In my exuberance (ok, stupidity) I glued a drawer together without the bottom...
 

Nice one, Dave!

I've avoid trying to cut a bottom groove in retrospect. Use drawer slips,
like you would in the best work. If you're not familiar with the
expression, a drawer slip is a moulding with a groove cut in it to take the
bottom. Tradionally it's glued and pinned on the sides and front of the
drawer, mitred into the corners, and you slide in the bottom, no glue, and
pin to the underside of the back.

If the ASCII art works, this is how it looks in profile.

___
|_ |
_| |
|__ |

The top internal corner is usually rounded over to avoid snagging clothing
in the drawer.

Although it involves slightly more work and the loss of a small amount of
internal drawer space, this system is generally accepted as a better system
than grooving the sides, since it avoids weakening them, gives more bearing
surface for the drawer to run on, hence less wear, and it's easier to repair
things when they fall apart/wear out. For a drawer the size you describe,
I'd guess the profile would be 1" or so deep and around 1/2" wide, the
groove being abou 1/4 - 5/16" deep.

HTH

Frank

In my exuberance (ok, stupidity) I glued a drawer together without the bottom...
 

Sooooooo...is there any way to salvage this sucker? It's a light duty
drawer 24 x 19 x 4 1/2". What would be a great way to retain the
bottom? Or isn't there any reasonable way to do that? Aaaarrrgghh! If
I just staple and roo glue a bottom to the bottom edges of the sides,
will that last? I don't mind if the drawer's total height is increased
by 1/4".

Easy.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...abspage=1&ccur
rency=2&SID=

and then route the outside of the back as well. This should completely cut
through the drawer back leaving a slot which you can slide the bottom into.

Size the drawer bottom so that it extends all the way to the back of the
rear slot opening, and nail up through the bottom of the back to secure the
drawer bottom in place.