Reply To: Drawer protruding on one side

For whatever it is worth.

A 400 mm deep and 500 mm wide drawer might imply that 1.6 mm would have to be removed from the side of the non-protruding corner. A 300 mm wide drawer of unchanged depth would call for 2.7 mm to be removed. Either might perhaps result in a risk of jamming.

If the drawer is running smoothly, without much play, up until the very last, then maybe the front isn’t of constant width or not square to the sides. Then, minute bevelling of the front and drawer frame opening can be an alternative to make the protrusion “disappear”.

My two pennies worth on planing drawer fronts is that it can be done (has to for me). If the bottom can be removed, it becomes easier to get the drawer into a York/Record vise. Often that is all that it takes; but if not – because of a fixed bottom or wide drawer – then one can have a support board clamped to the bench top and sticking out for the inside of the drawer front to rest upon, with the other end of the drawer front fixed in the vise.

If the drawer front isn’t the culprit, then it seems that the drawer frame opposite to the protruding front part is the culprit. If it is possible to inspect and reach into the drawer frame, then some wax or pencil lead on the back end of the drawer side can assist in finding the guilty spot.

I learnt the hard way that the edges of drawer frames can have very sharp corners, with associated too close shaves of your arm as you try to plane the deeper parts of the runner, guide or rail.