Tack Strips for Drawer Slides
HOME CLINIC
HOME CLINIC; If Those Drawers Stick
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December 30, 1990
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CABINET drawers that stick are a nuisance, but generally they are fairly easy to repair once the problem has been identified.
When a drawer sticks only at certain times of the year -- summer is the most common -- it is often better to do nothing about it except to lubricate the drawer. High humidity is usually the culprit. It causes wood drawer parts to swell and rub against each other.
Once the humidity subsides, typically in the fall and winter, so does the swelling. If you try to eliminate the rubbing by reducing the thickness of the swollen parts, the drawer may wobble when the wood returns to its normal dimensions.
Repairs are in order if stickiness persists throughout the year. First, determine exactly where the sticking occurs. To do this, pull out the drawer. Remove it, if possible. Check the sliding surfaces or mechanisms for obstructions, warping or wear.
There are basically two kinds of drawers: those with runners on the bottom and those suspended from the cabinet sides by metal or wood tracks. Drawers with bottom runners slide on guides that are part of the cabinet frame. The runners may be simply the bottom surfaces of the drawer.
With wood runners or tracks, slide your fingers gently over them, but watch out for splinters. If the runners feel rough but are reasonably flat, smooth them by rubbing them lightly with fine-grit sandpaper held in a sanding block or wrapped around a flat-sided piece of wood.
Afterward, lubricate the runners by rubbing them with a bar of soap or a candle, or by spraying them with silicone or Teflon lubricant.
Worn or broken runners or wood tracks should be repaired. But first, to gauge their condition accurately, make sure the drawer guides are in working order.
Check and lubricate the guides and clean the corners of debris with an ice pick or the point of a nail. Drive any protruding nail heads below the surface with a hammer and nail set.
If a guide is loose, refasten it in its original position with woodworking glue or small nails. To tell where the guide should go, look for old nail holes, glue residue and differences in the color of the wood to which the guide is fastened.
Align the guides so that they are parallel, else the drawer may bind. Large drawers sometimes have a central guide beneath them. Be sure it is parallel to the guides at each side of the cabinet.
Drawers with a central guide usually also have a plastic clip, called a track holder, attached to the lower edge of the back of the drawer. This device fits over the central guide and keeps the drawer on course.
When checking, be sure that the track holder fits squarely and that its fasteners are tight.
If guides are worn, one way to restore them is to insert thumbtacks along their concave abraded portions, to level the surface. That will compensate for the wear.
Another way is to install small right-angled nylon brackets called drawer glides. Fastened with small screws at intervals along both guides, they support the drawer fully on both sides.
After repairing, lubricate the guides and reinstall the drawer in the cabinet. If the drawer still sticks, turn your attention again to the runners. Remove the drawer and rub chalk along their bottom edges. Then push the drawer in and out a few times.
If the runners are warped, the most probable cause of the sticking, the chalk will have been rubbed away from the problem areas.
As a remedy, try sanding the runners with medium-grit sandpaper wrapped around a block. About every 25 strokes, test your progress by laying the narrow edge of a ruler on the runner and looking for gaps between the two.
If the warping is too severe for sanding, clamp the drawer in a vise and true the runners with a sharp plane instead. Set the tool to take paper-thin shavings, and always plane in the direction of the wood grain to avoid chipping the surface.
If a drawer wobbles, the runners or guides may be worn, rather than warped. Holding a ruler against their surfaces and checking for gaps, as described, is the best way to test for wear.
To repair the worn edge of a runner so that it is level with the rest of the surface, try installing thumbtacks, just as you did for worn guides. Push the tacks into the edge at the low points.
You can also use nylon stem bumpers; these are made for the purpose, but to install them, holes must be drilled in the runner.
If a runner is extremely worn, plane or sand it flat and level. Then rebuild it to its original dimensions by attaching strips of wood veneer to the planed surface.
Use hardwood veneer called edge banding. This comes in a roll and is usually backed with heat-sensitive adhesive. Place the banding, with its adhesive side down, on the runner's edge so that any excess width overhangs the outside of the drawer. Then press the banding with a moderately heated clothes iron to fasten it.
To trim the banding, turn the drawer over and set it on a hard work surface. Using the side of the drawer as a guide, slice through the excess banding with a razor-sharp utility knife. Next, sand the trimmed edge smooth.
To fix a broken runner, plane it flat and level and then rebuild it by gluing on a strip of wood thicker than veneer.
Drawers with metal runners and tracks can often be fixed simply by lubricating the parts with a few drops of lightweight household oil.
If that application does not work, remove the drawer, tighten any loose fasteners and then clean the parts with a cloth or a cotton swab dipped in kerosene or cigarette-lighter fluid.
Lubricate the parts before reinstalling the drawer. If parts are bent or damaged, or if sticking wheels cannot be freed, replace the mechanism.
On rare occasions, drawers stick because the cabinet has warped, and the sides are no longer square. Problems like those, as well as those involving fine furniture whose value may be lessened by amateur repairs, should be handled by a professional cabinetmaker or repair specialist.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/30/nyregion/home-clinic-if-those-drawers-stick.html
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