Johnson Hardware 2041PLBG Hidden Pocket Door Guide

Way better than the cheap included guide!
After reading several bad reviews I decided to purchase this hidden guide anyway, mostly because the non-hidden guide is so damn ugly. I thought installing the hidden guide would be a pain but it was actually quite easy. The guide itself is simply a single screw, so that was not a challenge. The challenge is getting a straight groove on the bottom of your door. Rather than use a handheld router I simply used my table saw, which is portable so I placed the table saw on the ground and with my wife’s help we made several passes pushing the door over the blade at various depths and fence adjustments. We ended up with a nice straight 5/16” wide slot from edge to edge. So glad we bought this rather than using the cheap ugly guide.

Works great… Just watch your finished floor height
I used this with a Johnson pocket door kit- The 1500SC, to be exact. I’ve had the door roughed in for awhile now, and got tired of it slamming in to the steel studs without the exterior guides that go on the finished trim. This seemed like an ideal solution, especially since I was also using the plywood clip kits on both sides of the door, and I”m not ready to finish the sheetrock and trim out just yet.The challenge I’ve found is getting the correct slot cutting bit for my router. Johnson’s expectation that you route a 1″ slot in the door is unrealistic, in my opinion. With the largest 5/16″ slot cutting bit that I could buy from my local speciality woodworking shop, and the smallest bearing, it still wasn’t enough to give me the full depth. While I could have taken the bearing off, I’d already painted the door and had it hung, and didn’t want to mar the edge of the door. I think that doing this on a freshly-acquires slab door (before painting) would have made the process easier.I routed a 5/16″ wide channel in the bottom of the door and used the finished floor guide (the shorter one of the kit). It was too tall, even though the door hangs about 5/8″ above the subfloor currently. (This is why I think it’s unrealistic… a 1″ channel AND a minimum of 1/2″ above the finished floor height seems excessive).I used a hacksaw to trim the top of the guide (after removing the plastic) and then trimmed the plastic from the bottom, and stuck it back together. This made it clear the inside of the routed channel, once the door had been hung. Mortising the guide stop on the front of the door was easy- Though, be careful with hollow-core doors. I had some minor splitting on one side of the finished surface, but a clamp and some glue took care of that.Overall- I’d say that this guide kit is reasonably easy to use, but I feel that the price is a little high, given how little hardware is supplied (and the premise of the kit).Hopefully my review prevents someone else from making some of the same missteps in the order of operations on door assembly next time. I think that this hardware kit is definitely worth it compared to the alternative of exterior guides attached to finished trim- This is a much cleaner look.

Cleaner install than the guides the door kits come with
I built my own door from scratch out of quarter-sawn poplar so I figured I’d be capable of routing a groove in the bottom of the door and screwing the guide to the floor. I was right. I like the “hidden” look and not having to worry about the plastic guides moving out of adjustment over time or scratching the door. I could have done a slightly better job mortising for the cover plate but that’s not the product’s fault.

Works well once installed, but not easy to install and unexpectedly poor quality
Once installed, this glide provides a smooth and even path for the pocket door, and it’s nice that it is not visible, unlike slides that mount on each side of the trim.But Johnson Hardware should be ashamed of the quality of this item. It arrived with a base that was not flat, and the upright glide was not perpendicular to the base. (See photos.) I was able to bend it straight in both directions with some effort, but that would be unacceptable quality even for a no-name company selling at one-quarter the cost. (I paid around $15 for the “kit” consisting of high and low glides — for installing on sub-floor or on finished floor — and a brass plate to cover the groove in the door bottom on the end that sticks out of the wall, all of which must have cost a small fraction of that to produce.)Additionally, the design includes an oversize screw (at least #12, maybe #14) for this application, which makes it unnecessarily hard to screw in (between the split studs). And the written instructions are minimal. (For example, there’s no explanation of the purpose of a small, hook-shaped protrusion in the base, which faces the door opening. There’s also no explanation for why the mounting screw goes into a slot, rather than a hole, in the base.)Finally, be aware that it’s not a trivial thing to use a router on the edge of a door to make the required centered, 5/16″ x 1″ slot along the length of the bottom of the door for the glide to slide in. That makes it far more challenging for a DIYer, or for a contractor unfamiliar with pocket doors or cabinetry, to use this type of glide than the types that mount to both sides of the trim surrounding the pocket or that mount on the floor, and rub against the sides of the door.For what it’s worth: I did not route the slot all the way to the end of the door facing the opening and then mortise and install the brass plate provided for that purpose. (It seemed to me that would somewhat defeat the advantage of having the glide hidden vs. the types of glides that mount to either side of the door trim. The instructions didn’t really explain if there was some reason to do it that way.) Instead, I drilled a 5/16″ x 1″ hole, centered in the bottom of the door, about 1/8″ away from the edge of the door that faces the opening. That way I could route the slot, starting at the other end of the door, up to the hole I drilled, without worrying about the router bit chipping out the door edge when it got close to the end of the door. Now the door edge, viewed when the door is retracted into the pocket, looks uniform, without having to see a brass plate at the bottom to conceal the slot and the upright portion of the glide.