Drawer slides

[MilDoc]

OK. I don't get it. I've read several books, looked at many plans. But I still don't get the installation of drawer slides. On a frameless cabinet, just how do you align drawer slide? Just by measurement? Or...?

[DonHo]

You can align the slides by "just measurement" but if you have several to install, you might look into a jig made for the purpose. Kreg makes one that looks nice but kind of pricy at around $30, I found a jig at Woodcraft for $6 on sale. It works well and the savings in time and trouble is worth it for me.

DonHo

[crokett]

Do you mean align them so that the slides on each side of the drawer are at the same height? I use story sticks. I figure out what height the slides should be at and cut a stick for each height.

[JimD]

I agree with David. The last time I needed to do this I ripped up some 1/4 waferboard scrap I had. First I made a piece to align the top drawer slide, then I ripped that down to align the next drawer slide all the way to the bottom. Simple story sticks will work fine but I found I needed an extra hand or two to hold the sticks and the drawer slide and the cordless drill. The waferboard stayed in place pretty well without me holding it. Any scrap sheet goods would work well as a "story stick".

Jim

[Tom Miller]

What part of the alignment are you wondering about?

First, you have to figure out the vertical position on the drawer that you want the slide. I have no idea if there's any "standard" position. I used to put them about in the middle, but on my last project I put them at the bottom. That made installation of the slides on the drawers easy, as I could just rest the slide and the drawer on a table to make my marks for screw holes.

To get the front-to-back alignment, I keep both parts of the slide together while I mark for screw holes on the drawer (they usually have through-holes to facilitate this), keeping the front of the slide flush with the front of the drawer box. (This assumes the front of the box will be flush with the front of the faceless frame -- false fronts added later.)

Once you determine how high up on the drawer the screw holes of the slide are (full slide height divided by 2 in my case), then you determine where this line should be on the cabinet carcase to put the drawer at the right height. Draw this line on the inside of the cabinet using, e.g., a framing square.

While holding just the carcase half of the slide up in the carcase, with the front of the slide flush with front of the carcase, line up the screw holes with your pencil line and mark for the holes.

That's it, except for all the tricks, such as:

1. A simple jig can be used in place of the framing square for marking the line in the carcase. Same jig can then be lowered a bit and clamped in place to hold the slide in position for marking holes, with a little stop block to help keep it aligned to the front of the carcase. There are jigs that have the hole positions drilled in, but they're not universal enough in my mind.

2. On the drawer half of the slide, use only the vertically-elongated holes at first. Then, after assembly, tweak the height before using the other holes to firmly attach slide in place.

3. On the carcase half of the slide, use only the horizontally-elongated holes at first....

4. Err on the side of too wide an opening for drawers. You can always shim the slides on the drawer side or the carcase side.

5. If your cabinet has more than one column of drawers, and you're attaching drawers on either side of a piece of 3/4" thick stock, stagger the screw holes of the slides on each side or they'll run into each other.

Regards,
Tom