Blum undermount slides, drawer width tolerance

[Randy Rizzo]

I've got 4 cabinet cases built up and now I'm ready to cut the drawer material. Using Blum undermounts and 5/8" thick drawer material the required drawer width is opening less 3/8". Though I've built the 4 face frames cutting the horizontal pieces against a stop on my cutoff saw I'm finding I have about a 1/16" (+ /- 1/32") variance in opening widths over 12 drawers. If I make all twelve drawers to fit the smallest opening, is there enough "slop" in the Blum mechanism to account for this 1/16" variance or do I need to size each drawer individually. I planned on using dovetails so the setup for each individual drawer would get labor intensive if the tolerances were that close.

[Stuart Gardner]

If it truly is 1/16" variance, you will probably be okay. But the forgiveness is pretty low. My advice is to start building some drawers and try them out individually. Probably not the answer you're looking for. I'm guessing you want to do all the tails and all the pins at the same time. Maybe do one drawer and see how it fits all the slides, then adjust from there.

[Jamie Buxton]

They should be good if you only need a sixteenth. However, I'd make all the drawer boxes the same width -- the width of the narrowest opening. Then I'd put shims between the slides and the casework to narrow up the wider openings. That is, customize the slide mounting, not the drawer box. A business card is worth about .008". Ordinary xerox paper is about .004".

[Randy Rizzo]

Thanks guys, I think making a test drawer out of some pine scrap to the narrowest opening will do the trick. If I find I need to shim a few slides to fit that would be the easiest to do then I can rout all pins/tails on the maple stock.

[Erik Christensen]

Randy:

If you are making the drawer boxes 1/2 blind dovetails I would make them all to fit. It is not that much more work to make each front/back pair fit the desired opening though you do have to mark them to keep them all together. I just did 12 drawers in 4 cases and made each to fit - to me that is easier than trying to shim out slides in a completed face frame box. All the blum undermount slides work great & this was my first use of this type of slide.

YMMV

[Stuart Gardner]

Randy:

If you are making the drawer boxes 1/2 blind dovetails I would make them all to fit. It is not that much more work to make each front/back pair fit the desired opening though you do have to mark them to keep them all together. I just did 12 drawers in 4 cases and made each to fit - to me that is easier than trying to shim out slides in a completed face frame box. All the blum undermount slides work great & this was my first use of this type of slide.

YMMV

Actually, I hadn't thought of this, but through dovetails should be easy enough to make all of them fit as well. It's the thickness of the pieces that govern the dovetails, so cut all the pieces to fit exactly, and then dovetail away. But you still have to get back to the original idea. Make one prototype and check to see if it actually makes a difference, then proceed accordingly.

[Randy Rizzo]

I made up a test drawer out of some pine to fit the narrowest opening this afternoon and then installed the drawer in the widest of the 12 openings I could find. I can't tell you what the exact range of tolerance may be, but I can state with certainty that if all your openings are within 1/16" it works like a champ, no problemo! We have the Blum slides in our kitchen but without the blumotion, these have it, what a slick mechanism. ;)

[Dan Friedrichs]

Thanks for the update, Randy. I was watching this thread with interest, as I'm installing some of those slides soon, myself, and kind of doubt I got everything with 1/16" :) Glad to hear that it worked for you.