Speeding up kitchen drawers

[murdoch]

Hi, we're currently making kitchen drawers starting with 20mm waney edged oak, and when finished they look great but it takes ages to prepare the timber.

Just wondered if anyone uses laminated oak boards to make drawers or has any other ideas? Just feel that the way we make them may be overkill as customers probably wouldn't know the difference!

Thanks

[senior]

have you got a 4 sider?

[murdoch]

Yes, scm sintex but only 180 wide. A lot of the time is taken glueing up for wide drawers. Our standard drawer depths are 110/180/210 and 260.

[tusses]

wood welder ?
to help speed up the glue up

[Bighat]

What's the slow part of the process? I would imagine that prep set up is pretty fast, straight line on the panel saw, then through the 4 sider. Is the slowest part glue up of the panels? Maybe a pneumatic frame clamp set up and woodwelder if you don't already have them?
Or is it more making up the boxes themselves that is slower? I saw Paul's omec manual dovetailer when I went to see him, it doesn't seem like it should be a lot quicker than a router/jig set up, but it was way way faster. Do you use one? Again woodwelder might speed up the gule up process? Not sure where else you are going to make up much time, short of outsourcing them, or doing them in birch ply on a CNC (friend who is a boat fitter does this, actually looks quite cool), but probably not the high end bespoke kitchen look you are after.

[podengo]

Could you buy in wider boards and put through a thicknesser?

Our 4 sider does upto 210 wide, so for wide door panels we use a thicknesser which has a 400mm width cut.

Or buy in laminated boards,

http://www.buildersoak.co.uk/OakEdgeGlued.html