Save HUNDREDS of dollars building your workbench like this! 

Good video. Your basic idea is really smart and even if someone doesn't do exactly what you've done, seeing how you've thought about the problem and solved it is just really good to know. Your details are really good. I've made a lot of drawers. I don't think I'd 'want' to use your method.... but it's so efficient and easy that it's probably the best method for a new shop. After a few years the ones that start to wear, just upgrade them. And the ones that haven't? You've just had the use of them for many years and saved a lot of time and delay. I've made drawers using finger jointed Baltic birch, hardwood runners rabbeted into the drawers and the carcass... Better, sure; and the drawers I made 30 and 18 years ago are still like new...but I haven't been able to bring myself to the hours and hours and set ups required to make more. The drawers you have and use are much better than the ones you don't have and can't use. I think I would make sure that if the carcass sides started to wear they can be popped out, replaced or rabbeted so hardwood runners can be inserted. The best coating for the MDF slots and the bottoms of the drawer sliders that I know of would be epoxy with carbon filler. It's black . Don't need fiberglass. You can quickly sand and buff this coating with steel wool this surface until it's smooth like a mirror (if you want). It's tough and slick, but I would always use beeswax or paraffin wax (not sure what they call this stuff in Europe). With this coating I don't think you need worry about anything wearing out. But definitely your edge easing and sanding is important, otherwise the drawer bottoms will start cutting into the carcass. I would double the number the slots in the carcass. so 70mm high drawers... 75mm slots, cut another set at 37.5mm. So you could use two drawers in three slots and space above the drawer. I've found that it's very easy to over fill a drawer. Suppose you decide to have a drawer for power tools? Some of these will be higher than the drawer sides. You could drop down half a height, problem solved. Also, because my method for making drawers was so time consuming I just made as many as possible, I arrived at a standard size (too big to mention here, I also used them as art print drawers). So for my shop I just made tall carcasses with runners so I could use all the drawers. So if I set up to make a bunch of drawers I'd make as many as possible. To coat the Baltic birch I drilled a small hole in the 152 x 152cm sheets, sand the whole sheet with a pole sander and ROS. Then I hung them on a wire hook and coated them with Bona floor coating. Then I cut out all the drawers. Hope this contributes to your brilliant solution.

Great tips! I didn't even think about having the nook between the drawers and the tabletop for placing a tool that you're using - good idea! Also, I love how neat, tidy, and clean your workshop always is.

Very smart, Dennis. I’ve used drawers like this for years, but standardizing the size and space is a game changer. Well done. Scott

This the route I wanted to go but wasn’t sure how except with hardwood. I’m glad this alternative turned out great and it’s the way I will go. Plus drawer slides are so expensive with as many drawers as I plan to have. Thank you!!!

I agree, this is a well worked out drawer system. I have used the more tempered 1/4 masonite instead for bottoms and fronts. If oiled and finished it turns dark brown and can be worked up to a fairly shiny surface if you want to put multiple coats on. No handles just a hole to pull with your finger. Yours is beautifully thought out and executed as usual.

I love your work benches! Their designs are both elegant and efficient. I wish I could get the hard MDF here in the states, but every time I look for it it's never from a local source. But the best part of your system is that it can be modified to easily accommodate different bench tops and building materials. Merry Christmas!

I've been looking for a method like this to make drawers for my shop. This is terrific! Thank you!

Brilliant to have every drawer box the same, saves on confusion of many drawer box dimensions, & I can remake a drawer height later if I decide

Hi Dennis thanks for the trick! Nice as always. I guess you spent sometime determining also the width and the depth of the drawers May you share these?

Another brilliant design. I do really like that my drawer slides extend fully, for my small bits storage, but if I had watched this before my first workshop drawer I’d likely saved the money on slides and gone this way instead. I like the modularity a lot.

rewatched this to gain understanding of the spacing. I am going to attempt drawers using this concept. Thanks for this video!!

This brilliant because it is so simple. I am designing my new workbench now and will use this design for drawers.

I'm fascinated by your drawer pulls. My German grandfather born in 1900 immigrated to the US in 1927 was a cabinet maker. I have a bedroom chest of drawers he built from plywood in the 1950s for my family. Your drawer pulls look almost identical to his. Interestingly I purchased a piece of Ikea furniture that has nearly the same design. Recently I made two drawers for my office and duplicated his design which was slightly tricky for a beginner. It had odd angles I had to plan in a specific order. I've never seen these pulls discussed or explained and seeing yours makes me think they may be common in Europe. Are those your design?

