A Cabinet for All of Bart's Dishes

Thanks Dave,
It is easy to understand given the exploded view and your explanation. You are very kind to help the mentally challenged. How do they attach the sides and back or do they just float?

Robert, after the front sides and back are glued up, the box is glued to the bottom assembly. If you look closely at the drawer front, you'll see that it extends at the bottom to be flush with the runner. The initial rabbet (for an overlay drawer) is cut so the remaining wood exactly fits the opening from side to side. The pins are cut a 1/16" longer than the thickness of the sides. After the drawer is glued up, the pins are carefully trimmed flush with the sides but at the bottom corner, the end of the drawer front is left flush with the runners.

This result in the drawer sides being 1/16" from the ends of the opening so you don't have the friction between the drawer sides and the opening nor do you have problems with changes in humidity affecting the fit. It would be best to use quarter sawn wood for the runners so that there's no (little) width change in the runners with humidity.

Dave,
Your thoroughness and clarity have explained it well. Thank you.
As for me, I will use full extension drawer guides , heavy duty when necessary.....

Dave I'm just curious about 2 things. First how did you get that grainy look in your pics of the cabinet? Is that a feature in SketchUp or are you using another program along with it? Also when you make a drawer or anything for that matter in exploded view, do you have to draw each piece individually or is there a way of breaking apart a model, that I don't know about?

As for the design, I very much prefer the 4 leg layout. Something about the 3 legged version just doesn't look right.

Also I do prefer the inset drawers, with everything else being somewhat flush the overlay drawers look a little awkward. Maybe if you were to bulk up the base a little so that it sticks out about as much as the drawers do at least, it might look a little more uniform.

That said, I am not very familiar with the Arts and Crafts style so I don't know if my suggestions would be pulling the design farther away from the style.

Allen, the grainy look is mostly a SketchUp thing achieved by mixing a line style and a watermark style, adding some color and then tweaking things. The effect was adjusted a bit by letting Picasa "optimize" the contrast.

I've uploaded the style I used here in case anyone is interested in trying it for themselves. I posted it as a zip file because that is really what it is. Before you download it make a new folder in the Styles folder under Google SketchUp 6. Call it New Styles.

Now, download the ZIP file and save it in that New Folders folder. Change the "zip" to "style". The file name should be Brown.style and when you open the Styles dialog box in SketchUp, you should find it under New Styles.

The exploded view does require that the parts be drawn separately and that each one be made into a component (or group but I rarely use groups) so each is a discrete collection of geometry.

Thanks Dave, just as helpful as always.