I got this neat tip for marking out the holes on a drawer to drill for a handle from a recent issue of Fine Woodworking. In the course of my work I put a lot of hardware on cabinets. I have a jig for marking the doors and drawers. The typical distance between centers for pulls is 3″. My jig works well for these pulls but even though it is adjustable it does not work as well on some of the pulls where the distance between centers is greater than 3″.
Today I had to install pulls with centers of 5 1/8″. I tried out this method and it worked very well. Relatively quick and suprisingly accurate.
Assuming you are installing a pull with a distance between center holes of 3″. From each corner of the drawer mark in 3″. Then draw a series of diagonal parallel lines as shown in the image. Where they interesect will be at two points 3″ apart and centered on the drawer top to bottom and left to right. Pretty neat. I found that rather than measuring the 3″ from the corner of each drawer, it was quicker to cut a gauge block from a scrap piece of wood and use that to establish the marks from which to draw the lines.
You can click on any of the images to see a larger version.
That's pretty damn cool…