Design help needed...

Dave O'Nan

Member
Messages
5
Location
Clayton, NC
My folks have asked me to make them a triangular corner cabinet of drawers. It is to replace something that they already have but it's too small. It is to be triangular in shape to fit into the corner 20" x 20" x ~28.5" across the front and approx 30" tall. They would like it to have drawers. Their current one doesn't have much capacity to the drawers. I would like to make it with the most capacity I can, while still keeping it fairly simple.
What I could use advice on is how to make the drawers. There are two ways that I think that I could do them. Either rectangular, which should be easy, but would limit their capacity. Also to gain the max depth to the drawers would make them significantly small across the front. Or I could make them triangular, which would provide the maximum space usage, but would make the construction, joinery and guide/slide aspect more difficult. If they were constructed triangular they would fit the front of the cab. much better.
I would like to use wood slides/guides for what ever drawer configuration I end up with.
I would appreciate some advice along the lines of which way to go with the drawers, pit-falls in making a cabinet like this, best type of wood guides to use for these drawers and any other tad-bits of wisdom y'all could throw together.
TIA
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Dave
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Interesting proposal. Use masking tape to tape out the size of the unit to be built, in a corner. decrease the size due to thickness of the exterior walls and then include the drawer side thickness and determine... is the drawer space worth the effort. If so then we can go from there.
Shaz :)
 
I started doodling on your cabinet idea. I was trying to figure out how to work out drawer glides. There isn't a great way to make them work if you want to make the drawers as large as possible. A single center under drawer mount glide might work but there's too much potential for twisting damage.

I have another thought though. Suppose the drawers pivot out from one front corner. It would give access to the entire drawer and the drawer could be supported well over its entire range of motion.
 
Oh i like that pivot-out idea, Dave.


That'd yield the maximum drawer size, minimize the amount of slide complexity (which also minimizes the wasted space to accomodate drawer glides, too), and also adds a bit of uniqueness to the piece.

Now all you have to do is decide which way to make the drawers swing!

Maybe one goes to the left, one to the right? Build it out of teak so that opening both drawers don't tip the whole mess over! :p
 
Dave R., slick idea on the pivoting drawers! Way to think out the proverbial box!

Dave O., I can't remember if you have used sketchup much, but Dave R. is the resident guru. If you are interested in doing a mock up in SU, he can provide a wealth of help!
 
A single center under drawer mount glide might work but there's too much potential for twisting damage.

No reason you cant use 2 under drawer slides. Space them at approx 1/3 of the way across the drawer front. You dont want drawer to come all the way out of the cabinet anyway, if the back 1/3 remains in the cabinet and you have 2 slides then twisting shouldn't be an issue. You could even truncate the triangle shaped drawer and have a small back piece on the drawer without loosing much actual storage space.

I do like the hinged idea too, but it sounds like more engineering involved in that.

Cheers

Ian
 
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