Bruce King
05-06-2012, 10:29 PM
I designed and built this large floor cabinet (6ft long x 5 feet tall x 18 inches thick) for a guy that wanted special order high gloss laminate all over it. It will have two vertical rows of glass shelves. The material cost not counting the glass is close to $700 (gloss laminate and plywood) due to the size and design.
I knew it could tip over easy in the truck so I put it upside down, screwed cleats to the "top" and screwed angled braces to these cleats that went down to the side of the truck bed into some grooves on top of the wheel wells. After doing this I stood in the truck and pushed on the cabinet and it did not move even a 32nd of an inch, very solid setup for this 175+ pound project. I have hauled similar cabinets and know to take it easy on highway ramp curves etc. The glass was not installed yet so no worry there. Looks good I thought, can't lose this one, too much time and money in it......
So we headed up the road to deliver this monster and uh, we never made it.
We were on a very long transition lane from a bypass to an interstate, just along a slight curve nothing sharp, easy to do about 45-50 with no worries since you really can't push this cabinet over if you wanted to.
Ka-boom! WTF! Look in the rear view mirror and the cabinet has fell over against the side! I check my other mirrors quickly to see what else was happening but this is a single lane, really wide lane and nothing beside me, before I could even apply the brakes I see the whole cabinet catapulting over the side of the truck! Then I get to watch it flip and slide for over 50 feet. A few cars were back there but they saw it coming and stopped. It ended up on the back and actually slid back to the inside of the curve out of the road which is weird but it was sliding and spinning like it was on ice with 30 sf of slick laminate on the concrete. The road must have been banked some too.
So we got out of the way and backed up to "load the debris" I thought. Check out the pictures, hardly any damage considering it took flight at 50 mph on the highway!
I have to do some wood filling where the laminate got ground away and will have to reskin the whole exterior (3 sheets glossy at $100 ea)
I'll let you guy's guess at the construction method I used that turned out to be way stronger than I would have imagined. Its all just 3/4 plywood. Want to guess at the joinery technique used on this?
The first picture is before the accident....
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I knew it could tip over easy in the truck so I put it upside down, screwed cleats to the "top" and screwed angled braces to these cleats that went down to the side of the truck bed into some grooves on top of the wheel wells. After doing this I stood in the truck and pushed on the cabinet and it did not move even a 32nd of an inch, very solid setup for this 175+ pound project. I have hauled similar cabinets and know to take it easy on highway ramp curves etc. The glass was not installed yet so no worry there. Looks good I thought, can't lose this one, too much time and money in it......
So we headed up the road to deliver this monster and uh, we never made it.
We were on a very long transition lane from a bypass to an interstate, just along a slight curve nothing sharp, easy to do about 45-50 with no worries since you really can't push this cabinet over if you wanted to.
Ka-boom! WTF! Look in the rear view mirror and the cabinet has fell over against the side! I check my other mirrors quickly to see what else was happening but this is a single lane, really wide lane and nothing beside me, before I could even apply the brakes I see the whole cabinet catapulting over the side of the truck! Then I get to watch it flip and slide for over 50 feet. A few cars were back there but they saw it coming and stopped. It ended up on the back and actually slid back to the inside of the curve out of the road which is weird but it was sliding and spinning like it was on ice with 30 sf of slick laminate on the concrete. The road must have been banked some too.
So we got out of the way and backed up to "load the debris" I thought. Check out the pictures, hardly any damage considering it took flight at 50 mph on the highway!
I have to do some wood filling where the laminate got ground away and will have to reskin the whole exterior (3 sheets glossy at $100 ea)
I'll let you guy's guess at the construction method I used that turned out to be way stronger than I would have imagined. Its all just 3/4 plywood. Want to guess at the joinery technique used on this?
The first picture is before the accident....
231504 231506 231505