How to Install 3 Types of Drawer Slides in Cabinets - WOOD magazine

you hi I'm Kevin Boyle with wood magazine today I'm going to talk about installing some drawer slides I've got a cabinet base here with a face frame and you'll notice there's no internal parts in here so really it doesn't lend a lot of opportunity to attach the drawer slides to the side of a say like a case cabinet with its frameless so what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to use some specialty hardware that's available often where you're buying your drawer slides to install these slides come over here to the bench go through these first oh we've got an epoxy coated slide now these slides you've seen just about anywhere probably in your bathroom may be advantages they're cheap they're easy install and they work great service for a lifetime you can buy these adapters so you can slide your drawer slides into the back of that give you some place to attach the back cabinet in the face frame next full extension slides ball bearing heavy duty so if you got an application where you need a lot of weight in your drawer or you really want to get access to the whole drawer these work great too these come same sort of setup I got these little brackets that slide right on the back of that slide snap in place easily give you a nice place to attach this back member in your cabinet and these also happen to come with a front bracket too and then finally for kind of a lesser weight rating sort of application maybe you want to maximize the drawer width you know with these first two slides you give up about an inch in your drawer space you know with this one you can pretty much go almost all the way out about eight an inch away from either side of your face frame and the disadvantage of these slides I would say is probably weight not really a heavy duty slide but works really good these also come with a bracket the mounts right on the back of the cabinet and your slide snaps right into that so let's install some drawers so we've got our drawer here and the first thing first is the epoxy slides come in two parts you've got a slide that attaches to the drawer box itself and you've got a slide that attaches to the cabinet these are also in right and left but conveniently for for us these are marked will have a right or a left on them and basically what you want to do and on the drawer the wheel goes in the back on the case side wheel goes in the front you can't remember that just remember that these are marked right and left so as you're looking at the drawer right would be the right your right hand so one other additional thing I like to do when I'm installing slides just keep it back from the front edge of the drawer just a skosh maybe about a thirty Seconds you don't want it button right up against the front okay now that we have the slide installed on our drawer we're gonna head over to the cabinet and we'll get these installed simply take this adjusting mounting bracket you slide it on the back here slide and I like to leave it all the way out or pretty close to that because basically once you stick your your drawer slide in there you kind of push that back adjust it so your drawer slides just back from the edge of the face frame kind of like the drawer just back from the edge now there are jigs that are off commonly available on the market and this just happens to be one that you can actually lock your drawer slide through the magnets right on the side here this kind of holds it steady and it also holds it right where you want it to be in the cabinet so the first thing I want to do just get that drawer slide just back from the front edge of the cabinet and then we're going to drive a screw now these slides are pretty light so you can kind of see that that's that holds itself up there pretty easy most guys have a little torpedo level at home and if you don't they're pretty inexpensive and pretty handy especially ones with little magnetic strip on them as you click that thing right down on that drawer slide and then you can check to make sure it's level and I know that my drawer slides level I know that I can attach that back through one of the horizontal holes because if I know it's level up and down I know that I'm pretty close on that so now I know that my most of my adjustment and when I get the drawer in is going to be side-to-side so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to drive a screw in one of those horizontal holes so we'll have that in place now I'm just going to repeat for the other side do the same thing and then we'll grab our drawer and see where we're at okay so we've got our drawer it's moving in and out pretty good one of the things I do is you know how you saw me cinch those screws down is I I come in with screwdriver and I kind of back them out so there they're not falling out loose but they're just a little loose so basically what happens is that drawer goes in and it kind of corrects where it needs to go so it's not pinching at the back the other thing I want to check for is I want to make sure the drawers you know George still pretty level so as a drawer face sits in there it's not tilting back and forth like that I got that I've got that under control because I used my handy guide to do that but the one thing you'd want to check is take a straightedge place it over the face frame bridging that check to check the drawer I can see