An ingenious idea for a closed indoors environment/workspace only.

This is a pretty solid little workbench. While once you figure out how it comes together, it is physically Easy to assemble ru-vid.comUgkxyFZUPFEey-PuqsPMxqaykBhgA1LWxFHh by yourself. But the diagrams explaining the steps are really pretty bad. I could not get the handle pins in all the way despite multiple attempts, so I just used a screw I had on hand for the 2nd handle. I could not get the first pin in further or pull it back out. You are supposed to hammer it in, but I had no leverage and the handle is plastic and I did not want to risk breaking it. I will get a lot of use out of the bench because of the convenient size and height. It does fold up nicely for storage. They even explain how to fold it so you don't get pinched...that is important!

This was fantastic. I wish more workbench videos focused on the lower half of the bench in addition to the top half/work holding aspects. When I see other workbench videos, the shelf area is such an after thought. Going to adopt a similar system for my workbenches going forward.

Absolute class mate, great content. 100% going to use this, simple, efficient and looks awesome. Keep up the good work!

What a great system. I'm in the process of building out my shop, and have watched many workbench videos. This is one of the best.

Excellent drawers. I really appreciate your plans & explanation. Thanks for sharing. Debbie

Didn’t know Arnold was into wood working. Love the videos.

Fantastic system and very nice workbench I will reuse some of your ideas I like a lot the workbench with the T-track grooves that allow you to hold in place anything. Well done

Great video! Can you make a video on how you made the draw handles please?

Fantastic - Very Creative. I shall employ your design in the refresh of my shop. Thank You for sharing.

great wood working videos. Like your style. Only thing i would add are labels to the draws. To many for me to remember.

Kudos @ Ron Paulk for original concept.

Excellent system. Will be using it as the basis of my own cabinets.

This is perfect. Thank you for sharing this clever and cost effective modular system - new subscriber!

Ik zou deze lade system ideeën gebruiken voor mij kleding kast ontwerpen. Heel fijne en simpel 🎉 bedankt

Hi Dennis, big fan of your channel! Do you have any videos of how you create your handles?

Merry Christmas to you too Dennis.

I love the drawer system, it is genius!

Your videos are always very informative and professionally presented, and your designs are clean and functional.

love it! do you have any printable drawing to build? i think you have given enough information in the video.

Your videos have quickly become my favourite. Merry Christmas and I look forward to your videos next year.

Outstanding, I love the idea and execution.

Merry Christmas to you and your family. I found myself watching some of your video's last night and hoping you'd soon release another one, and you did!!! Always love to see how your shop is coming together and I'm planning on duplicating much of what you've done in my new shop. I've been teaching myself SketchUp so that I can figure just where everything will go in my new shop and using your designs as a template (because I plan on building them) for placing my workbench and cabinets in my new shop. I've still got another 7-8 months before the house will be completed and my shop will be done, so I'm looking forward to all your future video's so that I can tweak my shop plans as I go.

This system is just what I was looking for and will serve my needs perfectly. If I adjust the measurements to match the Tormek inserts and work from that I should be able to serve all my needs with no issues..... Thanks for sharing and have a fantastic Christmas sir.....

A simple but effective trick to keep drawers moving smoothly is to rub a bar of soap in the grooves then move it back and forth so the soap is applied to the full length of the slide.

Wow this is an amazing system.

Loved this video. These will work very well for my small home shop and the drawer height is perfect for my 3 printed gridfinity organizers. Merry Christmas.

Thanks for the great video!!! just subscribed! Like the way you say drawers

This is not a woodworking channel this is a ASMR of german engineering! lol

Looks like a good system, have a nice festive season.

Rubio is a crazy expensive choice for that. Instead use 50/50 oil based poly and paint thinner.

Excellent ideas here.

What is the name of the black material in the table?

Brilliant video thanks Dennis. Giving me plenty of inspiration and ideas. Happy Christmas 🎅🏻 and a prosperous new year from England.

beautiful work thx for posting

Great build!

Fantastic job and great idea Dennis! Keep safe! Merry Christmas!

Do you have plans available anywhere for these drawers?

Thanks for the video!

I'd like to know why the sliding guides are only the bottom of the drawer instead of the whole drawer? that way you can only put some spacers (reducing MDF) and make the drawers a bit wider (optimizing space) is it because the thinner the sliding gap the smoother it slides?

brilliant idear money saving and good quality

Great system thanks😊

👍Happy Holidays

Thanks, Dennis! Allow me to adapt your system to my needs: It must be as light as possible. I'll use Aluminium for the framing.

Dennis, I know this design is simple but any chance of plans being made available? Every time I watch your videos I list over the black MDF. However the only supply I can find in the UK is Valchromat and this is even more expensive that birch plywood. Great job. John

Great video and merry Christmas. Thank you for the details, there will be many H.O.W. looking workshops after the New Years :)

Nice

What is the part you attached the incra to I can't find it?

What width did you go with? I'm thinking up plans for better benches for our hackspace, and I'm debating what's a good standard width for drawers. Too wide and you end up with too many different things mixed up in one drawer, too narrow and you can't fit all your "X" in the same drawer. Both of which make keeping things organized and functional more difficult. Also I note that on your mitre station there is no fence and you don't seem to have done the pull out top over the drill press. Is this because you've changed your mind on these things, or is it simply that you haven't got round to them yet? (I'm thinking of building something similar).

Would you recommend a full sheet of MDF 1220mm by 2440mm (48 x 96") at 55$/each or "half" sheet of Plywood at 1000mm by 1000mm (40 x 40") for 15$/each in a climate where it gets pretty humid (Canada)? The plywood isn't extremely high quality, but it feels decent (it is used plywood, no holes). I'm afraid MDF would not like humidity too much in a non-heated garage (it is heated, but not regularly, only when I go to work in it in the winter, I'll start the heater about 2 or 3 hours beforehand to make sure it goes to a "stable" temperature.

How are the drawer slides holding up over time ? I've seen older kitchen cabinets with this style of drawers and they are generally hard to pull open and not smooth. Would you just use another round of epoxy if they are resistant to pull out?

What is that dark material you are using for your top and drawer fronts?

How do you prevent the drawer being pulled out of the cabinet ?

clever. i like this very much.

Thanks for sharing. What do you believe is the practical limit to drawer width? My cabinet design has an interior width of 28.5 inches (about 72 cm). I'm concerned drawers like these may not operate properly or be durable enough at that width. Thanks again!

The only downside I can see is that wihtout drawer slides, if you pull the drawer out too far it will fall. Do you do anything to prevent that?

Ik krijg de ondertiteling van het bouwen van de drill press?

I did something similar in my shop but I added UHMW tape on the underside of the drawers to help them slide more easily.

This drawer system is brilliant. The ability to have lots of shallow drawers relatively cheaply is a huge organizational win. Thanks so much for the idea! Merry Christmas!

Excellent drawer system, I plan to add a pull out bread board above the top drawer for tool layout. The bread board will used like an extension of my bench but 5” lower since my workbench top is a 5” laminated beam. This allows the top of the bench to be uncluttered with tools and staged work pieces while easy access. I plan to add the breadboard the same finish details as the drawer bank. Also the bread board can be pulled out on either side of the bench above each of 3 drawer banks. I will cut blocks that can be placed level with the top of the work bench to effectively expand the width of the bench top. This drawer system is so efficient and adaptable, nice job Eric.

Really great video! I appreciate the depth you got into as to design choices and talking through them. I have some slightly different design elements on mine, based on need, available materials I wanted to use, etc., but your process definitely helped me. One idea I used that may help you is that I incorporated iron-on white melamine edge tape onto the gliding surfaces of my drawers, as a hardening treatment to make the action more slick. Mine has simple drawer boxes (no lip on a wider bottom), gliding on protruding cleats attached to the uprights, and the top surfaces of the cleats treated with the tape. If you wanted to use this harder/slicker surface treatment, you could route a mortise along the bottom edges of the drawers that is the thickness of the tape, iron it on there, and not have to change anything else. Cheers, and thanks again!

FYI... Many of your plans are not on the new website and the contact page is blank. Neither are there links to your videos like there used to be. I specifically wanted to look at the plans for your miter saw stand. I imagine it's still a work in progress, so I'll keep an eye on it. Again, thanks for sharing!

How/why did you select the standard width of the drawers? Trying to understand your thought process for selecting a standard drawer width.

subbes just because of metric. am so sick of every channel being imperial nonsence :D

I do have some concerns about long term wear of the MDF bottom. But I suppose if it became a problem you could trim off the proud MDF edge and glue on a strip of hardwood. Now, that said, this is a classic "wish I had thought of that!". I like this system.

Excellent project. I particularly like the idea of using the shallow drawers since I have recently come to the conclusion that stacking items on top of each other results in a loss of efficiency.

