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Question about my old boss's advice to build drawers 1/16" loose, was he messing with me
My old boss in Grand Rapids swore by building drawers 1/16" loose because wood moves, but I built a set last month at that and they racked so bad I had to shim every runner. He pulled me aside and said he only said that because he was too cheap to buy proper slides, and I've been doing it wrong for 4 years since. Anyone else get taught a shop habit that turned out to be just a shortcut for the boss?
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rayc948d ago
My uncle ran a cabinet shop in Kalamazoo for like 30 years and he told me the same thing about leaving drawers loose. Turns out he was just building them to fit the cheap wooden runners he made himself from scrap, so yeah the 1/16" was for his setup, not some universal rule. I read a thing on a woodworking forum where a guy measured a bunch of old dressers and most of the good ones were closer to 1/32" with metal slides. The wood movement argument only really matters if you're running wood on wood, and even then it's the sides that move, not the width of the drawer. Your old boss basically gave you a number that worked for his cheap method and dressed it up as wisdom. Four years is a long time to run with bad advice though, that stings.
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