Blum undermount soft close drawer slides

[Cooler]

I am building shortly some kitchen cabinets with Blum undermount soft close drawer slides.  The instructions show to notch the rear for the slides, however I usually leave the rear cut short so I can slide the bottom in after assembly.  Will I have any issue if I do that instead of notching?  And if I do decide to notch the rear, what is the best way to do this?  With a dado blade on the table saw?

[jteneyck]

You can leave the back short so you can slide in the bottom.  The notches in the back are just for clearance of the slides; nothing structural. '

I usually cut the notches with a dado blade, as you said.  

John

[Roly]

You can leave the back short so you can slide in the bottom.  The notches in the back are just for clearance of the slides; nothing structural. '

I usually cut the notches with a dado blade, as you said.  

John

The little pin that sticks out the back needs to go in a hole to prevent the drawer from lifting in the back.   As long as the pin can fit in a hole no  problem.  Roly (top right drawing)

[ajkoontz]

You can leave the drawer back off like you describe. If you're doing more than 5-6 this little jig is pretty handy. I'm doing a whole kitchen, so it made sense for me. You don't really need it for the front holes, but it's worth it to locate the hole in the back IMO.

https://www.rockler.com/rockler-jig-it-u...gKVLfD_BwE

[Roly]

You can leave the drawer back off like you describe. If you're doing more than 5-6 this little jig is pretty handy. I'm doing a whole kitchen, so it made sense for me. You don't really need it for the front holes, but it's worth it to locate the hole in the back IMO.

https://www.rockler.com/rockler-jig-it-u...gKVLfD_BwE

To locate the hole in the back, just place slide in position and give it a tap , the point on the pin will locate it.  Roly

[DaveR1]

If you haven't already found it, Blum has a calculator available that allows you to enter the opening size and a few other details and it spits out the drawer box dimensions. I have a client that uses these drawer slides all the time. I developed a dynamic component for SketchUp that automatically fits the drawer box and then provides the dimensions in a report.

[Cooler]

Several companies make drilling jigs.  I think I will get one of those.  Measuring is not one of my strong suits.

[ajkoontz]

Several companies make drilling jigs.  I think I will get one of those.  Measuring is not one of my strong suits.

To be fair, $30 for the jig I linked is pretty steep for what it does. I'm usually pretty tight, but even still it was worth the $30 for me to make things easier. I had a bunch of them to do. The small drill bits that come with it are very brittle. The big bit with stop was nice. There's a ton of ways to do the same thing, I just wanted to throw out some options.

I should add, I learned the hard way about the notches at the back of the drawer. First 4 or 5 I made I didn't read the instructions, so I had to go back and cut the notches after (dado stack). Once I learned how they worked, I made the backs narrower, which is a better way to do drawers anyway. I used 1/2" ply for the bottoms and the hole for the slides is right at the edge of the plywood. Would be much easier to locate and drill into solid wood drawer back.

[Roly]

If you haven't yet, make a mock up drawer and have the slides and locks on hand to see how they actually work. The exterior of the drawer is sized differently than for ball bearing slides. The locks can be placed in the front corners and use a Vix bit for the screw holes. The drawer sides should extend 1/2" beyond the drawer bottom. The drawer side thickness should match the slide specs. The notch bottom is even with the drawer bottom, with drawer upside down push the slide to where it starts into the lock and against the inside of the drawer side and tap it so the pin marks where to drill. If you do not need to notch with the back shorter there is no measuring as far as mounting the slides unless you are doing many and want to prefab all the parts.
The drawer box size is calculated from the opening to the inside width of the drawer. Get the parts and make a mock up, once your head makes sense of it, it is easy. (took a while for mine) You will like those slides. Roly

[Snipe Hunter]

I've installed these glides in 24 in deep cabinets and 12 in deep cabinets. They worked great on the deeper cabinets but not so well on the shallow cabinets. For whatever reason, the shallow glides come with the same rear mount as the deep ones but there's no way to connect them to the glide. I ended up screwing a block to the back panel of the cabinet and mounted the glides to the top of the block. I thought they just might have sent the wrong pieces but had the same thing happen with the same glides from another vendor also. If they are the right mount, I couldn't figure it out. BTW, the directions that come with them have a very tiny font. Had difficulty reading it, even with a magnifying glass.