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I’m using and old wood desk with a 1 ½” thick top laid on the desk top as my current work bench. I plan on building a new bench eventually, but probably not this year.
The current drawers just have a flat plywood bottom butt joined up to the sides and a rabbit in the front. It’s just a simple plywood box basically.
Anyway I’m building a new drawer the same size for my new plane collection to fit in the existing space and I’m undecided on whether I should dado the bottom in the sides & front OR rabbit to the front and butt join up to the sides like before. I am going to dovetail the sides to the front just for the practice if that makes a difference.
I have a number of drawers throughout the house with the dado edges broken off or split and I’m concerned about the weight of the planes being too much for the side edges and afraid they will break off too. I don’t want to use slides because they will not fit the existing space, but I will make room for them when I ever build a new bench.
The only real problem with the butt joint is the friction of the two large plywood surfaces together and I was thinking of maybe using a thin strip on each side between the drawer and desk bottom to keep the friction down. Maybe even a strip of sheet metal instead of wood if I can attach it flat without rolling up.
So is there any other real reason that drawer bottoms SHOULD use dado's on the sides?
Existing drawer to be replaced:
The current drawers just have a flat plywood bottom butt joined up to the sides and a rabbit in the front. It’s just a simple plywood box basically.
Anyway I’m building a new drawer the same size for my new plane collection to fit in the existing space and I’m undecided on whether I should dado the bottom in the sides & front OR rabbit to the front and butt join up to the sides like before. I am going to dovetail the sides to the front just for the practice if that makes a difference.
I have a number of drawers throughout the house with the dado edges broken off or split and I’m concerned about the weight of the planes being too much for the side edges and afraid they will break off too. I don’t want to use slides because they will not fit the existing space, but I will make room for them when I ever build a new bench.
The only real problem with the butt joint is the friction of the two large plywood surfaces together and I was thinking of maybe using a thin strip on each side between the drawer and desk bottom to keep the friction down. Maybe even a strip of sheet metal instead of wood if I can attach it flat without rolling up.
So is there any other real reason that drawer bottoms SHOULD use dado's on the sides?

Existing drawer to be replaced:
