Desk drawer - design?

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
I am in the midst of making a 'Work from Home' desk - that my wife will use during the pandemic. It will eventually replace the functional but ugly corporate-office cast-off Steelcase desk in the actual home office.

I have the top and legs made - and then we decided that this should be more than a table but be a desk. The difference is a the desk drawer.

Having read most of the wonderfully detailed WC posts of both Bill Tindall and Derek Cohen, I am emboldened to attempt a drawer. I have made 10 or so tables, but these all had a a solid skirt. Now that the front skirt is 'broken up' I have some design questions.

1. The width of the skirt is 28 inches, and depth 17" (table/desk top is 44 wide and 23 deep). With that geometry, is a full 28" width desk drawer advisable? Note that I will not be using commercial drawer slides.

2. With an approximately 2.75" height on the skirt, that's the max height on the drawer. If I use a traditional construction like shaker end tables, with a tenoned in bottom cross-rail and dovetailed top cross-rail, I'd lose 3/4" of drawer height for each (not rails for the drawer, but the cross pieces that are structural like a front skirt). If I use these, the max drawer height would be 1.25", not much for a drawer. So how do I keep keep a reasonable height drawer and have a structure that both supports the drawer and provides a solid desk structure?

My inclination is skip the top cross rail and use only the bottom cross rail - and using the desk top to 'trap the drawer'. What would you do?

Hoping my descriptions give you enough info to understand my question.
 

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