Need some advice - centre mount drawer slides

At first glance, it appears you have plenty of vertical clearance for the slide. But the front/back may be a little snug unless you put a thin false front on the drawer box. However, 1/4” hardwood is surprisingly strong for an inset drawer and would hide the slide at a height that the drawer runner will clear the face frame rail.
And if you were to make the false drawer fronts to lap over (overlay) the face frame, you’d be able to use all of the space between the drawer back and the case back for a rear mounting strip.

BTW, you could place the rear mounting strip on the outside of the back. Just bevel the edges or something, so it looks ‘on purpose’.

I actually do have false fronts that I plan to use (and have ready but not installed on the drawers themselves yet) and they will be overlay drawers. The gap between the drawer and the rail was because I was planning on using simple kitchen style sliders, but forgot to plan for the clearence needed.

Thanks

-- Mike - Antero's Urban Wood Designs http://anterosurbanwooddesigns.com

Agree with bladeburner.

Probably no need to advise that it’s better to have the hardware on hand in advance of building. :-)

Nice looking project, though.

-- Gene 'The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.' G. K. Chesterton

Thanks Gene. You’re right, either that or know which hardware you’re going to use so you can plan for it in your drawings. Yes, I’m a sketchup junkie.

-- Mike - Antero's Urban Wood Designs http://anterosurbanwooddesigns.com

I’ve been pondering that as I was cutting the lawn this morning. The small rail is the part that is fixed to the cabinet and the large rail is fitted to the drawer. The mounting bracket secures it to the back of the drawer (and protects the edges from premature wear).

I could glue it to the top of the face frame, but it might leave it weak and prone to come off. Here’s what I came up with while fiddling with sketchup (The green piece is the drawer slide, the red pieces are what I would have to make).

Only question is, should the slide come right out to the face frame front or stop at the back of the frame? Also, what about drawer stops? How do I stop the drawer from coming out unless wanted? I have visions of my daughter a couple of years from now getting curious and starting to finkle-finger around, pulling on the drawer handle and having it tumble out and land on her <:-O

-- Mike - Antero's Urban Wood Designs http://anterosurbanwooddesigns.com

I screw a half moon wafer of hardwood (mind the grain) to the back of the drawer. I have to reach in and half rotate it to remove the drawer. The wafer catches on the inside of the face frame.

When I use my shopmade dovetail sliders, I rest the drawer part on a business card to set the height for the fixed-lower part, which I then screw to a ledger strip on the FF rail. Then the same to the rear. BTW, all this works best for me when the case is lying on it’s back.

You may have enough clearance (guessing from the pic) to set the whole assembly on top of the rail.

I think you’re plan would work fine. I’d keep the slides as long as you can, but obviously if the drawer fronts are going to sit flush inside the faceframe, you’ve got to cut it a bit back from the edge.

I’ve seen similar solutions to Bladeburner’s in different styles. I’ve got some old drawers in my shop that have a little piece of metal (like an elongated washer) that hang down behind the drawer to keep it from coming out, but the screw holding them is loose, so you reach back and spin it up out of the way and the drawer pulls free.

On another old cabinet they just screwed onto the back of the drawer a strip of wood. The strip was long enough to stop the drawer on the faceframe above and below the drawer, but you could reach back and turn it to 45 degrees or so and it would clear the faceframe. The key to keeping it from accidentally ending up at 45 degrees or less, was to loosely screw on the strip at about 2/3rds to 3/4s of the way up from the bottom of the strip forcing it to hang vertically on its own.

I’ve got to invest the time to do more sketchup practice so I post pictures to explain what I mean. :-)

-- Ian - Life's a game, if you don't play, you can't win.

Thanks everyone, I’ll include some pics in my final project writeup of the outcome.

-- Mike - Antero's Urban Wood Designs http://anterosurbanwooddesigns.com