Simple drawer box help needed

[nkarasev]

Hi,
I tried to have reasonably simple drawer box made out of 1/2 ply, banded top edges, measured everything down to 1/16 inch, used Yonico Router Bits Drawer Front Joint Reversible 1/2-Inch Shank to route joints. Dry assembled it - perfect!
Once I have put yellow glue into routed joint grooves and tried to actually do final assembly - this is when the disaster struck. It turns out the glue is sticking much faster than it is setting or drying. Very difficult to have all the sides aligned correctly at once. By alignment I mean when the edges of two adjacent boards are at the same height and the joint looks seemless from the top.

You can't slide the board aginst another since glue just sticks. Ended up with about 1/32 inch misaligned sides, couldn't do anything about it until glue actually set in 10-15 minutes and nothing was possible to do at all. So the box came out less than perfect.
What is anybody doing to have the sides perfectly aligned at the very moment you join the sides? Simple corner clamps do not really help - the sides fall out of alignment almost immediately. This applies to rabbet joint or similar.

The only other way of doing box is likely dovetails, but this sounds like a lot more work and in general an overkill for simple drawers. Or maybe that is actually better, easier? If so, I am ready to try that, but I need to know if this is really the only option left. I am OK to spend time experimenting with routing, this part I can handle. It is glue that sets me up.

Thanks,

Niko

[fredhargis]

What the heck kind of glue were you using. Most PVAs have at least some working time to assemble the piece. The other thing is even with a glue that doesn't grab so quickly it's useful to do a "dry fit" run, assemble with out glue to establish the sequence of assembly, what clamps you want on hand, how things fit, etc. The disassemble and glue it together.

[FS7]

With regular yellow glue (for example, Titebond) a tight fit will often be difficult to move. I just clamped a panel yesterday and needed 3/4" pipe clamps to close the last 1/16" of the loose tenon joint after a minute or two. There's a vacuum effect along with the adhesion, and it will require a mallet to move it much.

For what it's worth, I have settled on a method to do drawer boxes. For "regular" cabinets, I have been making drawer stock in bulk out of prefinished edge banding and prefinished plywood. It's self-aligning with the dado for the drawer bottom (also prefinished plywood), and I assemble them with pocket screws front and back. The fronts are concealed by the drawer front, and the backs are, well, in the back. For solid wood drawers, I usually counterbore slightly, use screws, and then plug with contrasting dowels. The few times I bothered with dovetails or drawer locks, it ended up being way more trouble than it was worth and I was not happy with the result anyway.

I also remember that one of the first pieces I ever did, almost 20 years ago back when I started, used Home Depot common pine for the drawer boxes with no glue and just finish nails. It's still holding together, now taking the abuse of the kids.

[jteneyck]

The bit you are using is a typical drawer bit and is not nearly as difficult for assembly of the box compared to using finger or dovetail joints.  

Any common yellow glue will work fine.  If you need more open time, thin it with 5% water; it will double the open time.  You don't need a lot of glue.  Just put glue in one side of each joint.  Apply glue to the joint at both ends of both side pieces.  Stand one side up on edge on your bench, slide in the front and back, then slide the other side against the opposite ends.  Clamp each end.  Done.

You can use a 90 degree fixture to make it easier to get them square and speed up the process, too.  Just two pieces of 3/4" stock screwed at a right angle on a piece of Melamine thats a little larger than your drawer box.  Once you have the box clamped be sure to check the diagonals to verify it's square.  If it's not, adjust the clamps to make it so.  

John

[nkarasev]

Thanks everyone for responding!
Ok, I admit I did panic without good reason yesterday. Suffice to say this was my first box. After some thinking and remembering that I have seen most people in the youtube not to spread glue but just leave it in sort of long drops (it will squeeze under pressure neatly) - I figured two things I did wrong. I adjusted today and made perfect second box.
So mistake 1: tried to spread glue (yes, typical titebond extra strength). This takes more time than just put the long drop (not sure what you call this drop) and by the time I got to the last piece, the first one was already reasonably dry.
Mistake 2: I started assembling with two long boards and one short in between, also trying to fiddle with the bottom that needed to go into the rabbeted groove. Attaching last short was a struggle as I had to sort of detach partially the other end to make the bottom fit. BTW rabbeted groove along did not align boards enough, I mentioned that I had about 1/32 of disalignment. Enough to make me unhappy.

So the fix was - not spreading a glue. It is taking about a minute to put glue on all pieces, much faster. Leaving it not spread keeps it liquid. As for the boards - this time I put one long board on the flat, then attached bottom (bottom is now vertical), then attached both short sides, then at last attached the other long board. This way with the router bit I have I did not need to partially deassemble anything - the last board just slides on top. It took me total maybe 2 minutes starting with the glue ending with all box done. Aligned easily and clamped.

BTW: I did fix the first box by sanding the top edges. My banding is 1/16 inch solid wood strips glued to ply. This allowed me to sand off some of it to have perfectly looking top drawer edges. So it worked fine at the end.

I need to learn more ...

Regards,
Niko