Am building a two drawer lateral filing cabinet with the drawers 36"
long and 18" front to back. At present plan to use 18" full extension
slides rated at 100 lbs. Can I stay with the 100 lbs. slides or would
it be better to upgrade to !50 lbs. slides. Would prefer to use the
100 lbs. slides because they are $30.00 cheaper per drawer. Have never
built anything with drawers that long and would rather be safe than
sorry. All advice is welcome. Thanks.

Vic

Victor wrote:

Am building a two drawer lateral filing cabinet with the drawers 36"
long and 18" front to back. At present plan to use 18" full extension
slides rated at 100 lbs. Can I stay with the 100 lbs. slides or would
it be better to upgrade to !50 lbs. slides. Would prefer to use the
100 lbs. slides because they are $30.00 cheaper per drawer. Have never
built anything with drawers that long and would rather be safe than
sorry. All advice is welcome. Thanks.

Vic


It really all depends on what you are going to file. If you plan on filling
it with legal briefs or the like, go for the 150 and 200 if you can find
them. If it is for home use, the 100 should be good.

Deb

Let's see. Copy paper weighs about 5# per ream and occupies about
0.1 cu-ft. So a block of solid paper would weigh 50 #/cu-ft.
Your drawers (assuming a height of 8.5") have a capacity of about 3.2 cu-ft.
So, worst cast, the maximum weight if you pack it rock solid with paper
would be about 160#.
In reality you would likely be far lighter than this but how much is your call.
None of the above applies if you fill the drawer with gold ingots!
Art


"Victor" wrote in message
...
Am building a two drawer lateral filing cabinet with the drawers 36"
long and 18" front to back. At present plan to use 18" full extension
slides rated at 100 lbs. Can I stay with the 100 lbs. slides or would
it be better to upgrade to !50 lbs. slides. Would prefer to use the
100 lbs. slides because they are $30.00 cheaper per drawer. Have never
built anything with drawers that long and would rather be safe than
sorry. All advice is welcome. Thanks.

Vic

Victor wrote:
Am building a two drawer lateral filing cabinet with the drawers 36"
long and 18" front to back. At present plan to use 18" full extension
slides rated at 100 lbs. Can I stay with the 100 lbs. slides or would
it be better to upgrade to !50 lbs. slides. Would prefer to use the
100 lbs. slides because they are $30.00 cheaper per drawer. Have never
built anything with drawers that long and would rather be safe than
sorry. All advice is welcome. Thanks.

Vic

I built a cabinet like that for my wife but 30". I used 100# rated slides,
NP. I doubt there would be one with your 36" box.

One thing...a free standing lateral file cabinet has a burning desire to
tip. Especially when the top drawer is extended. It *will* tip if both
drawers are extended. There are various way to fix it one being a cleat
fastened to the floor or wall which retains one on the cabinet.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

"dadiOH" wrote in message news:gcN6k.16187
I built a cabinet like that for my wife but 30". I used 100# rated
slides,
NP. I doubt there would be one with your 36" box.

http://www.leevalley.com/hardware/pa...=3,43614,43616

And of course, the biggest problem to keep in mind with parallel drawer
filing cabinets is too much weight or too many extended drawers causes the
unit to tip over on you making for a really bad day.

"dadiOH" wrote:

One thing...a free standing lateral file cabinet has a burning
desire to tip. Especially when the top drawer is extended. It
*will* tip if both drawers are extended. There are various way to
fix it one being a cleat fastened to the floor or wall which retains
one on the cabinet.


SFWIW, have several commercial metal lateral files.

They all are two high units and have an interlock that only allows one
drawer at a time to be open.

Lew

The commercial wood file cabinets in our office use Knap Vogt slides with
interlocks. Link:
http://www.knapeandvogt.com/8500T_He...e =details.28

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
news:jOR6k.30$cv5.14@trnddc01...

"dadiOH" wrote:

One thing...a free standing lateral file cabinet has a burning desire to
tip. Especially when the top drawer is extended. It *will* tip if both
drawers are extended. There are various way to fix it one being a cleat
fastened to the floor or wall which retains one on the cabinet.


SFWIW, have several commercial metal lateral files.

They all are two high units and have an interlock that only allows one
drawer at a time to be open.

Lew