Search the Community

Scored big here ,I rescued this vintage filling cabinet from a skip/dumpster the other day . The nice thing is no money has been spent just recycled components. I love the idea of upcycling furniture , we do all make a lot of wasted as whole. I felted the drawers and cut the metal base off . They are pretty fashionable and a lot of hipsters are sanding them back to bare metal, oh bless them. It not as nice as my other draws, so to soften the industrial look I added a wooden top and some casters .. Now it looks more like a piece of furniture for the home. The drawers are a lot deeper than my other cabinet’s so that is brilliant. I hope you like my post and agree with me it was worthwhile saving this cabinet from the scrap pile. Better picture coming soon All the best Bobby

Hi. Only 2-3 days into the forum. I have spent a lot of time reading and its making me rethink how I store my shark teeth. I have about 800 teeth stored glass jars; 1 jar for FL beach teeth; 1 jar for NJ Beach teeth; 1 for big brook teeth in NJ. I was thinking of separating all the teeth by type for each area by using a nuts and bolts storage bin. Anyone use something like this? Thank you for any thoughts or comments in advance! Mark

I know there have been several threads on TFF that talk about storage cabinets for fossils, but since they are all a bit old I will start a new one to describe the storage cabinet I am in the process of making. It's not done yet but I thought I would show progress as I make it. A few things about the design. First, I wanted it to look at least somewhat presentable so I wouldn't have to stash it in some out-of-the-way location in our house. To keep the cost down I am going with oak-veneer plywood for the outside case, not solid oak. I'm using ordinary sanded plywood for the drawers, with solid oak dress panels at the front. The overall dimensions were driven by a couple of factors. First, I don't own a table saw or miter saw, so it had to be something I could make by just using my handheld circular saw. (I use a guide to make long straight cuts.) Also, I don't have a pickup truck so I had to have the 4x8 plywood sheets cut in half at Home Depot so they would fit in my SUV. That limited the maximum dimension to somewhat under 48" (Home Depot saw cuts are pretty atrocious on plywood). I decided to go with a design that had 10 drawers whose inside dimensions are 20x17". The lower two drawers are an inch taller than the rest. I also decided to use drawer slides for a smoother operation when opening the drawers. That meant the overall cabinet design was just about 36" high by 24" wide by 20" deep. Since I'm an engineer by training I felt it necessary to design the entire thing in Visio and use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the dimensions of each piece, taking into account the exact measured thicknesses of the plywood. Here's what the design looks like: I've been leisurely working on building it for the last couple of weeks and estimate I still have about a week to go. Here's what it looks like so far: Partially assembled, held together by clamps and screws: Drawer design. Note that I have done a somewhat unusual design. Instead of using 1/4" hardboard that is held to the sides by dado cuts (which would be OK if the drawer was for storing lighter things like clothes or towels), I used much more solid 1/2" plywood screwed to the sides. You might question this design, but look closely at the drawer slides and you will see they have "L" shaped ledges that screw to the underside of the drawers. So the drawer slides are supporting the drawers by their bottoms, not their sides. This design is better for holding heavy objects like fossils. To keep the cost down I used inexpensive drawer slides rated for 50lbs each, which should be sufficient for the invertebrate fossils I collect. Now I need to finish gluing and ATTACHING all the sides together, add the top, install the dress panels around the top and bottom, cover the screw holes with wood plugs, cut the drawer dress panels to final size and mount them, stain everything, and add a clear polyurethane coat to finish it off. Should be done by Christmas.