Long Story for a Short Punchline

In my garage, when we first moved into this house 27 years ago, I built a workshop with overhead plywood cupboards and a plywood countertop with plywood cabinets & drawers underneath. I made the effort to cut the cabinet and drawer faces out of a single sheet of plywood (each), with a pronounced grain, so as you look at the workshop the wood designs all lines up.

It is quite a neat effect, for a damn workshop.

Twenty seven years ago, having just bought a new house, and contemplating eleven drawer slides and twelve cupboard door hinges and latches, I bought the most inexpensive hardware I could find. The drawers hold tools (drills and screwdrivers and wrenches and plumbing pieces and electrical pieces) and can get / have gotten quite heavy. Accordingly over the years I've had to replace several drawers slides that couldn't handle the weight.

Last year I had about four drawers slides come off the rails and get all bent up. Their drawers either couldn't be opened or couldn't be closed. I resolved to finally do something about this situation, and replace the cheap-ass stamped steel economy slides with heavier-duty ball-bearing slides. I bought four pair of 100-lb rated 24" steel drawer slides at Home Depot, and installed them -- which turned out to be easier than anticipated. They worked great!

I went looking for more slides, to replace the other eight slides, but neither Home Depot nor Lowes carry much in the rare 24" length. I talked to HD and mentioned my plight, and they said they'd be restocking soon (since I had cleaned them out). Around Christmastime last year they finally got some 24" slides in and I purchased them (at twenty bucks each!) but it was too friggin' cold in the workshop to install them so they lay on the countertop.

Until yesterday.

Now that Mrs NoCo is retired too she nagged suggested to me that I get back into this project, since there are still /again a couple drawers you can't open.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the first package and discovered these were "soft-close drawer slides" -- the slides hit a little ratchet mechanism as they close and are pulled the last inch by a clever elaborate spring-loaded plastic doohickey. Huh, I thought, I don't really need soft-close in a fucking workshop but there already here so WTF.

Installed the first one -- somewhat hampered by the dearth of appropriate mounting holes due to all the plastic gimcrackery -- and went to slide the finished drawer in. No luck. Something was catching, preventing the drawer from fully entering the track.

I spent an hour examining the installed track, disassembling an unused track, mounting and unmounting the slide, and could not for the life of me figure out WTF was hanging up. Finally in frustration I decided to apply a little Polish Persuasion and force the drawer into its slide.

Mistake. Ball-bearings started popping out everywhere and the slide disintegrated into several pieces.

So, I revisited Home Depot, found some non-soft close slides, returned the seven undamaged soft closes ($ was just about a wash), and installed the first one last night. I was dead tired but it worked first time. Took a hot shower, some sleeper pills and crawled into bed.

I still, for the life of me, cannot figure out why the soft close slides didn't work. Assembly and disassembly when they're not installed is very straightforward, the catch on the side (to prevent the drawer coming all the way out) is cam-action so it latches when you first push the drawer in. That's not the problem. Something about 3" further in was hanging up. No clue what.

Oh well, I guess I don't need to figure it out anymore.

I hate being defeated by a piece of hardware though.

When you first tried to insert the drawer, how far did it go in before stopping?

All the way.

When not installed the slides open and close without hindrance.

Now I'm confused. You said, "Something was catching, preventing the drawer from fully entering the track." Now you say the drawer went in all the way.

Oh sorry, I misread.  I thought you said when I first tried the slides.

The drawer went about 6" into the slide before it hit something solid and stopped dead.  Makes a pronounced bang when it hits it.  Checked underneath and the drawer itself is not hitting anything under the counter -- it HAS to be the slide.

But I'll be dipped in shit if I could find it.

And the new slides, installed the same way in the same location, worked fine.

I'm intrigued. What brand and model of slides were they?

Soft-close:
Liberty 94x #942405, upc 885785622032

Regular:
Liberty D806 #D80624C-ZP-W, upc 885785313169

Looking at them on their web site, they appear to be standard installation. Is it possible to put the drawer-mounted piece on backwards (end-to-end)? Then the release mechanism that allows you to remove the drawer would cause the stoppage that you describe. Happened to me once.

That was Mrs NoCo's thought too. But no, the drawer member is closed at one end and open at the other, so it can only mate with the cabinet piece if the open end is out.

And there's no left and right dichotomy; they're symmetrical.

Hmmm. There's not too many things that can cause a hard stop as you described. If the drawers were not square, or the slides were installed a bit out of alignment, you would get a slowly increasing resistance. Did you use pan head screws or round head? There's not a lot of space in many slides.

Thought of that. Changed out the screws but it didn't help. There's a channel inside the slide that accommodates screws.