Anochrome Pencil Drawer Slide Built for Desks and Workstations

The Knape and Vogt 8250 is an 18 inch under-mount pencil drawer slide designed for shallow utility drawers beneath desktops and work surfaces. Its variable-height mounting lets installers fine-tune drawer position to clear knee space, and its stay-close hold-in detent keeps the tray tucked out of the way until it is needed.

Key Features

• Variable-height mounting adjusts the slide's vertical position to fit the clearance under a range of desktop thicknesses.
• Hold-in anti-rebound detent keeps the drawer closed and prevents it from bouncing open after a firm push.
• 3/4 extension opens the pencil tray most of the way while keeping the slide compact under the desk surface.
• 75 lb weight capacity per pair, well above what a pencil or utility tray will carry in daily use.
• Anochrome finish blends with light-colored melamine and laminate desk interiors.
• Polybag packaging ships one pair per bag, matched to a single-drawer installation.

Where This Slide Works Best

This slide is the right fit anywhere a shallow tray needs to live under a horizontal work surface: office desks with pencil drawers, kitchen desk areas, drafting tables, and built-in homework stations. The under-mount position hides the hardware completely above the tray bottom, keeping the knee well below clear. The 3/4 extension pulls the tray out far enough to reach pens, notepads, and small items without extending past the desk front. Because this is a pencil-drawer-specific design rather than a repurposed cabinet slide, the variable-height adjustment is built in from the start, eliminating the shimming and filler strips that come with adapting a standard undermount to shallow-tray work.

Construction and Finish

The 8250 is a steel slide with an anochrome zinc-plated finish. Anochrome is a chromate conversion coating applied over zinc plating, giving the hardware a light silver-gold tone that blends with the aluminum extrusions and light laminate surfaces common in desk furniture. The finish is suited to dry indoor environments. The hold-in anti-rebound mechanism is mechanical, integrated into the slide body with no separate damper component to wear out or replace.

Who Orders This Slide

Cabinet shops building home-office furniture and custom desks, millwork contractors fitting out commercial office suites, and furniture manufacturers producing desks with built-in pencil drawers all reach for a dedicated pencil slide rather than cutting down a full-depth undermount. The 18 inch length covers the most common desk-drawer depth, and the polybag pair format suits both single-unit custom builds and production runs where slides are pulled one pair at a time from a larger stock quantity.

A Desk Drawer Hardware Detail That Gets the Install Right

Specifying a slide built for pencil-drawer geometry from the start saves fit-up time and delivers a tray that sits where it should, closes cleanly, and stays out of the way when the work surface is in use.