Adjusting 'crooked' drawers / cabinet

[mark mcfarlane]

I was curious what people do to adjust for an inset drawer that sits proud on one side by ~ 1mm.

Maybe the carcass is out of square, maybe the drawer is out of square,... The drawers are ~30" wide so any small geometry error gets multiplied.

The slides I'm using are the KV soft/self close variety, KV 8455FM. The slides have little tabs with screw holes that seem to allow for angling the slide off the cabinet, but I'm guessing I should shim behind them with washers or something.

A couple thoughts I had:

1) Use washers or bend the slide tabs to 'rotate' the cabinet-mounted slides a little, e.g,. washer at front of left slide and at rear of right slide would rotate the drawer.

2) Mark the edges of the drawers with a pencil and remove up to 1mm as needed with a hand plane.

3) recess the drawer fronts 3mm behind the face frame so the result is 2mm recess on one side and 3mm recess on the other.

Anything else ya'll have tried?

I wish I had drawer slides that adjusted like the better Euro hinges: twist a couple screws to align everything.

[Jared Sankovich]

Mount the offending slide 1mm back using different holes.

[mark mcfarlane]

Thanks Jared. Unfortunately I believe moving the slide on one side of the drawer won't do anything. The drawer has to be rotated. Moving one slide back doesn't rotate the drawer, it would just mean that one side closes all the way and the other side doesn't close all the way. The drawer is a rigid square.

[mike stenson]

I'd hand plane it flush. It's easier than the faff that trying to shim would be.

[Jared Sankovich]

Thanks Jared. Unfortunately I believe moving the slide on one side of the drawer won't do anything. The drawer has to be rotated. Moving one slide back doesn't rotate the drawer, it would just mean that one side closes all the way and the other side doesn't close all the way. The drawer is a rigid square.

Yep, sorry was thinking undermounts.

[Dan Hahr]

Assuming it has a false front, just take it off, prop up the offending end with a taped on shim and run it through the planer taking off the back side.

Dan

[Jeff Roltgen]

Years ago, before switching to strictly undermounts (which include all the adjustments you listed above) I experienced this issue occasionally with side mount slides too. I still have a drawer full of plastic laminate cutoffs, about 1.5" square with a sawblade kerf slot running about 1/8" past center, which were my solution.
Loosen rear screw on the protruding side, pull slide away from cab side enough to slide that shim in, slot straddles shank of screw. Tighten. Usually, this will solve your issue. If not, add a second one.
As for any fasteners in between, I'd pull them and adjust with front and rear only, as you could easily warp that slide, creating even more fun. You may need to use a shim half thickness of rear one for the middle one or two, if present.
Let us know what works out for you.
jeff

[Kevin Jenness]

Shims work up to the point that the slides start to bind due to the opening becoming too small. Side mount slides usually call for a gap of -0"/+ 1/32" per side. You can taper the front of the drawer box on the jointer.

[mark mcfarlane]

A tad more info. There will be 6 drawers.

[mark mcfarlane]

Thanks Mike, Dan, Jeff and Kevin for the ideas. I think I'll start with a shim and see if that does enough without binding.

Wish I had bought the undermount slides, I'll try them on a future project. I just received about 15 of the full extension slides for this project. I've never had this problem before, hopefully its just the one cabinet being racked a little during install. Its a fairly large cabinet.

I think I'm going to have a similar problem in an 8' tall cabinet in the laundry room that has a 'coffee center' pullout. I'm thinking of building a parallelogram drawer for the coffee makers. In retrospect I should have added a horizontal brace in the design right below the coffee slide out to keep the cabinet square. It looks like I got a little movement of the birch plywood used for this particular cabinet.

Designing, building, and fixing mistakes. Lots to learn while having fun. I feel sorry for my friends who have retired and don't know how to occupy their time.

Thanks to everyone for the assistance.

[Robert Engel]

Never had much luck adjusting slides unless its a face frame case with rear mount brackets.

For that small a discrepancy, I plane the face flush.

I heard recently there are no Tandem slides to be had anywhere.


I feel sorry for my friends who have retired and don't know how to occupy their time.

Had to smile at this. They are probably more sane than we are...............

[Myles Moran]

If the drawers are false front, they can also be shimmed instead of planing them tapered. That would require setting the slides back a small amount.

[mark mcfarlane]

...
Had to smile at this. They are probably more sane than we are...............

Sanity is highly overrated.

Thanks again everyone.

I'll need some practice doing tapers on the jointer.

[Kevin Jenness]

I'll need some practice doing tapers on the jointer.

