If you follow the blog, you already know I dislike stuck drawers, and sloppy fitting drawers. In the sloppy category I place a drawer that goes into the opening crooked, such that you must fiddle with it to align it to the opening. The solution to avoid this is to install drawer stops, and to carefully trim them to ensure perfect alignment of the drawer front with the apron.I use a variation of the technique used by Mario Rodriguez, which he discussed during his presentation at Woodworking in America at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; I shot and edited a video that you can watch at this link.
To ensure proper alignment, I insert a drawer stop into a mortise I mark and then chop with chisels. I also use liquid hide glue, to make it easy to replace the stops if needed:
The right drawer stop.
The following photo shows the taper I put on the bottom of the front edge; this allows me to tweak the position of the stop during the glue-up (once the glue has cured, I simply trim the edge to ensure perfect alignment of the drawer front):
The left stop.
In the next photo I show the two drawer stops installed, and ready for trimming — I set each stop 2-5/8″ from the drawer openings. In this photo I have removed the drawer bottom, to make it possible to peek at the front edge:
Both stops installed, ready for trimming.
Once the glue has set on all stops, I will do the fine-tuning with the small #75 bull nose rabbet plane.
— Al Navas
About Al Navas