How To Make Wooden Full Extension Drawer Slides - Woodworking

if you're into woodworking you've probably seen one of these before this is a metal full extension drawer slide and what full extension means is that the drawer will come out all the way so that you can reach everything that's on the inside however that does make this thing fairly complex it has three larger pieces that are linked together by two sets of ball bearings that make it operate smoothly i need a bunch of these for a project that i'm getting started on 10 pairs actually which is 20 of these and while i think these are worth buying i wanted to make my own instead and that's what this video is about i already tested this out to make sure that it works by making a quick mock-up rather than building a drawer for the mock-up i just borrowed one from the purse cabinet that i made last year now these can be made from solid wood but i'm going to be using plywood for mine what plywood does is it eliminates one step and that's bringing the material down to an even half inch thickness and if you're interested in making these for yourself you can pause the video here all of the dimensions are on the screen now it's important to keep in mind that the dimensions shown are for the ones that i'm making which are 17 and a quarter inches long and that highlights another advantage of making your own slides you can make them whatever length you need they can be as short as you want or as long as you want within reason that is the plywood that i'm using here is good quality but it needs to be more than anything else is a uniform thickness although being straight also helps some of you are probably wondering but unfortunately nbf won't work for this it won't be structurally strong enough after the slots are cut so you'll have to stick with either plywood or solid wood and the preference there would be hardwood soft wood will work but it won't be as strong i'm just doing a little bit of sanding to clean up the edge any chip out that happened and also rounded over slightly it's worth pointing out that if you're doing this it's worth doing them all at the same time you don't want to be doing these one at a time these are the most complex parts so i'm cutting out all of the blanks for them before i do the rest of the operations to make them into the slide another thing that's worth pointing out is that this is a lot of work and it's going to take some time so if you're looking for the fast easy way this is not it the fastest easiest way to get drawer slides that you're going to be happy with is to reach into your wallet and buy them from a store now that i have all the blanks ready i can start routing the slots i pulled out my router table and i've set it up with a half inch bit and i raise the height of that bit up so that it's cutting in about a quarter inch i've also set up a block on the end that's clamped down and that'll stop the slot at the right place and to start it i'm using the leading edge of my movable fence i'll just line the end of the sock up with that and plunge in i'm going to cut all 20 pieces using this setup on one side only and then i'll have to change the setup on the other side because this slot is on the opposite edge [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i got all the half inch slots cut and somehow i managed not to make any mistakes the next thing i need to do is cut a quarter inch slot through both of these that goes all the way through the plywood so i only need one set up for that and i can do both slots on each piece [Music] and of course after the slots are cut i've got more sanding to do they get rid of the furries that are around the slots if you're using solid wood especially you know dense hardwood might have a lot less of that also really good idea to make an extra one a spare i have one here where it actually splintered out and it threw the cut off so i don't know it still might work i'm gonna use it but it would be better if i had a spare after the sanding i brought them all outdoors and set them up so that i can actually spray on two coats of water-based polyurethane lightly sanding the edges after the first coat and this will make the drawer slide work a lot smoother getting the slides coated on all four sides is best but it's really only just the edges that need a heavy buildup and if you don't have a sprayer you can clamp them all together sand them smooth and paint it on with a brush after you have both sides done i recommend taking them out of the clamps and setting them out so that they can dry without sticking together now that the slides are finished i can move on to making a marking guide that allow me to install the screws that work with these slides and basically it's just a blank slide without the slots cut in it and the locations for the holes that i have to drill it's dead center across that's eight and five-eighths in my case because these slides are 17 and a quarter inches long and also a half inch down from each edge and with those two locations marked i can drill them with a five thirty seconds inch bit i'll be using this guide to set the runners inside the cabinet and also on the side of the drawer and to give it a little bit of clearance i'm going to put two layers of masking tape on the top that'll give enough space for the slide to operate properly after you put some finish on the runners as well the final wooden parts to make for these are the runners and i've taken some maple from my scrap wood closet down there i already cut it to length which is 17 and a quarter same length as the slides and i've set my saw to cut it into blocks first this first one is actually wider because the corner is rounded over on the wood and i need to get rid of that but after that i'll reset the fence to three quarters of an inch and cut the blocks that width [Music] before i cut these into the runners i'm going to sand the side that i just cut that will actually be the contact edge of the runner so i want to make that as smooth as i can another option is to run them all through a thickness planer but that means you'd have to leave them a little bit thicker to begin with to make up for that amount that you're planing off you only have to sand one side there's only one side of these strips runners that contacts the side so i'm making a mark on here to show which one that is before they cut the strips out i just spent a few minutes dialing in my table saw to get these to the right thickness ideally what you're looking for here when you put two of these together is a even half inch thick and i'm pretty much there what this is is it's equal to the standard ball bearing drawer slide so that this design is kind of interchangeable with that you don't have to make any changes to the size of the drawer parts or anything to accommodate one or the other it's very important also this needs to be the total of these need to be just slightly thicker than this luckily plywood is usually thinner than half inch mine is about 40 000 slits so i've got lots of clearance there [Music] okay so the only thing left to do is to show you how it works unfortunately i don't have the project that these things will ultimately go in but i'm going to make another mock-up you're going to have to pretend that this is the inside face of the cabinet and this will be the side of the drawer so the first step is to take one of the runners and mount it on the inside of the cabinet with the line up that would be the smooth side the one that we sanded and for the sake of simplicity i'm just going to line that up with the bottom edge of the panel and i'm going to use glue and short pins to hold it in place with that done i can take the marking guide and put that in on top of the runner like that so it's flush on the front and use that to mark the bottom hole that's the one that you need to drill inside the cabinet and also use the guide to install the upper runner once again with the mark down the smooth side down now i can take one of the sides and put it in and see how it moves it should slide freely with a little bit of play top and bottom next i can do exactly the same thing again for the side of the drawer put on the bottom runner in the same way with glue and pins to hold it put in the marking guide except this time i'm going to be drilling the top hole and then put on the second runner on top remembering to put the smooth side down with the runners installed i can put the slide in next and you do that by installing it in the cabinet first and i'm using a number 10 three quarter inch machine screw i'm driving it into that hole i drilled before you only drive this down far enough so that it clears the top and then you need to check to make sure that the slide moves freely so with that done on the inside you can see that it moves out towards the front here i can take the drawer side which i have right here this has the hole that's drilled in the top and i can put that in place imagine you have the whole entire drawer you slide it in on top of the slide and you have access to that hole in the side here it looks more awkward when i'm doing it like this because obviously it's not a fully assembled drawer or anything but it goes exactly the same as the one on the inside you just take the screwdriver and drive the screw into that hole we drilled until it comes just below the surface of the slide here and it should work good that looks good and that's it goes all the way out and all the way back in nice and smooth here's the dimensions again if you want to make these for yourself also remember that i have lots of other plans available on my website there's a link in the description that'll take you there a lot of the things that i use here in my workshop are homemade and i have plans for some of those and buying those plans will help to support the work i'm doing here to produce this free content hey there it's monday afternoon and i'm doing the very tedious job of sanding the furries off the edges of these uh plywood parts here them are for my fully extension drawer slides this is

Channel: John Heisz - I Build It

Views: 858,003

Keywords: woodworking, how to, diy, jpheisz, ibuildit

Id: 1p7cYb-jjT8

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020