Figured out a weird trick for fixing drawer slides that kept binding up on me

I had these soft close undermount slides on a job last month that just would not run smooth. They'd get stiff about halfway out and I was ready to toss them in the trash. I tried adjusting the brackets, checked for level, even replaced a set thinking they were defective. Then my old mentor stopped by and pointed out the drawer box itself was twisted just a hair from the glue up. He had me run the drawer through the tablesaw and trim 1/16 off the back edge where it was pinching. Fixed the problem completely and I felt dumb for not checking the box squareness first. Anyone else run into slides binding from something dumb like that and find a simple fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

janaw116d ago

Asked my buddy about this and he laughed and said he spent three hours shimming drawer slides once before realizing he forgot to take the cardboard out of the box it was sitting in. Felt like a total idiot after that one.

reese_garcia6d ago

Gotta push back on this one. That's not being an idiot, that's just being human and sometimes we get so focused on the fix we skip the basics. Plus finding out after three hours that it was just cardboard? That's the kind of story you laugh about for years, not something to beat yourself up over.