# Short soft-close drawer slides, max width of drawer?



## DanLyke (Feb 8, 2007)

I'm doing up drawings for a bunch of kitchen cabinets, and given that we've got a small house with a small kitchen, a couple of those cabinets are going to be fairly shallow. For instance, I'm laying out a full wall cupboard that I'm wanting to make about 3 cans, or the width of a cereal box, deep. Because of hardware issues, though, it may end up a bit deeper.

So I've got two questions:

First, how wide can I make a drawer relative to its depth? I've got two drawers that I could make as wide as 2', although I suppose at that width I have to do something about the potential for a sagging drawer bottom (though one axis will only be 9", but would I experience racking issues if I have a drawer that wide, even with high quality slides?

Second, what other sources for soft-close slides are there? We like the Blum Tandem Blumotion, but it looks like their slides that for 9" drawers that have a minimum cabinet depth of 10½" deep may be discontinued. Knape & Vogt's 9" slides don't have soft-close, though I would like to try them out. I'm seeing that Futaba makes a side mount slide, I'm not sure if we're going to be okay with visible slides, but I'd like to try them out.

I also see that Accuride now makes a soft-close slide, but their self-closing slide had a lot of spring to it, which made the drawer seem like it was always being slammed, so I'm skeptical. But I'm looking for more options.

All input gratefully accepted. I'm also totally happy to take suggestions that'll save money, but I live in Northern California, the house cost $500/square foot and the kitchen will be done up in maple and mahogany with Baltic Birch or ApplePly frames, so a couple of hundred bucks more or less in slides as I redo this kitchen doesn't matter too much. Cost is a concern, but it's clearly not the primary concern.


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## AccuBill (Aug 25, 2008)

Hi Dan,
My name is Bill Coffey and I work for Accuride. I think I may be able to help you out. It seems that you are looking for a rather short length for a soft closing slide. While I can't help with that, we can provide 3832 slides in both 6" and 8" lengths without any closing mechanism. This may help you with your current project.

Also, I would like to talk to you a little more about our new Easy Close 3832. We have taken a completely different approach to this project than the 3832 Self Close you mentioned. The technology and resulting closing action on the 3832EC is not only vastly different than what you will see with our Self Close, but is also significantly improved in many ways over other side mount slides that may offer the same soft closing feature in a similar model slide.

I would love to talk with you more about this and get you any thing you may need to make the right decision for your project.

Regards
Bill Coffey
[email protected]


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## Zuki (Mar 28, 2007)

Well Dan it appears that you may be able to solve your challenge with help from Bill of Accuride.

Talk about great timing.

Cheers


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## DanLyke (Feb 8, 2007)

Yeah! I've exchanged email with Bill, and that's quite a bit more customer service than I expected.

Needless to say there'll be at least some blog entries coming up with what I've found out, probably some test cabinets, too.

My paying gig is developing computer "stuff". I've recently expanded out from software into doing some hardware. As a hobbyist it was often hard get get a vendor to talk to me for a few tens of units for building fun stuff. Luckily some of my clients buy chips in the hundred thousand and million unit quantities, but to get a response like Bill's for two thousand or so bucks of potential hardware sales (that are going to end up filtered through a distributor to boot) is pretty spectacular.

I'm floored. Thank you, Bill and Accuride.


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## DanLyke (Feb 8, 2007)

Doh, in poking around up there, I actually thought, from things I've found on the net, that it's Blum "Tandum" (sic), but I think the real Blum site spells it "Tandem", even if the rest of the net is rife with mis-spellings. Sorry, should have caught that earlier.

And, just because it's kitchen related, here's a slapped together box with some of my practice doors mounted, I think we're also going to use that frame and panel style for some of the larger drawer fronts.


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## DanLyke (Feb 8, 2007)

Just a follow-up: Bill sent me some slides, and I'm impressed. The Accuride EC slides have a really nice feel to them. There'll be a full accounting coming soon, with video of drawer slide action, although some of that involves getting some other slides because I've never been able to stress-test the other brands like I have these (there's only so many things they'll let you do to… uh… I mean… in a showroom kitchen…).

However, to my original question: 27" (the size of my test carcase today) is definitely too much of a span for 8" drawer slides. Either I need to do some sort of anti-racking mechanism, or, more logically, I need to make drawers half that width. If I can get the dimensions absolutely perfect, the drawers will go closed with a push on one side, except for that last click. However, I'm pretty sure I can't get the dimensions that perfect all the time, and then there'll be racking and binding.


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## cabinetmaster (Aug 28, 2008)

Dan, What are you making your drawers out of? We make ours out of 3/4" UV plywood and on drawers that wide we usually put in a 1/2" bottom and we never seem to have a racking problem. We have used the Accuride soft close slides and we love them.


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## DanLyke (Feb 8, 2007)

This was a straight piece of 3/4" ply. I believe the problem isn't the drawer width, on the 22" EC slides I had no racking problems whatsoever, the problem is the 8" drawer depth that I was testing the side mount slides for.

If these drawers were deeper there'd be no issues.

(Deeper as in distance from the face to the back, not from the top to the bottom…)


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## SIYIAirBumper (Nov 21, 2008)

Hi Dan,
I have read above your message. I know you do drawer and furniture business.
so I think maybe we could have cooperation with you. We are the air damper drawer slide manufactourers in China.
We can supply you air damper and drawer slide with best price and top quality.
Any way,we also do air damper business single.
The air damper can make drawer slide soft close mutely.

Thanks and best regars,
Ray
For more information,please visit our website: www.gzsiyi.com
Email: [email protected]


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