Lubricating wooden drawers

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terryc

terryc

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I built my drawers in the tub from wood and planned to just have wood slide on wood lubricated with beeswax.

Major bummer as it isn't working and seems to be actually sticking. It was just rub on heavily. Is the beeswax supposed to be heated on(gentle blow torch?/iron).

Technically, the bottom layer is form play coated with a spray on teflon coating ( so says the hard ware place) and the bottom is ply painted with oil based paint, well aged. Wonder if this (the Teflon) might be a problem as the wax didn't rub onto it at all.

Currently I'm going to try a stick of "dri-lube" on the other drawer, but was wondering if anyone else had any experience in this area and can suggest a fix to the problem.
 
Mate it will be the lil based paint. The coating on the formply is brilliant as a sliding surface for draws. Get the beeswax off and put the dry lube down instead. You should have no problems then. The oil based coat will stick to anything if its gets heat on it or has weight on it compressing it to another surface. Like you have in your draws. I can't really think of anything else that will do the job. Maybe put some of the plastic boat skid stuff you see on trailers.
 
Everyday candle wax makes a good wooden draw lubricant between two bare timber surfaces but as already said, painted surfaces will tend to stick. sillicon spray or graphite powder may be worth trying.
 
To report back, I'm going to have to take the bees wax off as it takes a pull approaching 50kg(used a scale to measure it) to get that drawer out with only the camp oven in there.

For the driver side drawer, carrying nothing but a length of pipe and heavy ground tarp(aka really nil), the pull required was 23kg. Paint sticking to teflon?

Pulled it out and smeared a stick of dry lube over the bottom and the pull required was only 9kg.

Haven't measured it yet with it loaded with just under 50kg of stuff, but it still comes out easier than the beeswax drawer.

I might have done something wrong with the beeswax as it actually came as hive cappings that I had to clean up myself. The trick seems to be filtering it with cheesecloth(or a very tight weave cloth). Well I hope it is as the wax floats on top of black stuff that floats on top of the water. The other mistake was that it was poured out into a wide bowl(thin layer of wax) when I should have used a small, very tall tin/bottle.
 
HDPE won't happen this trip, but it is in the back of my mind as an "upgrade".

Tested the driver side drawer tonight and it took a pull of 50kg to budge it. Not good.
 
If you sand or better still plain the timber to get rid of the paint then you can rub a dry cake if soap on to all the running surfaces. this should help and is cheap enough to do when ever it gets tight. the other thing i have done is get some strips of laminex and glue them to the bottom af the draw rub on some soap and your set....
 
i have had teflon skid plates on semi trailers and the trick with them is to make sure all grease is removed and apply baby powder between surfaces different aplication though
 
Hmm, to soap. I've got tubs of it(accumulated left over soap chips) around the place. Mostly use it for lubricating screw, but I suppose it won't hurt to give it a try.

I will also give sanding the paint off a try as well. The draws all need to be pulled after the trip to remove all the red dust in them.
 
Just bite the bullet and go to slides they dont have to cost a fortune. go buy yourself a cheap pair of rollerblade it will have 16 bearings in a set put them on the outer cabnet and srcew a peice of box or timber on the side of draws and your away. alternativly 608 bearings the same size as roller blades are about 4bucks each. if u put one bearing at the front under the newly attachted rail and one above the rail about 220mm back it stops the draw from tipping when you pull it out. hopefully ill finish mine tonight ill post up some pics.
$20 for cheap or secondhand roller blades and a bit of creativity beats $200+ worth of slides and the headache of timber on timber imo
 
Alternatavly if you have have kids just steal there wheels and tell them you converted there roller blades to moon boots o_O
 

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