this drawer sits perfectly flush with a face frame or just a little little beyond behind it which is great this side unfortunately is not it's sticking out sticking out about an eighth of an inch which means I need to shift this drawer this way a little bit unfortunately this back screw when it's in that slot I've got no more adjustment so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drive another screw into this slot except I'm going to move it on the opposite side that gives me that much more room for adjustment then go ahead and back that one out now I've kind of rotated the drawer around now you can see I'm flat on this side and flat on that side drawer sits pretty level it's moving in and out nice and easy it doesn't feel like it's getting hung up on anything so basically at this point all you got to do is drive a few more screws into these back brackets make sure you don't move them move it around too much when you're driving them but I like to pick one of those a single round holes not the slotted ones and drive a couple screws in those then you're ready to go I showed you how to install these drawer slides with this handy jig but I also wanted to kind of cover something you know you don't need this jig to install this is handy to kind of hold the jig in place for you it also helps keep that drawer slide parallel with the side of the cabinet which is very important but there's a ways of fixing that without this jig let me show you how that works basically I'm going to attach the front of slide the face frame just like I did with a jig and I'm simply going to take a measurement when a measure what that distance is to the backside of that slide simply transfer to the back of the case I'm going to measure there I want to make sure that that that measurement stays the consistent it's doing the same thing that the jig would do another slide you're just simply going to measure across and do the same thing over here too now obviously if it's not perfectly fit in there you can make those adjustments as we showed earlier we're going to install full extension drawer slides now these are ball bearing slides heavy-duty and these are a two-part slide to but when I start is I can start with the drawer and I leave the slide all together first I simply lay these are and these are not a right and left slide so you either way up or down just make sure you've got the small portion of inner portion of the slide it's going to go towards the front of the drawer so I'm going to engage that and I want to line up that drawer slide with the bottom of the drawer some people like to Center them on the drawer and that's fine too I just prefer to do it here because then I know I've got it lined up and it's straight it's not at an angle if you use a straight edge whatever you need to do just make sure that that that drawer slide lines up with the bottom edge of that drawer and then you know it's going to be straight I like to put one hole or one screw in the very front then I slide the slide back and I like to put one in the very back you can always come back later and add more screws okay so now that I've got that installed I can simply pull this lever down and disengage the slide pull off the part that's going to be attached to the cabinet then go ahead flip this over make sure you're doing the Front's now going this way so make sure you've installing that correctly know about you but I've I have installed drawer slides backwards before had one going one way and one go on the other drawer didn't work too well alright so now we've got our lined up get on this side we're going to go ahead and put two screws and the slide okay so now we're ready to install the other part of the slide on the case so let's head on over there next up we're going to install the other part of the slide to the cabinet now to do that we've got a slide on these rear mounting brackets you slide right on the back of slide snap them in place you can slide around they can adjust slots in the back gives you plenty of adjustability these also have a bracket that mounts to the front and that simply just drops that tab right in that big hole and it flips right up gives you two nice indications here that fit real snug up against the back of the face ring he's a real positive feel there we slip this drawer slide in there we're gonna fit it right up tight against the back of face room you'll feel it fit and right in those indentations on that bracket we're ready to drive our first screw next up is we're going to drive it screw in this rear bracket but before I do I'm going to stick a little level on there if you don't have a level with a magnet on the bottom of them like this one just take a piece of scotch tape or something like that and loosely tied on them you just want to make sure you're getting this drawer slide level I do that first and once I know it's level I'm then going to drive a screw that long slotted or the horizontal slotted hole not going to do it real tight I'm just going to do it kind of kind of loose there at first still level then I'm going to take a measurement in the front here and see how far away that's back slide slide is to the inside case I'm going to take that same measurement and back and make sure I'm parallel to the side it looks like I'm gonna have to move my screw over just a little bit more take another measurement it's good okay so we can go ahead and