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Why can’t we change drawer box material?
Hello, I’ve bene a long time customer and have ordered both the main Cabinets line and Modern line products. One thing I always notice is the Modern drawer boxes invariably have defects in the baltic ply (gaps, etc) that are very unsightly. It’s honestly a bit surprising to see in such an otherwise premium product. I notice the budget City line uses solid rubberwood boxes, so this wouldn’t suffer from the same issue. Is there any reason we can’t choose between rubberwood, ply, or even an upgraded maple box? Are there any plans to do this in the future? I’m planning on redoing my kitchen with the Modern line, but the boxes are honestly holding me back.
Many thanks, and thanks for all of the great products!
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3 Replies
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Sure — this is a bit more involved than simply swapping drawer box materials. Barker Modern and Barker Cabinets are primarily U.S.–sourced and represent the oldest cabinet lines we offer. Barker Cabinets is essentially our flagship brand, emphasizing domestic sourcing and high-end, durable components.
For drawer boxes, our go-to default has long been solid maple, but that material takes an enormous amount of time to process and is very costly to produce. For the past 30 years we’ve relied on Baltic birch plywood as our standard because it’s simply the strongest and most durable material we’ve ever seen for this application. Yes, there can be minor imperfections like small voids at the finished edges, but those edges are sanded and sealed for a clean, intentional look that proudly showcases the plywood veneers — almost like a badge of honor. That’s a stark contrast to cheap particleboard (PBC) drawers, which often break down or fall apart after just a few months. Baltic birch is so exceptionally strong that we’ve always felt its minor visual imperfections are worth the trade-off; I even use it for my own personal projects and prefer it over solid maple boxes.
City Cabinets, on the other hand, is our newest line — launched in 2023 — and is practically a baby compared to Barker Cabinets. The goal with City is high-end appearance at a lower price point with faster production. We shoot for “best bang for the buck.” One major way we save costs is in the drawer box material. Because City can import from overseas, we’re able to have our drawer box stock custom-produced and prefinished, which saves significantly on time and cost. We receive large batches of prefinished material, cut it to size here in Oregon, then machine and assemble the boxes in-house to add the value domestically.
The material we use for City’s drawer boxes is rubberwood imported from Vietnam, which is why it isn’t an option we can offer with the Barker-branded lines. Also, we sell our cabinets as complete packages, so there isn’t a practical way to break out the cost of a single drawer box or its materials separately.
All that said, I personally think the rubberwood drawers are excellent. They suit the City line perfectly by achieving our goal of providing the most affordable drawer boxes that still meet our quality benchmarks. Baltic birch will always be stronger and last longer in very heavy-use areas, but City’s rubberwood boxes are still solid and durable for most residential applications. While rubberwood is indeed a solid wood, it’s finger-jointed — technically stronger than a continuous solid piece, but the joints are still joints and could fail if improperly glued. In practice, this is extremely rare, but it’s the only real drawback to the material.
Attached is a picture of the birch veneer on a batch we are spraying to day. Note the veneer quality of the Baltic birch.
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That is some beautiful birch! Hopefully I’ll see it in my drawers. 🙂
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Yeah, the current stock of Baltic looks pretty good. If you have an older order from 2021 to 2023, the supply during that time was simply very limited and patches were more prevalent. The newer stocks of Baltic seem a bit cleaner overall, but I still see occasional patches.
