Detachable Drawer – Importance and Making

We have seen many information and guide on making all important side hidden compartment drawer. Here I am going to make some simple guide and steps of the process. The two-piece back with a recessed finger-hold allows the false bottom to be slid out.

Although the spaces created by these double bottoms are not easily detectable, they are bothersome to get to, because the contents of the drawer must be removed. In the first case, the drawer must be turned upside down to place anything into the compartment; in the second case, the false bottom, which is acting as the drawer bottom, must be removed.

Detachable Drawer – Importance and Making

To avoid having to empty the drawer, you could use the two-piece back method, but attach the lower section of the back to the actual bottom of the drawer so they both slide out together, forming a tray, as shown in method 4 below. Taking this a step further, you could put sides all around this tray and create a minidrawer.

The traditional construction of a chest of drawers presents another opportunity for hidden compartments. Visualize for a moment the interior of an average case piece with drawers and a face frame. On such pieces, there is often unused space behind the face-frame members, both between the case side and the drawers and between the drawers themselves.

This space can be utilized by simply building narrow wooden boxes to fit into these locations. These boxes are totally hidden unless someone removes the drawers to look inside the case. Even if the divider strip between the drawers is only 1 in. wide, a flat box with '8-in.-thick sides still yields about 3/4 in. of usable interior space. Any number of methods can be employed to secure the box: magnets, dowels, ledger strips, inset spinners or sliding pins.

Chest Drawer Experience

Some time ago, I was commissioned to build a chest of drawers that required a very well-hidden compartment for 10 gold coins. The usual false bottoms or boxes hidden in the case itself might be discovered. Security was the primary concern; access was secondary. I finally devised an "invisible" compartment, built the piece and delivered it. I told the owner it was up to him to find the compartment.

He paid. I left. A few days later, he called to confess he still had not found the secret compartment. He had removed all the drawers and gone over the entire inside of the case with a mirror, a magnet and a fine-tooth comb to no avail. I told him to take out the middle drawer, turn it over, remove the screw holding the bottom, slide out the bottom and look.

The drawer back was partially hollow. With a horizontal mortise, I had made two 4x6x1'-in. slots in the bottom edge of the drawer back, one on each side of the screw hole. The coins could then be wrapped in felt or tissue to keep them from rattling. With the bottom replaced, there is no reason to suspect the hiding place (see method 5 at the bottom of the previous page).

Making a Proper Desk with Woodworking Process

In addition to the drawer methods, desks lend themselves to a host of different hidden compartments. I've always suspected that pigeonholes in roll-top and slant-top desks were originally conceived by cabinetmakers to allow themselves room to play with these ideas.

Everyone has seen a slant-top desk with two fluted half-columns that pull out and are actually narrow drawers. These are practically institutions, and not secret by any means (at least not now).

Another common method often found in the pigeonholes of slant-top desks is a thin drawer behind the molding or scalloped facial above the pigeonholes. These parts either pull out like drawers or hang on hooks, clips or magnets. Roll-top desks sometimes have small corner brackets in the pigeonholes that pull out to reveal a tray just big enough to hide two, always elusive, pencils.