Thread: Drawer slides..I'm not bright enought to work this out

Being an ex cabinet maker of 27 years, I worked with drawer runners a lot in the past.
Anything over ~600-700mm is considered longer than 'standard', so they tend to jump up in price a fair bit.
There are a couple of options.
If your drawers are, for example, 900mm long, you could use 700mm runners, but this means the last 200mm of the drawer wont come right out, not a big deal as you should be able to easily reach in there. If you want to boost the load carrying capacity of the drawer, simply put 2 pair of the same runners on the drawer. Even your standard kitchen drawer runners are rated to about 30kg per pair. I like to double them up in a vehicle application anyway because they weren't really designed to cope with vibration etc.

I had a look at Hafele's web site. At a glance it seems runners over 700mm are heavy duty and anything over 800mm is only in the extra heavy duty section (see pic below)
I wouldn't expect them to be cheap, but if you want to give them a call just for interest, the NSW contact details are here >>> Hafele <<<

The heavy duty one's would be great, but I've had doubled up standard one's on the drawers in the County for a couple of years and they're still ok, and they're pretty cheap to replace............especially when you have some spare one's in the cupboard

Dust is what will kill them. I'd suggest washing off the grease that comes on them and use some graphite powder or other type of 'dry' lube ( or buy a car that has door seals that work )

Cheers, Murray

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

turf the bearings idea and go buy some strips of PFTE nylon slider... like they use on boat trailers..

4 pieces per draw(2 on the bottom 1 on each side) and a couple of bits of ally stripping to act as a guide.

done.

Originally Posted by Xtreme

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Or call into a building site and see if you can pick up a few lengths of the yellow nylon 'tongue' from the particle board sheet flooring. A few strips under each drawer and away you go.

That's similar to what I did on my previous drawer setup. Just rub a dry cake of soap on the mating surfaces now and then and they will work even better.

Cheers, Murray

I expected them to get sticky with dust,

Did not know that the fines in australian "bulldust" in some cases are technically a lubricant...

Talcum powder works well also ................ similar to 'bulldust' I guess.

I'm really trying to picture how two standard ones doubled up would work...?????

if I put two 500mm ones on for instance surely I only get the 500mm extension of the first slide.

what I'm thinking though is if my drawer is 1000 then maybe I could put an 800 on would still save me some money..
Although I have noticed that some of the larger drawer slides dont fully extend so I guess that's something I have to be careful of

Originally Posted by dullbird

I'm really trying to picture how two standard ones doubled up would work...?????

if I put two 500mm ones on for instance surely I only get the 500mm extension of the first slide.

what I'm thinking though is if my drawer is 1000 then maybe I could put an 800 on would still save me some money..
Although I have noticed that some of the larger drawer slides dont fully extend so I guess that's something I have to be careful of

re: two on each side i think what they mean is you install them above each other to increase the load capacity not how far you can pull them out.....

i have been really happy with the ones i buy at $22 a pair.....go with the 700mm

good point that somebody menntioned about washinf the oil/grease out and using graphit powder

Ok now some of you may laugh.....

I have bought some ali 'C' section (most of the stuff I have used is ali as I really need too save weight mainly because I have to manually lift this thing out of my car ever 3 months for a change over) I'm going to try a poor mans slide as one C section fits in side another.. Its a meter length.

I figured I will give it a try and if it doesn't work I will pull the C section off the draw and put roller bearings on the draw like scott suggested. I just figured this way a good portion of the draw will still be supported when I pull it out unlike using a bearing with a plastic or nylon roller.

And if that doesn't work I will bite my tongue and open my wallets and buy proper drawer slides.

This cost me less than 20bux so figured I would give it a go
its not going to slide nicely like a proper draw slide but as long as I can slide it out relatively easily it will do

Originally Posted by dullbird

. However I dont really need a huge weight carrying capacity like 100kg because I'm only carrying a few tools I reckon I could easily get away with 30/45kg as the draws are actually quite small, but you cant find them (well I cant anyway)

Until someone uses an open drawer as a step to reach stuff on the roofrack... I have seen it done!