This project is part of my miter saw station build.

Most of the time when we think about making drawers for a cabinet, there’s going to be a lot of cutting. Cut to size, carefully measure, cut dados, cut rabbets, more careful measurements, etc. There is a faster way, though, and that’s to make the drawer box with simple butt joints, and reinforce those with biscuits.
The biscuits add strength and also help to keep everything in line while the glue dries.

Here’s a video I made showing the drawer building process using this method from start to finish:

The drawers will fill the space directly beneath the miter saw’s dust shelf, where I’ve already built the blade storage drawer:

Watch this video for details on how I made this very convenient way to keep my saw blades within easy reach.

I’m using 3/4″ plywood for the drawers and set up the sheet on my folding sawhorses to make the first cuts. Note the piece of 2×2 under the sheet to support the piece while I’m cutting it:

Making the boxes with simple butt joints really speeds up the build and makes them a lot more foolproof. I cut the front, back, sides and bottom in no time at all on the table saw. I then set up a clamping rig on the edge of my saw to hold the parts while cut the biscuit slots and put the boxes together:

The clamping rig can be seen in action in the video at the start of this article.

First assembly step is to attach the front and back to the bottom. I cut the biscuit slots, then glued the parts together using screws to hold them while the glue dries. The screws act as clamps in this instance, but also add a lot of mechanical strength to the joints:

Next, the sides are fastened after cutting the slots:

I didn’t use screws near the top of the sides, but instead clamped it with my homemade bar clamps and set it aside to dry. I may want to experiment with another way to reinforce that joint, so a screw would be in the way.

With all of the drawers assembled, I could install them in the cabinet. These two in the bottom are nearly 9″ deep, and I’ll likely store my hand-held power tools in here:

I’m not sure what I’ll put in the other two, yet. They are both 5-1/2″ deep and like the bottom two, ride on full extension drawer slides: