Forget This Joint: What To Look For in a Dresser

Dressers are dependent on two things: the joints and the glides. The joints used on wooden furniture are one of the hallmarks used to determine its quality. The kind of joint used (or not used) can affect the longevity and durability of your furniture. There are about five joints used for varying purposed and types of furniture. Read through these summaries before you determine what furniture to buy.

Dovetail and English Dovetail joints are the best in quality. These joints lock the front of the drawer on a desk or dresser in place so the drawer will resist becoming loose after many years of use. Dowel joints are more commonplace in furniture, gluing a dowel or peg into a drilled hole to connect the wood together. Corner blocks help hold joints together where there is the most strain. Where the seat rails of a chair and the posts meet are often held up with corner blocks.

When it comes to dressers, a mortise-and-tenon joint is good to look for. These joints are normally used to join rails to the sides of a drawer inside a dresser. Mortise-and-tenon joints also used as a joint with chair frames. Also keep an eye out for tongue-and-groove joints, which are used to make flat surfaces and attach drawer fronts. Both of these joints are very strong and should hold up over a long period of time.

Wood furniture that uses simple butt joints should be passed up. Butt joints are when two pieces of wood are simply glued or nailed to the edge without overlapping. This kind of joint will not last long and is more likely to fall apart sooner.

The other key factor in deciding the foundations of a good dresser is the slides or glides used on the drawers. There are essentially two types of drawer slides: wood-on-wood rails and side or under-mounted rails. Wood-on-wood rails consist of a single rail that’s centered in the drawer, or two rails spaced apart at the edges or toward the edges of the drawer.

The wood-on-wood contact doesn’t make it the smoothest glide. Except for older dresser like antiques, look for dressers that use the side or under-mounted rails. These use a ball-bearing or wheel with a track fixed to each side of the drawer. Usually, you’ll see four slides inside, made of plastic or metal, that open the drawer by connection the track to the drawer opening and the outside of the drawer.