tighten that one up for now we're level we're perpendicular to the face frame so now we're gonna do the second slide same way slide that bracket right on the backside lock it in place drop the bracket on the front just like before screw all right we're in the ballpark there I'm gonna go ahead and drive into that center hole slot it looks pretty good okay so now we're ready install the drawer and check our fit we're gonna line it up on both sides here it's gonna be a little tight pushing this drawer in that's just rien gauging that mechanism but then you pull it out nice and smooth one thing to check here is we'll check the face make sure it's flat to the face frame make sure it's flat across the front too because you don't want it crooked because your drawer face won't sit on there straight we're looking pretty good so we can go ahead and add a couple more screws to the back and a couple more screws to the front of our brackets and this thing is ready for service an install Center Mountain drawer slides of this drawer now a couple things before we install this slide we need to make sure we do first one if we're gonna use Center Mountain drawer slides we want to plan on making our drawer bottom a little bit thicker this just helps gives us some meat to drive screws into typically a quarter inch bottom just not not enough meat if you want to use quarter inch that's fine but you want to give yourself enough room to put a spacer in the bottom at least have a half-inch material to screw into I just choose to go ahead and do a half inch plywood drawer bottom whenever I'm gonna use these Center mount slides that way it's covered the next thing we'll need to know is this if it's going to be up is this drawer slide going to need to go through the drawer falls front or not and the reason we'd want to know that is this gonna be an overlay drawer or an inset drawer an inset drawer you wouldn't need to cut this opening if it's an overlay drawer you might as well go ahead and do that and the reason that for that we're gonna show you a little bit later and gives you more meat on the face frame to screw into when we get over to the cabinet I'll show you why first thing we do though is I like to install it's a two-part slide I like to stall just pull those things apart kind of tough I like to install the first half of this drawer slide to the bottom of the drawer first and simply all we need to do is find our Center our drawer here is about 13 inches wide so six and a half inches front and back I ended up with the holes that way you know you're pretty close to Center you also want to make sure you use some pretty flat low profile screws that way they don't interfere with the two slides sliding back and forth screw that in place making sure that that slide in the front is just back from the front edge in the back and we can come back and add a couple more screws later so now we're going to head over to the cabinet and we'll install the other part of the slide okay as I said earlier whether the notch or not to notch if you're not going to notch that would be in an application where your drawer face is inset so it's flush with the face ring if it's flush with the face frame that means that drawer guide can't go all the way to the front and get on and screw onto that it's got to sit behind that in that case you'd need to add a little block and just simply glue on a piece of three-quarter inch material right on the backside of that flush with the top gives you a good place to screw that down in our case we're gonna let our drawer race face extend out it's going to be an overlay so this basically the false front is flush with the face frame that means I can use that face frame member to attach my drawer slide to so first things first I'm gonna find the center of my opening got a 14 inch opening that's pretty easy math 7 inches be our Center set the slide in place just back from the front edge just a touch drive a screw in place okay so now we're going to extend our back racket back to the back of the cabinet here and I'm going to use a little torpedo level I'm gonna sit right on that slide that way I can make sure I get it perfectly plumb it's important that your cabinets sitting on a plum surface too I'm also gonna measure over find my center of that slide or find the edge whatever is easiest to measure to make sure that measurement corresponds in the back and once you've got that you raise it up until it's perfectly level attach the first group okay so now we're going to test fit here sliding that drawer into the slide looks like we got a nice fit there's one thing left to do on this setup and the pool drawer out for a second you notice how it kind of wobbled when it was in there these come with these uh all there's hard plastic tacks and basically these go on either side of the drawer make sure you line them up with the drawer sides that'll keep that drawer from moving back and forth we're ready to reinstall it's nice fit add a couple more screws and she's ready to go

Channel: WOOD magazine

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Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, project, plan, carpentry, tool, technique, review, table, saw, band, miter, cabinetry, cabinet, making, make, build, drawer, slides, bearing, ball, extension, epoxy, under, bottom, side

Id: BQbeCCU6o9k

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2015