dovetail vs butt/glue/staple joints?

17 years ago

Has anyone purchased cabinets with butt joints and staples? We've interviewed 4 local cabinet shops that range from they don't do anything but build the base and drawers and then order doors, to 1 that builds his own doors, but none of them do dovetail joints on the drawers.

I would think dovetail joints would be an industry standard in the cabinet business, but apparently not. Even guys in business for 30+ years only do butt/staple joints.

Lowes is really my only other option to get quality drawer joints locally, but the bottom of the drawers seemed very thin, even with upgrades. We liked a mission style Cross Creek by Kraftmaid cabinet there from the Lynchburg collection.

I can't find any other dealers online that carry Cross Creek and am having trouble finding a Kraftmaid style that is comparable. If I can save some money online for quality cabinets and drawers, that would be great.

We haven't even had quotes come back from the local cabinet makers yet, but I don't see us going with stapled drawers when a dovetail jig should be standard equip in a cabinet shop. One guy didn't even use MDF! Said he tried it once and decided to go back to PARTICLE board. I told my husband, "Let's go. I've heard enough" :-)

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Comments (3)

fairegold
17 years ago
I think you'll get more response over in the Discussions side of this forum.

This COnversations side is for off-topic things like jokes and more personal matters.
sweeby
17 years ago
You know you can buy drawer boxes? Look online for drawer boxes, and if that doesn't get you enough hits, add searches for cabinet doors. I'm surprised your cabinet guys don't offer that as an option --
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carolyn53562
17 years ago
We had the butt/glue/staple joints in our old kitchen--the cabinets were 20 years old and we never had a problem with them. This has come up before and, although dove tail, is considered better, it seemed to be the consensus of the cabinet maker types that the butt/glue/staple joints will work just fine too. All of the houses in our old subdivision had the same 20 year old butt/glue/staple joint cabinets, and I don't remember one neighbor ever having a problem with them. My new cabinets are dove tail. I was surprised to find with my new dovetail kitchen drawers that the "box" is dovetailed and then the drawer fronts are screwed onto the dove tail box. With my dove tailed furniture, the drawer face itself is what is dovetailed to the sides and I thought the cabinets would be the same way. Even if you get dovetailed kitchen drawers, the drawer face can still become loose, although that would probably be easier to fix than on dovetailed drawers than on butt/glue/staple joints.