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
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.
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
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