Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Jesse Cloud

Hey Barry,

I use that technique often. Two reasons: 1)I'm cheap and don't want to drop a ton of $$ on metal slides and 2)Metal slides are very persnickety about exact gaps between sides and drawers - wood runners are too, but you can sneak up on the fit with a hand plane.

I don't think it would work for your project though. It requires a dado in the drawer as well.

I agree 2 times

Barry Irby

I was thinking of attaching the strip tot he drawer and rabbeting the cabinet, but there is little or no overhang on the drawer fronts.

And, I also agree on the metal slides. I find them persnickety as well. I must have installed hundreds of them by now but it's always a contest.

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Jack Dover

This is quite an old method, probably predates mechanized ways of cutting dadoes. An advantage is that one doesn't need horizontal drawer dividers, so a piece looks a bit more streamlined. I wanted to try it just out of curiosity, but couldn't wrap my mind around fitting a drawer: if the whole piece is not dead square and to size (mine never are) — it's a game over, isn't it? Another concern, albeit a smaller one, is fixing a worn drawer. Replacing a runner is easy, it's screwed on, but what about a dado, am I supposed to patch and re-cut it somehow?

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Henry (Raleigh NC)

Can't you simply box in the plastic drawer? No runner, simply a fit box around the drawer.

With plastic drawer boxes, it won't be fine furniture no matter what you do. Is the case to be plywood?

Henry

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Kudzu

This cabinet is built exactly that way and has been working for several years just fine.

One ever year or two I do pull out the most used drawers and rub wax on the dados to make them slide a bit smoother.

Sorry but you are mistaken thinking this isn't a good way to make slides. It cheap and works. What more could you want?

Re: I disagree 1 times

David Yoho

I've built a ton of stuff with drawers where metal slides were used. I never had an issue with them fitting properly. Most of what I used of both types required half an inch on each side. Maybe I'm missing something here but for me it was as easy as falling off a log.

I also disagree times 2

Dick Coers

I've always used full extension slides. I've never had an issue with hitting a dimension, even if an adjustment is called for. We aren't dealing with steel, a hand plane makes fitting easy. I too have done hundreds, been doing this for 48 years now.

Re: I disagree 1 times

Barry Irby

This is a case of getting tangled up in my own thinking. Both of them.

Part of my "problem" with metal slides/runners is I used most of them in kitchen cabinets that had Baltic birch drawers. The instructions that came with the ones I used said the tolerance was Plus 1/32" but minus 0. Lost my nerve. Actually finally learned it was far better to have the opening oversized. Much easier to shim the runners. Hard to hand plane a plywood drawer.

As for the sticks, I visualize them getting covered in crud and becoming gritty. As a corollary, I have full extension runners on my lathe cabinet drawers. Once or twice a year I have to clean them. Takes maybe a minute or two to blow the crud out of them. Tha's a minute I will never get back.

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Barry Irby

Maybe the part with the slot should be very hard wood and the stick softer so the wear occurs on the stick, and easier to replace.

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Barry Irby

I think that's where we will end up. Like you say, these are not going to be fine furniture.

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Barry Irby

You clearly have a LOT more experience with these than I do. I have none.

Glad they are working for you.

I have some shop cabinets I built almost fifty years ago out of salvaged and found materials. The sides are sink cutouts from plastic laminate counter tops. The runners are 1/4" thick aluminum strips that are about 1" wide let into dado's in the sides. The drawer sides are poplar found in an abandoned furniture factory. We had thousands of them. Mine are the worst of the lot. So, nearly fifty years later they are working just fine.

Re: Anyone use square sticks in dado's for slides?

Joe Fleming

Barry,

I have my dad's workbench and he built in four drawers with stick and dado slides. They were a bit tight when I got the bench in that the sticks were a bit too wide. I used a card scraper to take a smidgen off the edge, and waxed the runners and slides. I have been using that bench for about 12 years now, and have had no problems. He solved the "full extension" aspect by making the sticks extra long, so I can pull the drawers almost all of the way out without tipping down or falling out.

Joe

I have

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I made a sewing cabinet drawers this way as one of my first furniture projects. Retired the cabinet after decades of service as a sewing cabinet, then desk. This construction is common in some very old Period furniture. What do you see as a problem?

Re: I have

Barry Irby

This is a case of over active imagination. Somehow it just doesn't look like it would work well to me. Maybe I would have more faith in it if I had seen an old one still working well. I don't remember ever seeing one at all let alone working well. Maybe that's part of my problem, If I have never seen one, they can't be that good, Right? I used to repair furniture fairly regularly. Could it be that never having seen one is a good thing? I am rummaging around in my brain now, surely there is a recollection in there somewhere.

Thanks to everyone, I doubt we will be suing this on the current project. The drawers are waste bins from some sort of Swiss coffee maker being repurposed. I suspect simple cheap and easy is the best idea. I will follow my friend's lead on this, it's his project and I am just labor.

I can show you one

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

In my Gallery is a red drawer unit with a butcher block top. It is decades old. It has lived in 4 different houses providing storage space beside a sink. Lost track of how many times it has been painted.

No need to reinvent the wheel Barry *PICS*

Tim Greif - West of Chicago

Sticks and dados (or rabbets) have been used for the drawers in oak drafting tables and plan files by engineers, architects and draftsmen for decades. I've rebuilt and refinished four of them over the years and have one remaining to do that will become LOML's sewing work table. If you look at the pics, you'll see that the drawers have a running dado and a piece glued in as a stop toward the front. The "sticks" at the sides are actually L-shaped oak runners so that the runner extends far enough from the side panel to engage the drawer dado. Intermediate runners are just "sticks". You can see that this table has its runners well worn, to the point that the screws are now hitting the drawer dado. This table was probably made before I was born, so adding a small amount of material back onto those runners will last another lifetime.

The plan file is pretty interesting too. Notice that there is no space between the drawers. The drawer side had a rabbet cut the whole length of the top of the side piece. Each drawer sits on an oak runner. That bottom of that same runner sits in the next drawer's rabbet and acts as the top bearing surface for that next drawer so it doesn't interfere with the drawer above it and doesn't tip. You have to make sure you don't pull the drawer completely out or you'd overload the drawer side or runner. But that wasn't really an issue for plan files since there's not really any need to extend the drawer fully.

I love the utility and simplicity of these old pieces.