Shaker style cabinet

[Bryan Hunt]

I working on a design for a shaker style cabinet and would appreciate any feedback you guys might have. The size is pretty much fixed at 31" H x 24" D x 8' W. The cabinet will be partitioned into 5 sections each one basically 18" wide. My wife has chosen mahogany :) I'm planning on using 12/4 for the legs, 8/4 for the rails, and 4/4 for the door and drawer fronts with 3/4" ply for the side panels, and 1/4 ply for the doors and drawers. Finally, I'm planning on a solid top from 6/4 with the front three edges chamfered.

[Bruce King]

I working on a design for a shaker style cabinet and would appreciate any feedback you guys might have. The size is pretty much fixed at 31" H x 24" D x 8' W. The cabinet will be partitioned into 5 sections each one basically 18" wide. My wife has chosen mahogany :) I'm planning on using 12/4 for the legs, 8/4 for the rails, and 4/4 for the door and drawer fronts with 3/4" ply for the side panels, and 1/4 ply for the doors and drawers. Finally, I'm planning on a solid top from 6/4 with the front three edges chamfered.


Wow! That's quite a large piece. I would think about the weight and ability to fit it around corners etc as its being moved.
The top may have to be removable to make it lighter.

[Bryan Hunt]

Yep, the weight is a bit of a concern. Other than the weight, moving it into place won’t be an issue since we have a double back door into the living room where the cabinet will live. The top will certainly be removable.

[Jamie Buxton]

Around here, supplies of Honduras Mahogany have gotten pretty flakey since the Brazil embargo went into place.

[Bryan Hunt]

Here's the updated design:

371695

[Lee Schierer]

If you plan on putting anything it that cabinet I think you are going to want the center leg to support the weight in the middle.

[Bryan Hunt]

If you plan on putting anything it that cabinet I think you are going to want the center leg to support the weight in the middle.

You mean like this?

371760

[Bryan Hunt]

Here's the updated design. The wife likes the solid drawer fronts so I went with those. The drawers cannot have dividers between them because the math doesn't work out to allow a DVD box to clear the opening, so I'm going with the full overlay look throughout. If it's not obvious, the bottom and partitions are missing from the drawing.

371783371784

[Bryan Hunt]

Here's the latest. The back will have fans in strategic locations and the bottom will have holes for air flow in the sections that contain the electronics.

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[Carl Baker]

In terms of woodworking / furniture design, it sounds like you are on the right track. Since you mentioned it houses electronics, One suggestion I would make is to give a lot of thought to cord routing / management. I have done several built ins at different homes and one thing I feel I always fail to address is cord management. The closest I got was a cabinet where I incorporated full extension drawer slides to mount the shelves, allowing access to the back of each piece of electronics and their connections from the front of the cabinet. problem there was that I had to leave enough slack in my cord connections to allow the slides to work. To do it over again, some sort of "retractable" strap system may work.

My applications were fixed built ins, so I had no choice to access from the back, although I still believe that is the best solution for electronics. I would consider a door at the rear of the compartment where you plan to house them. Maybe even just a removable panel. Granted, you don't want to move this thing very often, but I think you'll be a whole lot happier if you can at least utilize this for the first hook up of all of the equipment and get your cords and connections neatly gathered up.