Drawer Slide Jigs
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Pros suggest several options for quick and accurate drawer-slide installation. June 17, 2005
Question
Does anyone have an easy method for setting drawers into cabinets, so you don't have to fight to get them set right? The most common slides we use are the Grass self closing side mounted 100lb slides.
Forum Responses
(Cabinet and Millwork Installation Forum)
I found the Kreg drawer slide installation jig at a show recently and would now not try to install a drawer without it. It has saved me 10 times the cost of the jig in just 2 months' use. It works for side mounted and center bottom mounted slides, full extension or Euro slides.
Is this the
Kreg drawer jig you are referring to? Will it work with KV and Accuride slides?
Yes, that's the one. If you are using the KV and Accuride full extension side mount, it works.
Grass makes a slide and jig system that will surely solve your problems. It's based on their 6610 series slide with a slightly modified rear socket. One jig is for top drawers only and the other is for the bottom two in a bank of drawers. I saw it at the IWF in 2002 and was sold right away. I purchased it right away and have had wonderful results. The slides are within pennies of the regular 6610 and the jigs are slightly pricey but worth twice the price.
I use
Blum's and have always just run the drawer into the opening with the cabinet members loose and held it where I wanted it and marked the rear sockets with a pencil, shot a staple to hold, removed the drawer and screwed the socket. As Papaw used to say, that may not be by the book, but it has always worked. Have had some tell me the jigs would work better, but it's hard for me to imagine as well as this seems to work.
The way I like to install full extension BB slides is to:
Screw one of the slides to the inside of the cabinet.
Screw the other slide to the drawer.
Insert drawer into cabinet.
Screw second slide into cabinet.
This way the slides are automatically inline with the cabinet and the drawer. This is not the easiest way to do it. I would like to hear other techniques. I also sometimes just mount the slides to the inside of the cabinet evenly, but that isn't much faster, and more often it is out of alignment.
If you're using drawer slides with rear sockets on face frame cabinets, there is an easy way to mount drawers. I worked in a large shop that used the following method. First rip some plywood the height of the sockets, about 2 1/2". Then cut them to length, about 5/8" wider than the drawer hole. You will have to determine this by how your sockets are made. Next, attach your sockets to the strip you have cut. Insert the cabinet part of the slides in the sockets and put them in the cabinet, attaching the front edge to the face frame and letting the back edge with the sockets hang. Now install your drawer, and push the drawer front tight to the cabinet all the way around. While the drawer front is pushed up tight, push the strip with the sockets attached to the back of the cabinet and fasten it there with screws or staples from behind. Two people can do this pretty fast and easy, but one can do it if you use some spring clamps to hold the drawer front in place. It may take some fine tuning to get all the measurements right, but works pretty good when you're done.
We put stretchers in our cabinets, front and rear, below each drawer to rest the slides on when installing them. Really easy and foolproof.
