Simple drawer from scrapwood

You can never have enough drawers like clamps. I have two different types of drawers installed in my workshop:
– “neat” ones, with nice fronts; I have them in my planer/workbench and the TKS table.
– very simple ones, screwed together from scraps of wood or furniture.

The latter is what we are talking about here.

If you need a lot of drawers, the whole thing can quickly become quite expensive, if you work with new board material and proper pull-outs. But if you don’t care about the look, it can be done very cheaply. And if you take simple, self-made pull-outs, it can be done nearly for free.

As material I used for my cheap drawers mostly the parts of old, no longer needed cabinets. Fortunately, I did not dispose of the stuff at that time. As a tool you need a table or a hand saw, a cordless screwdriver, wood drill, a spirit level, a clamp, a marking gauge and screws. Something like this:

A little tip for cutting the coated boards: be careful how you saw the boards, because such boards tear extremely on one side, if you don’t pay attention to a few things. The difference on my table saw is enormous:

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However, since only one side is visible, I don’t care about the tearouts this time.
If you have large clamps at hand, then this makes screwing together easier, but is not mandatory. Don’t forget to pre-drill before screwing, otherwise you might end up with the wood bursting away. Since I’m using 3mm screws, pre-drilling is done with a 3mm drill bit.

The most complicated part of the project is attaching the pullouts. Whereby “complicated” is rather relative. Just measure it well, mark it and that’s it. To make it straight you need a spirit level and a clamp. The easiest way is to use a one-handed clamp.

Once the pullouts are mounted, just hook in the drawer and you have more storage space again. As you can see, depending on the situation, it may not even need a handle on the drawer. If you are not quite as lazy as I am, then take, for example, leftover handles from the old cabinet that you have used for the drawer.

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