Update: I spent a full day trying to make a drawer slide fit and I'm done with soft close

Last Thursday, I was installing a set of cabinets in a kitchen remodel. The client insisted on these high end soft close slides for every drawer. I'm talking the kind with the little dampers built in. I had one drawer, just a simple cutlery box, that would not sit flush no matter what I did. I must have taken it off and put it back on six times, checking my reveals and my case square. The problem was the slide itself had about a millimeter of extra play in the mounting channel, so when you pushed it closed, it would ever so slightly twist and bind. I finally got it by shimming the back of the slide with a piece of card stock, but it felt like a hack. Everyone acts like these things are foolproof, but that tiny bit of slop in the hardware can ruin a perfect fit. Has anyone else had to fight a drawer slide that just would not cooperate?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_morgan11d agoTop Commenter

Tell me about it. I've found that slop in the mounting channel is the rule, not the exception, with a lot of those fancy slides. The tolerances on the cabinet box have to be perfect for the hardware to work as advertised, and that's just not real world conditions. Your card stock shim isn't a hack, it's a standard field fix. I keep a roll of veneer tape in my kit just for packing out slides and hinges. It gets frustrating when the solution feels like compensating for a product's hidden flaw.

christopher_roberts2911d ago

Yeah, the "hidden flaw" part is spot on. But I don't think it's always hidden. Sometimes it's just a bad design choice. I've seen slides where the mounting channel itself is just stamped sheet metal that bends if you look at it wrong. No amount of perfect cabinet tolerances fixes that. The hardware relies on the installer to make it rigid, which is backwards. Good slides shouldn't need that.