Drawer slides need replacing. Options????

[Clarence Martin]

Built a nice Curly Mpale Chest of Drawers a couple of years ago and , well, I made a mistake when calculating the width of the drawers. I used those cheap white metal drawer slides and they worked ok for the 1st year, but they broke under the weight of everything in the drawers. 6 drawers and EACH SET NEEDS TO BE REPLACED !!!!

Here is the problem...


The drawers themselves are made so that there is just enough room to fit those narrow cheap drawer slides, not the heavy duty expensive ones like I SHOULD HAVE INSTALLED!!


SO......

I looked at an old chest of drawers that I have and they have those wood sliders underneath each drawer and they are set in the middle of each drawer.


Questions:


1. I know I can fit the wood sliders underneath each drawer, but should I use just one slider per each drawer or use 2 ?

2. Buy them or make them ?

Thanks,

[Steve Griffin]

How big are your drawers? --width and depth.
How much room do you have on either side of each drawer box?

[David Werkheiser]

I would swap out the existing slides with some ball bearing side mounts. Should cost you $15-20 a set from the "box stores or $8-10 thru mail order. The side mounts take up the same space as the old ones, 1/2" on each side. I think to go with the wood bottom mounts will be extra work and may not work well.
David

[glenn bradley]

Agree that 1/2" is required for 100lb full extension -or- cheap-o 3/4 extension plastic wheeled glides. Do you have something that takes less than 1/2" per side?

[Zach Callum]

Blum Undermounts take up less than 1/2" per side, and are much nicer than side mounts.

[Matt Meiser]

Blum's need a bigger clearance at the bottom though that might not be there without rebuilding the drawers. I'm thinking the same as Glenn--1/2" is pretty standard side clearance for everything but undermounts.

[Jamie Buxton]

I'm guessing that the OP is talking about these --

They take a side clearance of 1/2", so any of the Accuride-type ball-bearing full extension slides will upgrade them -- without modification of the drawer, which is what the Blum Tandems would need.

[Ruperto Mendiones]

If the sides are not too thin, consider side-mount slides in a shallow dado.

Ruperto

[John TenEyck]

Use quality slides like the type you have rated for the weight you have in the drawers and they should last a very long time. I used standard Blum kitchen slides like these http://www.blum.com/us/en/01/30/30/ . I have some large drawers with slides rated for 100 lbs and they must have at least 75 lbs of canned goods, etc. in them. 17 years later - no problems.

John

[John Piwaron]

Looks like it's been a couple of days since your original post. Since you haven't replied and have gotten some great advise so far, I can't add all that much. But here goes:

1) is there 1/2" of clearance available on each side of each drawer? If so, an Accuride or Blum slide may fit.

2) that center slide you mention will be a bunch of work with no guarantee either. Though to be honest, I've seen it in plenty of factory made chests, so maybe. some of them also use a button of slippery plastic at each end of the opening to help the drawer as it passes over.

3) this is the hard part - if the above aren't working for you, get creative. Sit in a chair in front of the chest. Relax. Consider the problem. There's always a solution. Several, in fact. Let your mind wander. What if . . . . . Write the idea down. Repeat.

There's lots of ways to make drawers slide. One of the best I've done didn't involve mechanical slides at all. It's a simple square of wood that's attached to the carcase and fits into a dado in the drawer side. In two of my projects, both are desks built for my kids, those drawer sides are 1/2" thick, the dado is 1/4" deep. I did that both sides. Yeah, they slide "harder" that is, more friction, than a ball bearing slide, but so what? They work and they've been working for around 20 years now in the first case and about 15 in the second. And under the abuse a child will give them. Both "kids" are adults now. And still use the desks I built for them. FWIW, the desk I eventually built for myself uses Accuride slides. But it's a very different design.

Consider how drawers work in traditional cabinets. Queene Anne comes to mind just 'cause of the chest Norm built in an episode of NYW. Those just slide wood on wood.

There's always a solution. Keep it simple. Keeping it simple will prevent compounding the problem. God knows I've chased enough complicated solutions that didn't pan out. I just did one of those yesterday. I finally gave up and did what I should have in the first place. For me, it was trying to rescue a miscut part. Instead of trying to fix it, I should have immediately made a new one. It took all day to come to that realization.