On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 18:31:56 -0600, Swingman wrote:

On 2/1/2016 3:39 PM, OFWW wrote:

Do you make dovetails on all four corners of your drawers? Normally
speaking?

For fine furniture and cabinetry, normally yes.

For Tier 1 kitchen cabinets with 3/4" sides and 1/2" bottoms, depends
upon the budget.

Tier 2 kitchen cabinets, not usually, just on the front.

Consider the two most detrimental forces that act upon a kitchen cabinet
drawer that cause it to fail:

1.The sheer force acting on the drawer sides when pulling the drawer out
by the drawer front, or false front.

2. The downward force of the load on the drawer bottom from the contents.

Front dovetails totally mitigate #1;

And a dadoed drawer back, cut high enough to allow a thinner drawer
bottom to slide into grooves, thereby allowing for drawer bottom
replacement, instead of a new drawer if it becomes necessary from
overloading, mitigates, to a large extent #2.

My Kitchen and bathroom drawers lasted 30+ years before the drawer
faces would occasionally come free, or the drawer boxes started coming
apart.

Proves the point: A 30 year old kitchen is not a "modern" kitchen, and
it appears some of the existing drawers did not even withstand that.

Note: I can make a good living just bringing 7 year old kitchen cabinet
components in multi-million dollar homes up to modern standards (that's
how shoddy residential construction workmanship is these days) ... and
certainly anything older for damned sure. LOL

Super great advice, thank you.