The Woodshop Shed

Cabinet with 100% DIY sliding doors

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


I'm not a big fan of sliding doors, but I wasn't on the mood to mess with hinges, etc., Especially where this cabinet is supposed to go, which is on the wall above a closet door. (The opening salvo of my war on clutter.)The cabinet itself is boring, but I thought the doors might be of interest.Having never made sliding doors before, I looked online for a basic tutorial. Granted, I didn't look that hard, but everything I found called for prefab plastic track.But the local big box store didn't have any, and the stuff I found online seemed overpriced (and I didn't want to wait for it to be shipped), so I made some out of hard maple. I have one of those mini dado stack blade sets intended for making box joints (Two blades, put 'em one way, you get 1/4 inch flat bottomed grooves, the other way, you get 3/8. I have yet to actually make any box joints with it, but it's been handy for other stuff.)Anyway, cut two 1/4 inch grooves, 3/16 inch apart in long piece of maple. If I had to do it again, I think I'd try 1/8 inch apart, but i was worried something would split or break off. I cut this long track in half so as to get the top and bottom tracks.The doors are just plywood floor underlayment, which is something over 3/16 inch thick and easily fit in the grooves without binding.I glued the track in place and made the doors, and that's when I ran into a problem. If I made the doors the width of the opening, plus 1/4 inch for the depth of the groove, the doors would only fit in the bottom groove. If I made the larger, I couldn't install them, they'd be too wide. I solved this by cutting a 1/8 inch thick strip to go in the bottom of the two bottom grooves. This raised the doors up enough so they were partway inside the upper grooves, but were still easily installed by inserting them into the top groove and letting them drop into the bottom one I added some paste wax to the grooves and the door edges and everything worked great.Like I say, boring, but perhaps someone else might find this of use.

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