Greetings from Texas, USA! I just discovered your channel this week and I have enjoyed what I have seen so far. I love your workbench/drawer system! The modularity is fantastic and as you mentioned it is much more economical. I do like the metal drawer slides, but this is a great system when you need to make many drawers (as I do in my current shop). I also really like your Match Fit assembly table. I just got the starter kit, so I'm excited to make one for myself as well. Cheers! - Joe

Your drawer system is absolutely brilliant. 👍 My wife & I are elderly so I'm keen to convert our kitchen door/shelf cupboards to drawers, & your system means that it will be affordable. My workshop is tiny, I've got a circular saw track guide, but no router or table saw, so your last suggestion making the slots with pre-cut pieces will be perfect. 👍

As a professional shopfitter, I had access to scrap slatwall. I used this pre-made material to form slotted case sides and avoid the need to cut multiple dados. Even if the slatwall is purchased new, this is an economical way to execute the same design.

Do you plans for the drawer system? Couldn’t find on your website.

I really enjoyed your video for the drawer build. I was wondering if you have a pdf file similar to the dist extraction and clamp rack for build reference. I tried writing some of the measurements down but I think I have missed a few. It is very well thougth out and and scaleable. I am building some base cabinets for a miter saw and CNC and I would like to incorporate this design for drawers. Thank you in advance.

Now that's some proper engineering! I retired from the custom woodworking industry, and know a good drawer when I see it.😎 Great video, and nice shop. One tip to offer up about runners, to everyone, came from a forty year old dresser(now 70). Way back in the day, I guess we did this. Plastic Laminate on the tops of the carcass runners. Plus add 1/2" tall lam. strips on the carcass sides(above the runner, or right in the dado, like an L) and get a closer fit, no-wiggle tolerance. Can be glued up on the long strips before cutting to length. Based on that old dresser's still slick drawer action, I built a set of four tall dressers for a family friend from mahogany ply, and we know ply on ply doesn't cut it. It was a simple solution to use some scrap lam that color matched. These dressers had conventional sides and runners well spaced vertically. That was over 30 yrs. ago. There's hardly any wear on the laminate, save for a bit of the color worn off, on the leading edge. None but the faintest scuffs (1/2") on the lacquered drawers.

I recently made similar type drawers with a flexible system for my work van out of Birch plywood. I clear coated the drawers and cabinets and then gave them both a generous coat of waxed. They work great!

I love this modular idea of building drawers! Very tidy, and I'm liking and subscribing. I'll be building a workbench soon, and I'm sure I'll use some of your drawers :D

Those drawers look really sharp and give a really professional look to your shop. Nice job!

Wow, you have just given me the perfect idea on what I need to do in creating my drawer spaces. I love this and will be implementing this drawer design in my shop. Thank you ! I have also never been to your channel before, but just subscribed as I'm really impressed with the way you think. Great stuff ! Cheers from Utah... ;-) 2 thumbs up !!

Dennis, I'm happy to find this. I'm struggling a bit with drawers and storage and your solution is ideal! I really love the bench top and drawer fronts - what material did you use for those? It seems strong enough as you're using the Incra clamps in there. Thanks again and happy new year!

What width is the MDF you are using. I cannot find that you say it and it is not on the plans.

The way you pronounce drawers reminds me of the first woodworking skills I ever learned from a video. However, it wasn't a RU-vid video. It was from a VHS aka a VCR tape that featured Frank Klaus teaching how to cut dovetails.

Hi! Great video…do you happen to have plans or cut lists for these drawers? I can get most of the information from the video but just in case I thought I would ask. I do not see any on your website. Thanks!

Great job Dennis! I have 2 questions : what is the width of the plywood you are using for the frame? What are the dimensions of the cabinet? Thank you in advanced

Beautiful workspace! I think we need to rebuild our workbench, because it's all kinds out of alignment, plus we used sliders, which are honestly just the worst for us as beginners

I enjoy your channel. I'm about to embark on a Shop build in my garage. I'm going to steal some of your ideas! I love the organized, minimalist approach to your shop. Thanks for the tutorials.

Boy I really enjoyed the video. Great craftsmanship 👍

Hi Dennis, love this drawer idea. Great presentation. Would you recommend the Makita pin nailer you were using ? Drill pro on Banggood have a nailer but not sure whether it is 23 guage or not. Regards, Paul

Hello Dennis, fantastic video and your design looks amazing! As someone new to woodworking, I'm curious if your design is beginner-friendly for someone like me? Ethan from land of down under Australia. PS. Love to watch a video from someone using metric :-)

Great system. Looks like this will be a lot cheaper to make than all these draw slides.