Collectors cabinet drawers jammed

Over the past 12 months I have been making a collectors display cabinet for a friend, approx 420W x 250D x 460H with 10 drawers each 400W x 45H x 250D.

The carcase and the drawer fronts are made of Northern Silky Oak, and the drawer sides and rear of 10mm thick Tassie Oak, with a 4mm marine ply bases.

The carcase is made of 18mm NSO, with mortice and tenon joints at each corner.

The drawers will slide on 16mm x 5mm Tassie Oak runners screwed to the side of the carcase, with 16 x 6mm slots in the side of each drawer. The drawers will have 0.5mm between them to allow for expansion and contraction of the front faces. I hope that will be adequate.

I made the drawers a smidgeon overwidth, and have sanded them down to a nice piston fit a couple of weeks ago during the 34 degC days.

I brought the carcase and fitted drawers into the house overnight, not air-conditioned, and next morning the drawers were jammed tight in the carcase.

What would you think is a suitable separation of drawer sides and carcase to prevent jamming in future ? I was thinking of perhaps a 0.25mm gap between one side and the carcase with the other side held against the carcase.

I am also having trouble getting my head around how to make the 16 x 240 x 6 runners with slots in them for adjusting the runner position

All suggestions and ideas are welcome

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Nice looking unit ☝️.
I like running drawers on mid drawer side slots that way sometimes. If I’m understanding you correctly .
I wouldn’t have fitted the slots and runners last . I would have fitted the runners first . Then fit the slotted loose drawer sides to the runners , then finish making the drawer with a slightly over height front and sides and plane them in later when all are made , ending with planing the fronts all flush .
To fit the runners now I think you’ll have to run the slots in the sides , stack the drawers up and cut spacer blocks that match the slot distances , number them and use them to set the runners apart while fitting to carcase side . Or something like that .
Rob

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Originally Posted by auscab

Nice looking unit ☝️.
I like running drawers on mid drawer side slots that way sometimes. If I’m understanding you correctly .
I wouldn’t have fitted the slots and runners last .
Rob

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thanks for the nice compliment Rob, this is my first go at making a cabinet, so I am learning lots. My aim was to fit the lowest drawer, then use spacers on either side to position the next pair of rails, assuming all the drawers are the same 45mm height.

But my question is, what spacing should I use between the drawers and the side of the case, to prevent the drawers from jamming. I have modified the original post to show this more clearly

Depending on moisture content of wood, conditions of shop relative to its final home and time of year made, its common to make it about 1/8" gap or approx 3mm.

This also leaves room for any units which may not be perfectly square/variation between drawers

Sorry Rob, I accidentally hit the wrong icon. I don’t need pictures :)

Ha Ha no probs . Ive done that before .


When I fit drawers I just plane the front it till it fits and the gap looks as small as possible . And the back is a touch narrower. Ive never measured it . A business card thickness at most is about right I think .

Well, it is a full on wet season up here at the moment, very high humidity. I had made a 0.6mm gap i.e, 0.3mm either side of the drawers, and a vertical gap of 0.4mm between the drawer fronts, and all is working smoothly. They may be a fairly loose when winter comes, but so far, when sitting several hours in 20 degC aircon with little humidity in the treated air, there has been no apparent change

After 2 or 3 days of continuous rain, everything in the house seems damp, horrible humidity. And all the drawers in the collectors cabinet are jammed again :(:(:(:((:((:((

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Originally Posted by Dengue

After 2 or 3 days of continuous rain, everything in the house seems damp, horrible humidity. And all the drawers in the collectors cabinet are jammed again :(:(:(:((:((:((

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We had to go to Cairns over the weekend and came back to a very wet Townsville. Joe one good thing about all this happening at this stage and while you still have the unit is that you can save face and at least have the opportunity to rectify it and to allow for future seasonal movement without too much effort.

Thanks for the comforting thought, Geoff, good opportunity to get it right now and it won't ever jam tight again.

I spent a lot of time getting it right in the first place, 25 thou gap between each of the 10 drawers and the side, checked with feeler gauges ( how anal is that, but it was easiest and simplest way to do it). Looked good , nice and even vertical line with the drawers nicely centred.

Find this morning that the problem is the sides of the 450H carcase have bowed inwards, particularly at the front. The rear of the sides are held in position by the 6mm rear marine ply panel. So the 5th drawer is jammed very tight, whereas #1 and #10 are OK.

I will have to trim 1mm off the centre drawers to fit, so now the centre drawers will be narrower than the top and bottom drawers. When the atmosphere returns to a more normal situation this might look a bit odd.

Set the #5 plane to 3 thou shavings, and carefully trimmed the Tassie Oak sides to snugly fit in the carcase. This current atmosphere (wet season, days and nights of rain) should be the worst case timber swelling scenario. It will not be so bad once the timbers of the carcase and drawers are all oiled and cured, and the drawer runners waxed. Waiting for a bit of dry weather to do this.

It was 100% humidity all last night, 11pm to 6am, so at 7am tried the drawers, and all moved freely. Whew !!