file cabinet drawers

[joseph f merz]

Have a potential job building office desk .I have never built a file drawer and would like info and advice . The plan calls for several roughly 36" wide file drawers . I looked at the ones he had and when drawers are extended they moves around alot . The supplier I talked to said for file drawers use a 150# slide .

[Cary Falk]

I built a 2 drawer lateral file cabinet with 36" long drawers for legal size folders. I believe I used 100 lb full extension slides and have never had a problem with it.The draw is rock solid at full extension

[Michael W. Clark]

Price it both ways. This way they can evaluate the price difference for themselves. Assuming the cabinet construction would be the same, the only difference in price would be cost of the slides plus your mark-up.

If this is a multi-drawer unit, most of the commercial metal ones have concrete in the bottom to prevent tipping. We had some 3 and 4 drawer metal cabinets that had concrete pads resting in the bottom framework. A real pain to move, even empty.

[Sam Murdoch]

The anti tipping is as important as the kind of drawer slides. if you won't be fastening these well to a wall or to a well structured c-top, consider a counter weight as Michael refers to above or something else that will do the job.

[Larry Frank]

I built a lateral file and used the lateral file drawer slides that were rated I think at 175# and were at least an inch of overtravel. This is a tough application for drawer slides especially if the drawer is loaded and used a lot.

[larry senen]

some file slides are more than 1/2" thick. whatever you choose watch out for that dimension.

[Paul Murphy]

I've seen file slides sold with a lock-out pivot to allow only one drawer to be opened at any one time. If I wasn't installing the unit screwed to a wall, I would probably use a slide of this type in an office lateral file.

FWIW paper weighs 75lb/ft3. Worst case, a 36" ream of legal paper would weigh 186 pounds.

[joseph f merz]

I built a lateral file and used the lateral file drawer slides that were rated I think at 175# and were at least an inch of overtravel. This is a tough application for drawer slides especially if the drawer is loaded and used a lot.
Yes attached to a wall .I will search for some 175# slides . Sounds as if they get used alot . Though I think it is true about it being a tough application from the responses I recieved here I feel more confident it could work .Will use solid core sheeting and a longer screw in the slides .

[mark frost]

Thanks for the replies as I had a similar question. Mine will be built in to the wall.

[Harvey Melvin Richards]

Slides that are made for lateral file drawers are made so that they tend to work as a pair instead of individually. Make sure that the slides you purchase are rated for the drawer width (36") that you'll be using.