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Hardwood drawer rail in hardwood channel

To economize on the use of hardwood, I have often made the drawers with a hardwood rail sticking out the side, and made that slide in a hardwood channel in the piece of furniture. I used this approach for a drawer in a TV table. With the drawer only filling part of the space underneath the table, the channel just spanned from the front to the back for the drawers to slide in.

I also used this approach in a drawer chest, shown at left. The drawers go right to the edge of the cabinet, so it was more expedient and space efficient to just attach pieces of hardwood to the inside sides of the cabinet. I just used pieces of scrap hardwood I had lying around, which is why the pieces of wood have odd shapes to them
Each drawer has a bottom guide, and a top guide. The top guide is there to keep the back of the drawer from tipping out if its pulled out more than half way and let go.
A refinement was to make the top rail a little bit shorter on the front. That way, if the drawer is nearly out, rather than have a crazy amount of leverage on the rails and potentially damage things, it will simply fall out. It also makes the drawer easier to insert back in the cabinet if it was taken out, as the back of it just needs to be placed on the bottom rails, and pushed in, rather than aligning it precisely first.

Hardwood drawer slot rail on hardwood rail

The best sliding and most durable drawer slides are of course if you have hardwood sliding on hardwood. Preferably with a very dense and close-grained hardwood such as maple. My dad often makes drawers like that on furniture he builds.

I have personally never used this approach though - I don't have my own source of hardwood, and its too expensive to buy just to make drawers.

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