Woodworkers, Help! Dresser Drawer . . .

[JayGere]

Hi!

I'm sure there must be an easy fix for this, and I 'pologize if it's obvious, but here's my problem:

Dresser drawer. Base of it, the thin plywood-y part that slides into the grooves at the side of the drawer, no longer remains slid forward. In other words, when I open the drawer, the base of it slides backwards, leaving a gap that my clothes fall out of.

I've tried jury-rigging all sorts of fixes -- contact cement (worked for a while), finishing nails hammered in from the outside, bent nails (made it impossible to close the drawer all the way) -- but have had basically no luck.

Can somebody suggest something? Thanks!

[e-mail]

[Doug Miller]

Nail it in place. A single nail, going up from the bottom, through the plywood panel into the center of the back panel of the drawer, will hold it in place quite well.

[jim]

and when you fix it with the single nail remember that you cannot try to put 10 lbs of potato into a 5 lb. sack.. from pushing all the stuff it is what broke it in the first place....

[cc0112453]

The thin bottom piece is held in place by the four sides. If the corners of the drawer have loosened or any of the sides are coming loose you will need to deal with that issue separately. What ever you decide to do, the appropriate material for repairing the drawer is Elmer's wood glue and small nails. You want to use the proper size nail. Actually what you want to use is a very small nail or a brad. You don't want to split the wood or leave a large nail head showing. If you are using a nail near the end of a piece of wood, snip the point of the nail off with a pair of wire cutters. This will allow the nail to cut a hole in the wood rather than split the wood and create a crack. Make sure you seat the nail below or even with the surface of the wood so that it doesn't catch on anything.

[Phisherman]

Slide out the bottom and clean out all the grooves. Slide the bottom back in and use ONE screw through the bottom and into the back. Don't glue drawer bottoms!

[Ken Carlson]

Take the drawer out, flip it over, and one screw through the bottom panel in to the back panel of the drawer should do it. Don't try gluing around every edge, you want the bottom panel to float in the grooves in the front and side panels, and just be rigidly attached at one point in the rear.

Ken