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Spray WD-40 on Drawer Slides

This is a trick that I have used many times in my cabinet making carrier. If your drawer is not working smooth, just spray a small amount of WD-40 on the slides. It generally works best if you can apply it to both members on the cupboards and the drawers.

Caution:
If you put too much oil on the parts, eventually you will have a black dripping mess inside of your kitchen, bathroom or office cabinets.


To achieve the best results:
Take the drawer completely out of the cabinet and spray the lubricant on the entire interior surface of the slide parts inside of the cabinet and on the drawer. When you are spraying the lubricant make sure that your arm is moving in a very swift motion. You only want an extremely thin coating to go onto the parts. If you stop while spraying you will certainly get too much on the surface.
WD-40 Spraying on Cabinet Drawer Slides
If you are spraying the WD40 on drawer slides that have ball bearings (full-extension style) you are going to be amazed at the improvement. Sometimes one small shot to the bearing area will yield amazing results. Even the best full extension drawer slides will operate better with a small application of the oil.

The use of the oil will generally make the operation of the drawer a lot smoother and it will open and close quieter as well.

It will fix squeaky, scratchy, noisy, clanking sounds when opening or closing a kitchen, bathroom or office cabinet drawer.

If you have locks installed on a file drawer, give the interior of where the key goes a short blast using the straw extension provided with the lubricant. This will make turning the key a lot easier.

You can also take a moment to apply a little to any spring cabinet hinges that are making noise.

Can I use WD-40 on any kind of cabinet drawer slides?

The answer is yes!

Anywhere that metal is rubbing on metal or even plastic wheels running on metal the oil can be used.

  • It works on:
  • Bare metal slides
  • White epoxy coated or painted drawer slides
  • Full extension styles
  • Metal drawer sides

What if WD-40 doesn’t work?
If you are still having difficulty opening and closing the member, then you will need to research how to fix a broken drawer. The chances are good that it is either too loose or tight and needs to be adjusted. It’s also possible that you are missing a ball bearing, a plastic wheel has broken or some part of the wood on the cabinet has come loose. There are hundreds of possibilities or reasons why the cabinet part is not working properly.

Hopefully you will discover a quick fix that won’t consume a lot of your time. Changing drawer slides can be a rather frustrating task and time consuming task.

Categories: Working With Drawers
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