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Customer's complaint about my drawer slides sent me back to the drawing board
Last month a homeowner in Boise pointed out that the soft-close drawer slides I'd been installing for two years were getting louder after about six months. She said they started sounding like a ratchet strap when you pull them. I brushed it off at first, blamed humidity or cheap hardware. But then I tested my own kitchen drawers and she was right. The issue wasn't the slides themselves, it was how I was mounting them. I was squaring the drawer box to the face frame instead of allowing a hair of play on the non-captive side. That binding put stress on the mechanism over time. I switched to shimming the rear bracket with a 1/8 inch spacer and now they glide silent. Has anyone else run into this with the full extension undermount slides, or do you all set them dead flush?
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lily_stone761mo ago
Man, that story really gets me because it's such a sneaky problem. You do the same thing for years, it looks right, it feels right, and then somebody points out a small noise and it unravels everything. I totally get that sinking feeling when you check your own kitchen and realize the customer was right the whole time. It's also kind of wild that a tiny bit of play on the non-captive side makes that big a difference over six months. I bet a lot of people never catch it because the slides still work fine, they just get loud and gritty sounding. Good on you for actually listening to her instead of blaming the hardware like most folks would. That 1/8 inch shim trick sounds like something worth remembering.
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