Hello, readers! This is my first post as The Queen’s “structural engineer.” No, this does not make me “King Patina” or anything else related to patina (excepting, of course, the Queen herself). I am very happily, the Farm Boy.”
One of, if not the main, issues with old, vintage furniture is rickety drawers. Although a common problem, it is also one of the easiest to fix and with very basic tools.
Tool’s You’ll Need to fix a Drawer
You can fix a drawer using the methods outlined below with little more than wood glue, a hammer, a drill, some appropriately sized finish nails, GRK screws, and clamps. While these are the basics, an 18 gauge pneumatic pin nailer also comes in handy, though it’s not necessary. Most things I use a pneumatic nailer for can be accomplished with screws. A decent drill is easy to obtain (most people already own one) and is usually cheaper than the compressor, nailer, and air hoses when first starting out. As for the screws themselves, do yourself a favor and buy quality screws. Quality goes a long way, and in my experience, GRK brand screws (for everything from trim/cabinet screws to concrete lag bolts) are the only ones worth using.
Getting Started on the Drawer
Although you can separate all the the joints for re-glueing and fastening, to start I usually leave any dovetail joints in place and only separate enough of the drawer sides from the drawer bottom to run a bead of wood glue (see below).
After I’ve run the glue in the drawer grooves, I reseat the drawer in the side grooves.
In the case of this drawer, I also separated the rear joints of the drawer. As they weren’t dovetailed, I re-glued them and fastened them with a few nails from my 18ga. pneumatic pin nailer, because the drawer sides were to thin to put a trim screw in. If you don’t have a pneumatic nailer you have two options depending on the thickness of the wood you are fastening to: for thin wood, the old fashioned finish nail and hammer are best, but you should drill pilot holes for the nail before fastening. If the wood is thick enough (usually at least 3/8″) GRK trim screws are the best. Whatever method is used, wood glue should always be used when re-fastening separated joints.
I then used the same nailer to fasten the drawer bottom to the drawer sides by shooting nails through the bottom of the rabbet joint (or the groove in the drawer side that the bottom rests in)
Next, I stiffened up the existing dovetail on the drawer fronts with GRK brand trim screws.
Even with these small, quality screws pre-drilling a pilot hole is safest to avoid cracks in the old wood, so I drilled out holes, two in each side, before sinking the screws.
As I wasn’t quite satisfied with the pins/nails holding in the thin wood of the drawer sides I added a bar clamp and measured the cross diagonals to check for and maintain the drawer’s squareness. On any square/rectangle when the diagonal measures are the same, the drawer is square. That being said, sometimes a squared draw won’t fit correctly in an old, out-of-square dresser. As it is rarely worth tearing apart an old dresser to make it perfectly square you’ll need to use your judgment, and in the words of our ever pragmatic Queen: “can’t you just eye it up?” As you wish!
And there, let the glue set overnight (or at least a couple hours, the fasteners should hold) and it’s done.
Thanks, “Farm Boy!”
If you have any questions or comments be sure to ask. The Queen probably can’t answer them, but the farm boy certainly can.
Look for a post detailing the final piece–after fixing–verra soon.
PS: My farm boy doesn’t know it, and maybe I’ll eventually tell him, but I’ve linked this post to Think and Make Thursdays. Hehe!
Until next time,
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