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How to PERMANENTLY Repair a Perpetually Broken Kitchen Drawer
Wanna skip the True Story and just view The Fix? Check out the highlighted portion at the bottom:
At one time or another, we've all played out the scene in the kitchen where we say the wrong “right” thing to the Lil' Woman… macht nichts... whether wife or girlfriend... and while she is fretting around there, ostensibly to cook your best meal of the day... WHAM!… she takes out the anger she feels for you by slamming closed the kitchen cutlery drawer… and suddenly, the whole GD thing falls apart with whatever was in there cascading noisily all over the kitchen floor.
So that ends the argument …but because she punctuates the follow on pause by saying, “I thought you said you could fix ANYTHING!”… Your manhood gets insulted and you realize you'll have to put on your thinking cap and use your wits and everything from small brass nails to triangle oak wedges hot glued into all four corners of the drawer to fix the problem. And so, you dive in and try mightily to get the damned thing back together. And… for little while at least, the repair holds... until enough time passes and the same overused drawer takes enough of a pounding again and again to repeat the breakdown cycle. And then you're right back where you were when you started...
Einstein used to tell people that he insisted on keeping a small lamp, a notepad and a pencil next to his night stand so that if he had a dream that gave him an idea of a mathematical or a physics moment of clarity, he would make himself wake up and then write down the essence of his unconscious solutions before he lost them forever... in sleep.
Last night, I had one such cool “Einstein Moment” that I think its worth sharing with anyone who has ever been plagued with “The Busted Kitchen Drawer Problem”. It was so damned simple, so strong and so permanent that I was LOL in bed that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Here is what I dreamed up:
I put the drawer segments back together by slipping the lower drawer “floor” panel back into the long side grooves of the long ends of the slotted side pieces that have the metal rail and rollers screwed onto each outer side. Then… I turned the drawer upside down and drilled out three pairs of 3/32” holes about 1/2” apart and located them just below the bottom edge of the slots near the front, the middle and the back of the two side boards. Then, using some Stainless Steel 0.041” Safety Wire (AKA Lock Wire from Harbor Freight) I measured out 3 lengths long enough to feed each of the two ends through each pair of holes, almost like a pair of shoe laces and then pushed the two loose lock wire ends through each pair of holes of the opposing side board.
Then, using either a pair of flat nosed electrician's pliers or actual safety wire pliers… I slowly pulled the three pairs of “shoelace” wires tighter and tighter while twisting the two ends together keeping the drawer bottom panel snug inside the two side board grooves. It followed that, like tightening twisty ties, I just rotated the pliers gradually and watched the wires wind together on the outside of the side board until they were all as evenly tight as reasonably possible. Then I just clipped off the three ends and laid the coiled wire ends flat against the side boards.
When finished, the 3 pairs of “Wire Shoelaces” were as tight as guitar strings and solved two problems: (1) The side boards can never get loose again… ever... and (2) The 3 pairs of wires give added “turnbuckle cable” like support to the underside of the drawer bottom, making it impossible for it to bow inward and slip out of the side panel grooves ever again! I slid the drawer back onto its rails and found out it “moves like a dream” ; even when loaded back up with a heavy bamboo cutlery tray along with 15 lbs of S/S knives/forks/spoons and all the other junk she has stuffed in there. I had this job done in 15 minutes without any assembly problems.
Wanna skip the True Story and just view The Fix? Check out the highlighted portion at the bottom:
At one time or another, we've all played out the scene in the kitchen where we say the wrong “right” thing to the Lil' Woman… macht nichts... whether wife or girlfriend... and while she is fretting around there, ostensibly to cook your best meal of the day... WHAM!… she takes out the anger she feels for you by slamming closed the kitchen cutlery drawer… and suddenly, the whole GD thing falls apart with whatever was in there cascading noisily all over the kitchen floor.
So that ends the argument …but because she punctuates the follow on pause by saying, “I thought you said you could fix ANYTHING!”… Your manhood gets insulted and you realize you'll have to put on your thinking cap and use your wits and everything from small brass nails to triangle oak wedges hot glued into all four corners of the drawer to fix the problem. And so, you dive in and try mightily to get the damned thing back together. And… for little while at least, the repair holds... until enough time passes and the same overused drawer takes enough of a pounding again and again to repeat the breakdown cycle. And then you're right back where you were when you started...
Einstein used to tell people that he insisted on keeping a small lamp, a notepad and a pencil next to his night stand so that if he had a dream that gave him an idea of a mathematical or a physics moment of clarity, he would make himself wake up and then write down the essence of his unconscious solutions before he lost them forever... in sleep.
Last night, I had one such cool “Einstein Moment” that I think its worth sharing with anyone who has ever been plagued with “The Busted Kitchen Drawer Problem”. It was so damned simple, so strong and so permanent that I was LOL in bed that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Here is what I dreamed up:
I put the drawer segments back together by slipping the lower drawer “floor” panel back into the long side grooves of the long ends of the slotted side pieces that have the metal rail and rollers screwed onto each outer side. Then… I turned the drawer upside down and drilled out three pairs of 3/32” holes about 1/2” apart and located them just below the bottom edge of the slots near the front, the middle and the back of the two side boards. Then, using some Stainless Steel 0.041” Safety Wire (AKA Lock Wire from Harbor Freight) I measured out 3 lengths long enough to feed each of the two ends through each pair of holes, almost like a pair of shoe laces and then pushed the two loose lock wire ends through each pair of holes of the opposing side board.
Then, using either a pair of flat nosed electrician's pliers or actual safety wire pliers… I slowly pulled the three pairs of “shoelace” wires tighter and tighter while twisting the two ends together keeping the drawer bottom panel snug inside the two side board grooves. It followed that, like tightening twisty ties, I just rotated the pliers gradually and watched the wires wind together on the outside of the side board until they were all as evenly tight as reasonably possible. Then I just clipped off the three ends and laid the coiled wire ends flat against the side boards.
When finished, the 3 pairs of “Wire Shoelaces” were as tight as guitar strings and solved two problems: (1) The side boards can never get loose again… ever... and (2) The 3 pairs of wires give added “turnbuckle cable” like support to the underside of the drawer bottom, making it impossible for it to bow inward and slip out of the side panel grooves ever again! I slid the drawer back onto its rails and found out it “moves like a dream” ; even when loaded back up with a heavy bamboo cutlery tray along with 15 lbs of S/S knives/forks/spoons and all the other junk she has stuffed in there. I had this job done in 15 minutes without any assembly problems.
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