I've watched several videos showing different ways of making wood drawer slides in place of commercial drawer slides. The simplest was just extending the drawer bottom beyond the sides of the drawer, and them placing blocks along the sides to create grooves for the drawers to slide in. Everything can be done with a table saw, maybe even a circ saw.
Some more advanced involve routing a groove into the drawer sides for wood runners to slide in. These types of course require a router, and probably a router table.
Either seems quite practical, but I imagine friction becomes an issue as weight goes up. On the simpler one where the drawer is basically built on top of a plywood base, the design is pushing the "made from just a sheet of plywood" but it seems to me, the "runners" would probably work better from MDF, or solid wood. MDF seems slicker than edge on plywood.
Just wondering if anybody has any experience building drawers without slides, that can point out pitfalls, and maybe limits of the concept. Adequately thick plywood I think would be plenty strong, but I imagine much weight in the drawers and they would become hard to move.
I was thinking about building an under bench storage unit with some drawers to hold 3D printer and model making supplies. Mostly bulky but lightweight materials, so thought that might be a good trial run to experiment with some cheap and easy drawer making techniques. I particularly like the idea of the plywood bottom also being the slides for its simplicity.
I think this is the video I watched, if not the exact one, it is quite similar.
I think I would add a full width drawer front to cover the slide slots and improve the appearance.
Some more advanced involve routing a groove into the drawer sides for wood runners to slide in. These types of course require a router, and probably a router table.
Either seems quite practical, but I imagine friction becomes an issue as weight goes up. On the simpler one where the drawer is basically built on top of a plywood base, the design is pushing the "made from just a sheet of plywood" but it seems to me, the "runners" would probably work better from MDF, or solid wood. MDF seems slicker than edge on plywood.
Just wondering if anybody has any experience building drawers without slides, that can point out pitfalls, and maybe limits of the concept. Adequately thick plywood I think would be plenty strong, but I imagine much weight in the drawers and they would become hard to move.
I was thinking about building an under bench storage unit with some drawers to hold 3D printer and model making supplies. Mostly bulky but lightweight materials, so thought that might be a good trial run to experiment with some cheap and easy drawer making techniques. I particularly like the idea of the plywood bottom also being the slides for its simplicity.
I think this is the video I watched, if not the exact one, it is quite similar.
I think I would add a full width drawer front to cover the slide slots and improve the appearance.
