Wooden runners

cusimar9 · 2 Aug 2015

I'm making a large drawer and I want to use wooden runners. Since the drawer is large I want to take care over making the whole thing to run as smoothly as possible.

I have oak, beech, maple, ash and some redwood (?) offcuts I could use. I'm thinking of rubbing them down to 400 grit and then using plenty of wax.

Does it matter which species of wood I use for the runners? Should I try and make the drawer as light as possible, will that make it run smoother? I was going to make the frame from 20mm oak but I could plane this down to about 10mm to save weight.

rafezetter · 3 Aug 2015

I've not made runners, but I would say of those possibles I'd ignore redwood as it's softer than the others - the weight of the drawers shouldn't make a difference if they are all installed to run true, plus whatever gets put in it will change the weight anyway.

It reducing the overall weight by planing the oak from 20mm to 10mm important? Do you plan on moving the item regularly? Plus thicker wood is more stable.

AndyT · 3 Aug 2015

I think that with this sort of question your best advice is to look carefully at good quality traditionally constructed furniture and follow what has been good practice for many years.

So oak should be your first choice for the drawer sides and for the runners though your other hardwoods should do, provided that they are straight and stable.

Drawer sides should be 10 mm or under. 8 mm or 6 mm was more normal, even in quite large drawers in chests of drawers and provided that you are not making something of very unusual proportions will be plenty strong enough.

Chrispy · 3 Aug 2015

I've still not come to a decision on this one but there is a theory of hard on soft, ie hard draw sides then soft runners, because oak on oak wears each other quickly but oak on pine doesn't. Also in old cabinets it's often quite easy to replace the runners rather than repair the draw sides after a hundred years or so.

custard · 3 Aug 2015

If you're making a piece with an intended 200 year service life (and if you're not why are you bothering in the first place, when Oak Furniture Land is so economical!) the runners should be harder than the drawer sides, the thinking being that with most designs it's easier to remove and repair the drawer rather than rummage around inside the carcass trying to effect a repair to the runner. Of course if the design means the runners are easily removable then the logic is reversed.

In any event, even though that's what I was taught, in practise I tend to follow Andy's advice and for long life in large drawers use a hard material like Oak for both drawer sides and runners. I too aim for thin drawer sides, with drawer slips adding to the width where it's needed as a bearing surface. Paste wax (any decent brand will do, I use Black Bison but they're all pretty much the same) makes a huge difference to the smoothness of drawers.

Good luck!

cusimar9 · 3 Aug 2015

Thanks for the advice all, some good suggestions here.

Runners and drawer slides are both designed to be easy to replace so I'm literally just going for ease of sliding. The drawer is 1.4m wide which I know is not ideal so I'm taking my time planning how it's going to work.

Interesting the advice seems to be to go with thinner drawer pieces. Given the drawer involves a curved front I can make the whole carcass only 60mm high, with a full height curved front which will further reduce weight. Whether or not I also make the drawer front 10mm thick I'm not sure but I'll ponder that one.

The final piece for me to work out is how to attach the veneer ply bottom - I don't have a single piece big enough so I'll need to divide the drawer into 3 compartments and support the bottom on two dividers within the drawer. Oh and I can't use dados as i need every mm of drawer height I can spare.

Why do I make things difficult!