This page documents the construction of the storage cabinets upon which the layout was to be built (their designs are covered in the previous page).
The Cabinets
I didn't take any photos while I built any of the cabinets themselves, because they are fairly straight-forward. All 5 sides are made out of 3/4" Oak-veneered plywood (cabinet-grade). This makes them very heavy, which is good for benchwork, but they are still manageable by one person using a dolly. All cabinets were made to a standard height and depth, and a width to fit their originally-intended space.
The following are some photos of interesting cabinets. This is a corner cabinet where one set of cabinets are going to be placed against the face of this cabinet, as you can tell from the toe-kicks below. Rather than waste this precious space, I built a corner cabinet with fixed shelves in it. The cabinet will have a small door that provides access to the shelves. As you can see, for maximum flexibility, I made the distance between the shelves different for each one. That way I can always fit something in that cabinet. These kind of cabinets are great for storing things we don't need very often, such as paint cans, old structures, households goods, etc.
The next photo shows a set of cabinets which have individual slats glued to their sides to provide support for a large collection of simple drawers to hold things such as strip wood, sheet styrene, miscellaneous parts, etc. The drawers were made out of four strips of 3/4" Oak plywood glued in a square on top of a sheet of Masonite hardboard. Not pretty to look at, but easy and cheap to build. A set of two doors will hide the drawers. In addition to the above-mentioned purposes, we also use the drawers to store household items, odd-shape scenery materials, and kits in the process of being built.
This is what these cabinets looked like when they had their stained doors installed.
This next photo is a bit overexposed, but it was to show the dark interior. It has two shelves set back. That allows the front of the cabinet to have the full interior height of the cabinet, which is great from storing 3-foot sections of rail and other long, tall items.
Constructing the Drawers
I will now describe how I built the visible drawers for these cabinets. I learned from previous layouts that ergonomics is very important. It is frustrating to always hit your head or another body part maneuvering around the hobby room. I decided, therefore, that starting with this layout there would be no protruding parts sticking out from the benchwork. Also, I wanted a solid, even-looking face to the cabinets so as to not distract from the layout above them.
These two photos show the front and the back of the finger pulls used to open a drawer. Curvature is due to photographic perspective. The front of the drawer hole was made using a one-inch Forstner bit, and the back was made using the Ogee router bit. It is just large enough to get a good grip on the drawer.
Using nothing more than yellow carpenters glue and a handful of clamps, the drawers go together quite easily. When the drawer box was dry, I re-enforced the joint with some dry wall screws.
As you can see, I used simple butt joints for the drawer sides. The 1/4" plywood drawer bottom sits in a groove cut into the drawer sides. I formed a groove in the drawer bottoms using some thin strips of solid oak. The front and back panels of drawer had a matching groove cut into them. A matching solid Oak guide is installed in the cabinets making it easy to slide the drawers in and out, while keeping them neatly aligned.
The idea for the drawer fronts is to take a single sheet of Oak plywood, and cut each drawer front from that one sheet. The grain of the wood will flow vertically. When all the drawers are installed, the whole front will look like one board.
The next photo shows the interior of a cabinet that is to receive the drawers described here. Drawer supports were already screwed and glued into the cabinet at the correct spacing for the drawers. To accurately attach the drawer front to the drawer box, I placed the drawer box into its appropriate slot in the cabinet. At the back of the drawer support in the cabinet I placed a temporary piece of wood. The drawer will be pushed against that, insuring that the front of the drawer box will stick out just a bit from the front of the cabinet.
Next, I placed the drawer box in the slot, and temporarily clamped two pieces of wood under the shelf.
The drawer front can then rest on the temporary pieces of wood while I set up the clamps. The glue needs about 30 minutes to set up, and I can move on to the next one. You will notice the paint cans in the bottom of the cabinet. Those are weights used to hold down the center drawer guide for the next drawer. By thinking ahead like that, building these drawers becomes more of a mass-production process and goes quite smoothly.
After the drawer front has been glued in place, the drawer can be removed from its slot. Here's the finished drawer.
And this photo shows a finished cabinet with ten drawers, ready to be stained. This cabinet with the drawers current holds about half of my tool collection.
This next photo shows three of these types of cabinets and their drawers completed. There are also two corner cabinets in this setup. They are all bolted together. Combined with their weight, they are literally unmovable now.
Along this wall I installed a special drawer. It is basically a pull-out shelf. This comes in handy while working on the layout (for tools) and while operating (for throttles and paper).
This is one of the last photos I took (on November 11, 2003) of the second half of the layout room. The cabinets are finished. On the left side a gap is visible. I built a workbench between the two collections of cabinets. Follow this link to the next page for how I built the workbench.
