Fast, Inexpensive, Strong Drawers

P.S. Yes this is cross posted. On purpose, but only because they are related groups regarding this project.

Have a look at office equipment filing cabinets as they come in various draw depths and heights. I have about 7, 4 of which fit under my bench nicely for storing various tool categories and the other 3 about the same height form a work storage surface and I store various items in the drawers. I have another smaller cabinet which has drawers about 1" deep and 10" wide which I store things like taps, dies, reamers, drills, and many other items in. All where acquired free as they were being chucked out and I was in the right place at the right time.

Along those lines I used to work about 10 miles from the State of Maryland surplus store and got sent up there once to get some used filing cabinets for our offices. They had many, many filing cabinets for sale at cheap prices, both 2 and 4 drawer models. I just had to pick through them looking for the nicest ones, but I didn't have to find matching units. Some universities also have surplus stores if you live near a large campus. Maybe alternate 2 or 3 regular drawer units that you build with 1 or 2 filing cabinets for deep drawers, then more regular drawers. Throw in a full height knee hole every so often for roll-around equipment or a workstation.

I built a rolling storage rack for heavy stuff using surplus roller slides for 19" relay racks, with angle iron uprights and shelves cut from exterior-wall steel stud remnants. The slides are for electronic equipment that could be quite heavy; my 1970's RF spectrum analyzer weighs 60 lbs.

The shelves can be moved by drilling new holes in the uprights. If you find surplus relay racks and cut them down you can use the pre-drilled mounting holes.

Might be like these which I used recently on a sliding table for cutting glass

. They seem to be the same as those in the 19" rack unit I converted into a drink cabinet, kept the slides, replaced the metal shelves with laminated glass.

I have made my drawers out of 1/2" cabinet grade plywood. On the sides I cut a 1/4 inch dado a 1/4" in from the edge, the front and back dado cut leaving a 1/4" x 1/4" tongue. Sides and backs get a 1/4" dado a

1/4" in from the bottom edge, the bottom gets wait for it a 1/4" removed all around. Glue and nail together, make a stronger bottom than just 1/4" ply.

For 54' of drawers, I'd take neither of the routes you named. I'd go straight to an industrial source of pre-fabricated drawers and buy what I need and then adapt the framework of the bench to suit. Maybe in the case of some that need to be extra strong I might do some reinforcement but no more than absolutely necessary. Metal drawer boxes with decent slides are already plenty strong for most uses.

In the 1980's I rearranged my shop and bought some cheap yard sale painted wooden chests of drawers to cut down for temporary tool and pipe fitting storage under a bench, until I found something better. The knobs broke and needed stronger replacements but the drawers stood up to heavy loads very well.

"Jim Wilkins" on Fri, 4 Oct 2019 18:01:54 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Hmmm, I have this collection of Hollywood bed frames. All that angle iron, just setting there ...

Bed frame can be some really nasty stuff to cut and drill. Supposedly the dregs of metal mixtures. You may drill a hole or two just fine and then another in the same piece is hard enough to ruin the drill bit...

So plan on it being a hassle and maybe you'll get lucky :)

Bed frames may be recycled railroad rails, with a higher carbon content that makes them stronger but tricky to work with.

Yesterday I read that Stephenson's original track gage was 4' 8", he had to add 1/2" later to the tracks but not the wheels to make them run more smoothly.

Another bit of useless RR trivia: the steam locomotive was an American invention.

However, as with Fitch's pioneering steam rowboat, history instead remembers the men who made crude earlier inventions practical, Stephenson for the locomotive and Fulton for the steamboat.

It seems the Founding Fathers knew about submarines (Bushnell), steam locos, high capacity assault rifles (Girandoni) and air mail. Washington personally handed the first US airmail letter to the balloon pilot.

Many of the answers are certainly fast and cheap. Some may be fast, cheap, and strong, but they won't be made hte same. Of the specs fast, cheap, and strong cheap was 3rd in level of importance. Also I indicated that I wanted them to all be made the same (look the same). I guess appearance is slightly more important than I made out to begin with. There are certainly a few ideas worthy of consideration. Thanks everybody.

If I had a better answer I would have posted it, and maybe bought some myself since my Sears-flavored tool cabinets need repair. The second-hand tool store that rates cheap and customer-proof well above pretty uses Vidmars for the heavy cutting tools and racks of sheet metal bins for the lighter stuff.

I've found that as I've become older and cheaper that appearance is highly over rated ;-)

Well I was thinking if I went with wood I'd just make the boxes, and not bother with fancy drawer faces, or if I went with metal I'd just rivet the drawer pulls to the boxes.

I still envisioned them as looking like they were made the same and being being roughly even down the whole length of the bench.

I see MSC stocks Vidmar. Even with my discount... Yee-ouch! Might as well buy Mac or snap-On. LOL. Well maybe not. You don't have to chase the MSC truck for 6 months if you have a bad item. LOL.

I would have suggested making plywood drawers with slides and perhaps faces of red oak, which I spent the summer sawing into planks and beams for future projects. However this morning I saw a 3' red oak stair tread in a hardware store priced at $35, and larger ones up to $48.