Stay away from narrow drawers (<8"). To avoid spelching on a box with sides that overlap the front start with the drawer front flat on the infeed table and run the high corner in until the cut is full depth, then make the taper cut. The safest method for dropping on uses a backstop, although I admit I don't do that. For minor adjustments hand planing may work almost as quickly. An edge sander is another, safer tool for fast tapering.

[mark mcfarlane]

Stay away from narrow drawers (<8"). To avoid spelching on a box with sides that overlap the front start with the drawer front flat on the infeed table and run the high corner in until the cut is full depth, then make the taper cut. The safest method for dropping on uses a backstop, although I admit I don't do that. For minor adjustments hand planing may work almost as quickly. An edge sander is another, safer tool for fast tapering.

Thanks Kevin. I have a 4" edge sander but the drawers are 6, 8, and 10" tall. :(

These are inset drawer fronts.

I'll do some more research on doing wide tapers and maybe post back in a new thread.

I'm thinking I'll use the jointer too get close, removing the initial stock from the back of the drawer front, and then fine tune the fit on the front side with a hand plane.

The final fit hand planing will best be done at the location of the built in cabinet so I may build a little floor level planing bench although I may get by doing the final fit hand holding the drawer front and using a block plane to just trim the edges a bit.

[mark mcfarlane]

Thanks everyone for the help on this project. I ended up using a couple thin washers to rotate one of the 5 drawers and fixed what were slight mismatches on the other 4 drawers with a block plane. I looked at some Amish furniture we bought and noticed they used a small round-over bit on the edges of the inset drawers, so I did the same. Hid a lot of sin and greatly reduced the amount of hand planing needed.

Took about half a day. Came out like this:

475373

I bought a couple hand planes this past year and am really enjoying using them for many unexpected reasons.

[stevo wis]

Mark,
I am just finishing up a dresser and am fitting the drawers. Several years ago, Phil Lowe wrote a FWW article about fitting inset drawers. I downloaded it and it helped a lot. Some of the things he mentioned were:
1. At first use a marking knife to get a snug fit to begin with for length.
2. Making the drawer backs 1/16 shorter than the fronts.
3. Handplaning the fronts as you mentioned.
4. You could also plane the side opposite the side that is proud. That is, if the left side is proud, plane off near the back of the right side to "pivot the drawer. Doing this along with planing the front, prevents too much taken from the front.
5. He even mentions, planing the insides of the cabinet, though that can be a ton of work.

Personally I would do it by hand or at least be very careful with the jointer.

At this point, my drawers are all rough fit and it's looking pretty good, but i need to get them glued and final fitted. If you would like more, message me and I can get more info for you.

Stevo

[andrew whicker]

That looks really nice! I like it.

[mark mcfarlane]

Mark,
I am just finishing up a dresser and am fitting the drawers. Several years ago, Phil Lowe wrote a FWW article about fitting inset drawers. I downloaded it and it helped a lot. Some of the things he mentioned were:
1. At first use a marking knife to get a snug fit to begin with for length.
2. Making the drawer backs 1/16 shorter than the fronts.
3. Handplaning the fronts as you mentioned.
4. You could also plane the side opposite the side that is proud. That is, if the left side is proud, plane off near the back of the right side to "pivot the drawer. Doing this along with planing the front, prevents too much taken from the front.
5. He even mentions, planing the insides of the cabinet, though that can be a ton of work.

Personally I would do it by hand or at least be very careful with the jointer.

At this point, my drawers are all rough fit and it's looking pretty good, but i need to get them glued and final fitted. If you would like more, message me and I can get more info for you.

Stevo

Thanks Stevo, I'll look up that reference for a future project. This one is done and the drawers are full of stuff.


That looks really nice! I like it.
Thank you Andrew

[Bill Dufour]

You say they all needed to be shimmed. I assume the carcass was not square?
Bill D

[mark mcfarlane]

You say they all needed to be shimmed. I assume the carcass was not square?
Bill D

Bill, I only shimmed the slides on the top drawer of 5 drawers. 2 other drawers needed a little block plane work (< 1/16") to match adjacent drawers.

The carcass was square before I installed it. I apparently torqued the case a little bit during installation, and maybe some of the plywood moved a little bit. The case is made of 'decent' stain grade birch plywood, but not BB. I didn't detect the twist until it was too late to easily fix it completely, i.e. the granite above and below and the stonework on the side were completed so there was no way to remove and reshim the case.

In retrospect, given the height of the case I should have added a horizontal brace between drawers in the middle of the case to increase rigidity. Using a 3/4" back instead of 1/4" would also have helped make the case more rigid and easier to install but I was trying to maximize drawer depth. Then more care during the case installation.

Living and learning.