Stickley furniture centre drawer guide

[johne]

I was watching a video on Stickley furniture and it had this centre drawer guide. I thought it was a pretty clever idea because it would prevent drawers with wooden runners
from pinching when closed by pushing on the left or right side.

Apparently it was invented in the 1920's. I had never seen it before (never too old to learn)  

Edit: an added advantage would be that the drawer guide gives more stability to the drawer bottom (in case of large heavily loaded drawers)

Have any of you used this centre guide? Is it a big improvement? Seems to be in theory anyway.

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Here is the video, the drawer part is at around 2 min into the vid.

 

[nclemmons]

I like to use center drawer slides when I can use them.  I've done multiple dressers and chests of drawers and they work really well.  I tend to make mine wider and thinner than those in the picture as I always do dust panels between drawers so I'm looking to minimize the thickness of the glides.  I'll do glides that are 1/2 inch thick with a mating 1/4 thick center channel that is about 3/4 wide that goes on the bottom of the drawer.

They strengthen the drawer from sag as you say, but also are much easier to close a drawer with the center slide without it 'canting' to one side or the other.  A little wax on well sanded center slides and the drawer really glides.

neil

 

[John Stevens]

Thanks for posting that, Johne.  I grew up with solid wood chests that had center guides for the drawers, but not guides on the sides.  I can really see how the two types of guides would compliment each other.

Just for what it's worth, my late stepfather was an artist and woodworker who went into business repairing fine furniture that had been damaged in shipment.  Boy, he loved working on Stickley furniture!

Regards,

John