Wooden Drawer Slides?

Someone (I can't remember who) recommended the woodgears website recently, and I've been exploring it. For those who aren't familiar with it, the guy is an engineer and has lots of articles discussing his approach to woodworking.

Apparently he's a big fan of wooden drawer slides. In fact, he says he never uses anything but wooden drawer slides, he has an interesting and detailed discussion of them.

I rarely hear any mention of them here, and I was wondering what the experts think of them. When do you use them, if ever? Pros? Cons?

Opinions? I'm all ears (or eyes). :D
 
I've never used a metal drawer slide. Nothing against them at all. For furniture I've always made my own wood slides. They just seem classier. If I was going to make kitchen cabinets I would use metal.
 
I like the sliding dovetail ones they sell at Rockler. I've not found them cheaper, but I also haven't looked.
 
I use them as well in furniture. I like hard maple runners and dados in the drawer sides. This requires a hardwood side to your drawer box for reliability over time.

I use ball bearing, full extension for shop cabinets with the exception of my first attempt at a web-frame carcass built out of scrap ply way back when.
 

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I made a toolbox for my dad more years ago then I like to admit, with wood slides. He overloads the crap out of it with wrenches and it is still working fine some 30 years later.

I made some compound full extensions a few years ago for a project, but I lost my butt on them and never did it again. If a guy wanted to set up to make a few hundred at a time it wouldn't be too bad, or if it is for a hobby and you don't need to make a profit.

Wood slides are cool, and what is called for with furniture. I agree that kitchen cabinets get too much abuse.
 
There comes a point when I don't think wooden slides will cut it. One of my dream projects is to build a giant wooden (4' long or longer) wooden tool chest (think Snap on), that will be the lower part of a bench. The metal cabinets are expensive, and in an old shop I worked at, the Snap on chest grabbed attention, where the old wooden ones around there didn't. They were much narrower, and overloaded. (wax on the slides would help) But none of them had a four foot wide drawer.
 
I have used white oak runners, waxed, on the one cabinet I built for my shop. I have some furniture (dressers) where the wooden slides wore out. I think the wood used was inferior. Maybe soft maple? It was not very hard wood. wooden center drawer guides have failed also but they were glued with hide glue and it seems to get brittle with age. I bet a good modern glue and hard wood slides would work very well. I have thought about using Osage orange for slides and may do that some day. That wood is very hard and strong.

The only drawback I have experienced was the lack of a drawer stop and a mind that forgot to NOT pull the drawer out too far. :eek:

I bet a few center guides to support the weight and some strong (meaning beefed up) side slides would work just fine for a large drawer.
 
Woodgears site

I've seen the site name many, many times but never looked so today I did. That's my kind of woodworking so I have just begun to look at the many links. I have already built projects using techniques of his but have never looked at his actual site. I have built a 43-note air calliope using a valve box technique that Mathias designed on his homebrew organ. I currently have it disassembled for more revision. On my "Convolution" project I used a wood chain design patterned off his Wood tank tread. That guy is an excellent woodworker! Thanks for the link
Back to the drawer slides...I would like to see what others have done for wood slides. Is there something beyond just building a wood track in the center and attaching guides on the drawer to follow the track?
 
Wooden slides are fun to make and work great - as long as the drawers will be very lightly loaded. If you try putting more than a few pounds in them, the drawers will become hard to operate. Even waxing the drawers does not make them work a lot better.

The photo show the small 15 drawer parts cabinet on left. It has wooden slides and work very well.

The two cabinets on the right use 3/4 extension drawer slides that cost about $3 per set, and they are wonderful to use. The drawers have been opened thousands of times, and they still move with the slightest fingertip pressure. Some of the large drawers on the cabinet on the far right are heavily loaded, and would be a real pain if they had wood slides.
 

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A few years back I built a tool chest similar to what Randal described but mine is only about 30" wide and the drawers are around 16" deep. I built some rather complicated compound full extension slides for that out of 1/2" poplar that work pretty well, but again you don't want to overload it. I'll have to get a couple pictures later and post them, cause I know the rule: "If there's no picture, it didn't happen." ;)
 
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