My old kitchen (circa 1953) had several wooden drawer slides. We used that kitchen for 4.5 years.

One drawer stuck horribly until my clever DH got out the ski wax and fixed that problem. They aren't too bad.

My bedroom furniture is also 1920's and it has wood glides and they work easily (although too noisy).

For the amount of opening and closing we do in the kitchen, the modern stuff wins.

We took out a 1930s cabinet with wood slides that worked beautifully---would have kept it but it was 7' long and there was nowhere else to put it. :( I think Crown Point still builds cabinets with wood slides in addition to some local craftsmen, but they are extremely expensive...we had to settle for Blum. Ah, well. I never had a problem with those drawers loaded quite heavily. (The built-ins in our bathroom are another story, so it really depends on the quality of the construction.)

Wood glides work very well...for a time. But, over the years the wood becomes wears down and is no longer smooth and the drawers begin to stick and definitely do not open smoothly.

Speaking from experience here.

My parents' kitchen cabinets were built in 1960 with wood glides. My mom tells me they worked very well back then...they definitely do not now!

Ski wax might work...but I noticed the wood has been worn down with 50 years of use.

I have wood glides in my solid, site-built 1972 cabinets. (Or maybe I should say I HAD them as DH ripped them all out over the weekend!) They slid pretty well, but not like you describe. You had to use a bit of force to get them closed completely, causing a loud banging of drawer contents being shuffled around. I don't admire every new convenience or contraption on the market, but I have dreams about Blum hardware removing that wretched thud DH made when he slammed the silverware drawer shut a dozen times a day.

LOL about the kitchen pervert! I feel like that too sometimes when I'm my MIL's new kitchen. She must think I'm strange by now how I go around opening her pantry cabs and drawers. I don't even notice what's in them. I just want to admire a new cabinets! I don't get out much....obviously.

Like others have said....wood glides work well for a time, but modern glides will win out in the long run. Wood wears down, and also expands and contracts depending on moisture content. So in the winter when humidity is low, the wood will shrink. In the summer, the wood may swell to the point that the glides don't slide very well or they may stick all together. I rate metal glides right up there with indoor plumbing. lol!

Think about it, all of our furniture is made with wood glides and works fine.

true....but dresser drawers do not hold the same weight as kitchen drawers and do not get opened and closed as often. My pots and pans drawer is holding a LOT of weight! As is my mixing bowl drawer and baking dish drawer and several others.

I had a '40s kitchen with wood glides. Once I waxed the glides (and painted the 70s green off of them) they worked fine.

But! They are full extension only if you actually remove the drawer (and often that mean spilled onto your feet, although that can be fixed). I would not go back. My furniture has wooden glides and ranges in age and quality. Yeah it works OK. But I wish I had full extension on those drawers also!

Not that it's a big thing, but I'd like to find a way to avoid visible metal glides in a period/vintage kitchen. Undermounted glides are a solution, of course.

@johnliu, undermount glides are a good solution. That's what we're getting (I think? hope? realized we never discussed that explicitly, but it's what we looked at, so we'll see!) Blum makes a nice full-extension one.

Wood glides need maintaining - ie waxing regularly to keep them working smoothly. Most people don't do that, or even realize it needs to be done, so they stick and wear. Or people paint them, and they stick.

Having said that, I don't think I'd want deep 30"+ base cab drawers running on wood glides, the friction would just be too much.

On my furniture drawers with wood glides, I DO have to use both pulls to open any drawer larger than ~20" wide.

I only need one of the two pulls to open my largest kitchen drawer which is about 28" front-to-back, 14" deep, and 40" wide and holds about 125 lbs of baking junk.

Undermount Blum slides are cool. Wooden ones? No. Why make life harder on a whim?

I had a very tough sell in convincing my husband that we wanted many and large drawers in the new kitchen, mostly because all those he's ever used have been sticky wood-on-wood ones, and he can't imagine such a drawer moving smoothly. He came from a house, by the way, where his father was an avid drawer-slide-waxer, so lack of maintenance wasn't the issue.

