Our local woodworking group will be building a pair of large display cabinets which will be located in the County Jury Room. There will be a lot of heavy tempered glass including full length sliding glass doors. The wood will be cherry at 10/4, 8/4, and 4/4 thicknesses.
I’ve attached an overall picture of the design. We wanted to be able to breakdown the cabinet, and re-assemble on site. The weight is estimated to be about 500 pounds for each cabinet, therefore the modular breakdown design. Also, we wanted to be able to easily replace glass if necessary.
We decided to use mortise and tenon joints with bed bolts holding the posts and rails together. We think this will enable the breakdown and re-assembly, and also help with shipping to other locations when desired.
Do you see any flaws in this design?
Replies
Your design will work I think, but I have to say I'd do it differently. It's not that large a piece that it must be broken down to fit thru doorways etc. Wouldn't it make more sense to just have all the glass parts easily assembled/disassembled? Without the glass the cabinet is not very heavy. I think you're over-engineering the knock-down option.
DR
Based on the diagrams, assemble and disassemble seems awkward and difficult when you think about fitting the mating the rails, styles and heavy glass, holding them in place while you tighten bolts. I think I agree with the other response that it seems more logical to fix the joinery and make the glass removable.
If you build as drawn, having built several beds I've learned that there is absolutely no advantage of "bed bolts" over case-hardened machine bolts except $5 apiece. And you don't have to buy a special bed bolt wrench. Good luck.
i'm not a big fan of the bed bold design either...if for no other reason than because you can see them...
if you are concerned about transporting them I agree taking the glass out should do plenty to reduce the weight...
if i was going to make anything breakdown i would consider removable base and cap(think barrister cabinets), but only if you are concerned they might be damaged while shipping them around...
Thank you for your ideas and responses. I can easily make the side glass panels removable by having a dado with screwed in frame. However, I am perplexed on how to do the sliding glass door removable. I can't inset the roller bearing channel into the rails and still have fixed joints.
I agree that regular carriage bolts will work vs. the true bed bolts.
Tim
"I can't inset the roller bearing channel into the rails and still have fixed joints." (Admitting up front that I don't follow this sentence) With glass doors like that, aren't they usually installed by having the upper groove deeper, such that you insert the door into the upper groove, raise it high enough to clear the lower frame, and then drop down into the lower frame???? Pardon my befuddlement.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Shower doors are set in a channel hidden from view a fixed case-like structure and the hardware is readily available. But, not knowing the sesign you have in mind makes a response difficult.
Without knowing the specs of the sliding mechanism it's hard to answer, but I've never seen a sliding door that couldn't be removed for repair / assembly. Certainly a glass door has to have this possibility, even if the glass is tempered.
The most primitive setup is a simple dado above and below, with the upper being deeper as FG noted. Doors that are suspended from above are hung from their rollers with a removable and adjustable screw system. Their track is screwed in place before the glass can be mounted. Doors that run on a lower track also need an extra-deep upper one to allow angled insertion.
You need to consider design-wise how to make the doors look like the side walls; i.e. - if the sides will have secondary frames for making them removable, how to make the doors appear the same.
DR
DR, thanks for the additional thoughts.
I am not convinced that the extra molding work to frame up the glass is worth it, over the original bed-bolt plan. Also, if the door can be removed by pushing up, I would need to figure out how to prevent this while locked. These cabinets need to be secure from easy entry.
I still see an easy construction, assembly, and shipping/movement with the break-down method. The fixed joints would still be mortise/tenon, so there is very little difference in the work involved to construct the joints.
Thanks again for the help in thinking this through.
Tim
You could make a removable top. Make the top of the face frame with full tenon but not glued in place. When you remove the top the top face frame would slide up and out fo the full mortise. Put fasteners inside to hold the top in place that way the cabinet would have to be open to loose the top. All would be secure that way.
Jack
Jack, I see your point, and I agree that this would indeed provide a way of removing the door. This would work, but I am not convinced that it would be simpler or better than the original full tenons with bed bolts.
It is interesting that I already had a removable top which included the crest molding. However, the top was simply a hat that fit down on the already assembled cabinet frame.
I'm attaching an exploded view of the cabinet design as I originally designed it with the bed bolts.
Tim
Tim, It seems you have already made up your mind to go with the bed bolts. I think it is as good an idea as any but I would sugest for security reasons that you drill the outside holes a little deeper and install plugs when the unit is finaly assembled. Tightly fitted they wold not need to be glued and could be remove by drilling and inserting a screw.
Jack
P.S By the way , what drawing software did you use?
Edited 7/1/2006 12:38 am ET by JLMCDANIEL
Jack, I think you are right about plugging the bolt holes.....
I use SketchUp for all my furniture and building designs. I previously used 2D CAD programs, but about 1 1/2 year ago switched to 3D and SketchUp. I'll never go back to 2D.
Tim
A removable frame for the glass will be immediately clear to anyone who might need to deal with it 20 years from now. Your bed-bolt assembly will provoke head-scratching to say the least.
Regarding the upper dado for locking doors, it is often done by making the deeper portion only in the center of the cabinet. The glass can be put in or removed at that point, but when the doors are in closed position they cannot be raised.
DR
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