heavy duty workshop cabinet.

[luc gendron]

I,ve recently been commissioned to make 5 heavy duty high school woodworking shop cabinets. These cabinets will be used, opened and closed, dinged and banged by about 100 people (14 to 18 year olds!) on a daily basis. Does anyone here have plans for a solid construction cabinet? Most plans call for piano hinged doors. These doors usually have storage designed into them, thus creating quite the load on the hinge. My concern is attaching these piano hinges to the plywood edge. Seems that the screws don't have much to grab on to. One option would be to glue solid edging to all plywood edges but this seems labour intensive. Also the cabinets I plan to build must have pull-out drawers for easy access and maximum use of space. I'm debating if I should use the Accuride 100lbs slides (22'')(http://www.hardwareattic.ca/en/ACCURIDE_SLIDES_174/MEDIUM(100LBS)_4441.html. or if it would be overkill to use the 200lbs slide http://www.hardwareattic.ca/en/ACCURIDE_SLIDES_174/HEAVY(200LBS)_4511.html . Quite a difference in price, but I'm not paying, the customer is! Any comments and plan ideas would be appreciated.

[Jamie Buxton]

Like you, I'm not impressed with the strength of the usual piano hinge. In particular, its screws are going to need to go into the plywood edge, so they are rather likely to tear out under high-school use. Me, I'd use conventional knuckle hinges, and several of them per door. If you must use piano hinge, use the wrap-around style. That style gets the screws going into the face of the plywood.

[Jon Shively]

I teach Agriculture Education in a high school setting. Welding is a very popular course I teach (3 different levels, one level per semester). Always amazes me the skilled teachers that buy equipment versus building it and using it for a teaching moment (or moments depending on the size of the project!) Not in anyway being negative to you for this commissioned project. In fact, good for you for thinking of the downfalls instead of just building it status quo. I have three older tool cabinets that were in the shop when I started there. The piano hinges are very fragile in my opinion as the weight of the doors and tools seems to pull from the top and the hinge fails. I renovated the cabinets inside and out a few years ago and put on for strength as well as a decorative touch, the blacksmith type strap hinge (because we built them in house also!). Looks good, is beefy, and now has held up over 12 years. In my carpenter cabinet on the doors are screwdrivers (ran out of room in the tool cabinet), tri squares, framing squares, chisels, and metal rulers. In the tool cabinet all of my combination wrenches hang on the doors from 1 1/2" thru the smallest ignition wrenches. In the welding cabinet, on the doors hang all of my square vise grip clamps as well on the other door all of my two fingered vise grip type clamps. (over 50 of each, substantial weight).
The bottoms of my cabinets have shelves on one side, an open area on the other side. Originally would have preferred to have sliding drawers, but bought heavy duty plastic rectangular boxes years ago and specified what goes in them. In the tool cabinet the bottom gets unlocked as it houses tools. In some of the boxes, one box holds all of the valve lappers and valve lapping compound. The other box holds all of the ring spreaders/ring pliers, another box has the ring compressors, another box the valve compressors, another box has the cylinder hones, etc. In the construction cabinet, I keep the bottom locked as it houses all of the extras, sand paper, grinding wheels, cut off wheels. Things that are consumable and hard to keep track of. In the bottom of the welding cabinet, shelves are all the way across. I keep all of my welding rods and welding wire as well as extra dark shields and safety shields there. Talk with the teacher and this may give them some ideas they hadn't thought of. Not calling all students thieves, but some don't understand we have to live within a budget also and just because there is a large stack of cut off wheels doesn't mean we can afford to supply the community! Is nice to have lockable storage within reach so you don't have to leave the students or have the students stop working so you can go get a piece for one student. Just my thoughts and two cents worth of opinions from 20 years of teaching in a high school shop.

[luc gendron]

Thanks for the reply John,

Actually, I've been a teacher for 15 years. I've been teaching Math and this year, knowing I was also a cabinet maker, the principal asked me to teach a woodworking course. Over the years, the workshop was used by many so called ''experts'' and the workshop had become unsafe and basically a mess. Within two weeks in the shop I made over 15 recommendations on improvements for safety issues and one of them is building storage for tools, wood and unfinished student projects. (I teach in french, so excuse me if am not completely error free in my postings!).

I will use the occasion of these cabinets to teach students basics in cabinet construction but the lack of space within this workshop and the time factor (one hour per day) would make realising this project very difficult if not impossible within this school year.

I appreciate your comments on the hinge, could you post a photo of the cabinets?

[Richard Butler]

I would use a backing plate with the hinges. That way you are compressing the wood between two pieces of metal.

[Brian Hale]

I'd go with some strap hinges, perhaps 1 every 8"-10". I consider piano hinges a lid type hinge rather than a door type.

Are you going to let the students design the cabinets? Perhaps some sort of design contest?

Brian :)

[Joe Chritz]

(I teach in french, so excuse me if am not completely error free in my postings!).

As I have mentioned on other non-woodworking (gasp!!) boards. Your english is infinitely better than my French. In fact I never would have guessed.

I can't add anything else except to agree to use something that attaches into the face of the plywood.

Joe

[Dan Forman]

Thanks for this thread!!! Nothing helpful to add, but you just convinced me not to use piano hinges on my upcoming shop tool cabinet project.

Dan

[Michael Gibbons]

You could try the double sided hinges that Norm on the "New Yankee Workshop" used on his "Tool Cabinet" episode. The hinges wrap around two sides on the cabinet and the doors so pulling out from the edges of plywood shouldn't be an issue. I think he got them from Rockler.

[Charlie Velasquez]

You could try the double sided hinges that Norm on the "New Yankee Workshop" used on his "Tool Cabinet" episode. The hinges wrap around two sides on the cabinet and the doors so pulling out from the edges of plywood shouldn't be an issue. I think he got them from Rockler.
I think these are the ones Michael is talking about:
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=283&filter=piano

I have seen these on a couple of cabinets that supports quite a bit of weight.

[Rob Blaustein]

Would several Euro-style hinges be sturdy enough for this purpose?

[luc gendron]

Dan,

I don't think a piano hinge is a complete write off for a home workshop cabinet. My concern is because these cabinets will be used daily by about 100 different teenagers!