(Like artemis78, I just realized that I have to check before my cabinet order goes in that the glides are undermounted as I saw them. Yet another detail...)

This period thing is getting out of hand, sorry OP.

wood glides? anyone using coal in their kitchen for cooking?

I also hear getting rid of electric appliances saves lots of money ;)

My ''ideal kitchen'' (for this particular house) would look as if the original kitchen from 1911 survived to now without ever being gutted and remuddled. Pieces were added along the way, appliances were updated, but the bones of the pre-war kitchen are still there. That's the Great War, mind.

Steel side-mount slides would dent that illusion a bit. It's not a big deal, but heck, I'm even thinking about how I can make the paint look old.

We have undermount Blum glides. It's a good compromise without pulling out the ski wax every few years. My house is from the relatively peaceful era of 1895, with wars only in Cuba and then of course the Sino-Japanese war. I did not pre-chip my paint, but had my cabinets hand painted with brushes, and will accept the chips that my 3 kids and nutty dog bring. Light fixtures are actual antiques, appliances are brand spanking new.

Our wood glides on our 1957 site built cabinets not only were tough to pull out and sometimes the wood on wood made a screeching sound, they also left sawdust in the lower drawers. I love our new cabinets with Blum soft close undermount glides and I really don't miss the sawdust.

You probably had Osso Buco for dinner - great meal, I'm sure. Here's a wonderful recipe. I use beef shanks, too.

We had wood glides in our kitchen in our cottage, they stuck, then launched themselves out because there was no stop at the end. They can be hard to put back because you have to line everything up perfectly, it can take a while.

I would imagine you can find good wood slides in 2010, certainly better than those from 1911.

Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sharon's recipe

I agree Pharaoh! As you and others have said/implied...Just b/c something is "period" (as in from an earlier era) doesn't make it better...

johnliu, I understand completely with a period kitchen. My present kit is small but I still wouldn't give up inset cabs.
I did use undermount glides with full extension. When a drawer is open I wanted to see the dovetail not a metal side mount.
I do have some dresser drawers full of books that still slide nicely with the wood glides.

I was about begin this post with "johnliu, I understand completely with a period kitchen" but I see that's been done.

We also are trying very hard for a kitchen that feels appropriate to the rest of the house (a 1923 bungalow.) Our goal not historical accuracy, but, more modestly, to keep people from feeling jarred when they cross the threshold from the dining room.

We chose cabinets that follow the patterns of the woodwork in the rest of the house--easy enough. Our hang-up came with the discussion of hinges. I had imagined we'd use traditional ball-tip exterior hinges. The cabinet maker argued successfully for interior hidden hinges, citing the benefits of adjustability (both for him and for us.)

He suggested that he could mount faux hinges on the outside to give us the traditional look. For about five seconds I thought this would be a fine idea. Then I had forehead-slapping moment. What part of the craftsman ideal would favor faking mechanicals for the sake of appearance? None that I can see.

So we will not have visible hinges. The interior type we're using is reasonably unobtrusive, so I don't feel that too much visual rightness has been compromised for modern function.

There's no reason well-planned wooden glides (which can be adapted for full-extension) would not last indefinitely. You just cannot make them from the first wood at hand. You need a very hard wood. White oak for the drawers and frames, and boxwood for the slide tongues themselves. Fine Woodworking mag does an article on this topic every few years. Resist the herd mentality; be an individual like ev'rybody else. Don't mindlessly follow the pack.
Casey

Just posting a picture of the kitchen mentioned at the start of this thread.

Drawer box and wood glides are made to fit case precisely. No separate drawer face to tweak the gap with, no adjustable metal slides.

Just posting a picture of the kitchen mentioned at the start of this thread.

Another detail I like - inset ring pulls.