawer runners and kickers are full height -- 118 mm -- and run the full width of the table. I think that 12 mm ply would work for the drawer box, but at around 1000 wide, watch how you attach the ply box to the table top.



I think that is the basics of what you need to do,

BUT
I have to ask, given that the table top is effectively 163 mm thick (118 + 45) how comfortable is it to sit at?
Do your legs foul the aprons, or is the top surface too high for your elbows?

Originally Posted by ian

hi Lappa


BUT
I have to ask, given that the table top is effectively 163 mm thick (118 + 45) how comfortable is it to sit at?
Do your legs foul the aprons, or is the top surface too high for your elbows?

i measured it late last night - the top is 42mm so it’s 160mm.

Its very comfortable to sit at.

I’m 183cm tall and I have space between the legs and the apron and my arms are parallel when resting on the table top.

Just measured another large outdoor table and its much the same dimensions.

Its a great idea.
When I made our dining table ten years ago I suggested it to my wife.
She was initially against the idea, but mainly because it made the build longer.
Now she loves them.
I out two drawers in each side of the long side aprons.
They are quite shallow but very useful for placemats, coasters as well as cutlery.
I have two support pieces of wood per set of drawers underneath the table top that act as support for the table as well as somewhere to mount the drawer runners.
The top of my table is about 30mm from memory, although being parquetry the central parquets are laid on a sheet of 19mm ply with solid wood frame.
Our table is 1870 x 1200.
Drawers are 397mm,w x 500mm,long x 60mm deep with 45 mm internal usable depth.
I have included some pics which may explain it better than I can.

Cheers

Frank

apron with drawer.jpgdrawer depth.jpgdrawer.jpgunder drawers.jpgunder drawer out.jpg

Thanks Frank. Great pictures and info

I think I’ll be going with end drawers. I read through all the posts again and draw up some plans. One aspect of this table is that who ever built it used screws up through the aprons to secure the top - one will be right in the middle of the drawer!

1F74CEE6-A5C9-46AB-B18E-9FB8C9B670E2.jpegT

I’ll probably have to add some buttons to secure the top at the ends when I remove the central screw.