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I was talking to a friend of mine about storage solutions for screws and nuts in the shop. I was getting frustrated with using the original the boxes or putting them into the plastic bins you can buy. He sent me a video from an estate sale showing an antique octagonal bin that probably came from an old hardwood store and I was inspired to come up with a way to build it so that I can vary how many levels of drawers it had. The orginal had 10 levels. It sits on a lazy susan base with 8 triangular drawers per level. I used the opportunity to figure out how to use Sketchup which I used to work out a really cool way to make make interlocking dividers by cutting just 2 different patterns. I also used Sketchup to design the drawers, including rabbets.

The frame is made entirely of 1/2" sanded plywood. I had to make a jig to make cutting out the octagons for the horizontal dividers and I also used a simple jig to route grooves for the vertical pieces to nest in. I used a website calculator to determine the easiest way to layout and cut squares into octagons by trimming off the corners to get the radius I wanted for the unit. For the drawers I decided I wanted to use some really inexpensive wood and planed cedar fence pickets down to 1/2" thick (they were less than 3/4" rough) for the drawer fronts. The cheap cedar pickets have some really nice grain once they are planed. For the drawer sides I re-sawed white wood 2×4" slices and planed them to 3/8".

The slots for the dividers (see the Sketchup drawing) were cut on my table say using a dado blade stacked to 1/2". I used an auxiliary fence on my miter gauge to reduce chip out for the various cuts at different angles and depths. Note that the height of the drawers was determined by the deepest cut I could make with my 6" dado blade and shop made dado insert on my old delta contractors saw. Unfortunately, while I was ripping and cutting the plywood the bearing on table saw motor went out. After trying to fix it myself for a while, I finally decided to buy a new saw. The new one can actually cut about 1/4" deeper and I could have made the drawers slightly deeper but I had already started cutting out the dividers so I didn't want to throw away what I had already cut (about 80% was done on the old saw). I cut enough to make 11 layers but decided to make 2 units instead of one really tall one. I glued one layer at a time until I reach the desired height (second picture).

I cut thin strips of the same 1/2" planed cedar pickets to trim out the edges of the plywood. This also had the added purpose of hiding some of the imperfections in the alignment of some of the pieces caused by the grooves routed in the horizontal pieces not being quite exact enough. On one unit I stained the trim but on the other (and all the drawer fronts) I used a polyurethane to seal it. I was originally going to paint the plywood but because the trim grain looked so nice I decided I didn't want to cover it up.

I cranked out the pieces for the 88 drawers in production mode. Because the fronts and one of the side pieces also had an angled rabbet on the ends to make glue up easier, I had to set up several different angled cuts to get them all made but all in all it only took about 3 hours to cut all of the pieces to size including rabbets. You can see the crude assembly jig I made to glue up the drawers in the 4th picture. Instead of clamping, I used a pin nailer to hold it together while the glue set. Note that there was a rabbet in the bottom of each board to accept the 1/4" plywood bottoms which was also glued and pinned into place. Because I didn't want to sacrifice any depth in the drawers I decided not to use a grove and floating drawer bottom. It took me about 8 hours to assemble all 86 drawers. The reason that there aren't 88 is because I made 2 double drawers by leaving one of the dividers out on one of the units. I made the fronts to look like 2 drawers with a divider between them. I finished the drawers by adding antique bronze label pulls that I bought from D Lawless. At 54 cents each plus screws, the pulls cost more than all of the wood combined. Next time I might design one out of wood.

This turned out to be a pretty ambitious first project in 20+ years but It was a blast to design and build and I am very pleased with how it turned out. I am glad I decided to make 2 smaller towers because it can fit one of those standard metal and particle board garage shelf units you can buy at the big box stores. It was really fun designing everything and it really challenged me to learn Sketchup. Using Sketchup, I was able to workout all of the various angles before I cut some prototypes. I only made a few minor refinements after the prototypes were cut.

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really cool design, great organization! would love to have that in my home, not the shop!
 

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I like the planning that went into this project. I like the way you designed the dividers. Thanks for sharing the Sketchup view.
Do you have any plans on sharing your entire plan?
 

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272 Posts
Well designed, well executed. I really like this.
 

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I really like that. I'm looking for storage and that is a lot of storage in a reasonable amount of room.
 

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I really like this. Would look nice in my room with my collectables in it and sure it looks wonderful in your shop. Nothing wrong with making things for your shop that look really nice. http://lumberjocks.com/projects/89746 I think it shows a level of pride! Thanks for posting and great job!
 

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Wow, that is one very cool storage box.
Just curious, do the drawers want to "tip" (because the base gets narrower) as you pull them out ? Or do you take the drawer completely out to look thru it?

Thanks for sharing!
 

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This is a very nice and original project.Great work, thanks for sharing.
 

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Wow that is alot of drawers in a small space. I love this. Any chance you can post the saved sketchup file?
 

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+1 to all of the above.
 

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That really turned out well! I became aware of these about a year ago and would like to give it whirl one of these days. You did a superb job…...Let me know also if you're willing to share the plans, thanks!
 

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nice job, I'll take drawers over shelves anytime. Project looks to have been built with a lot of pride.
Thanks for sharing your project.
Have a blessed day, Todd
 

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Lazyman,
Very nice project, I saw one of these on the Picker's show just a few nights ago and wondered how they were made.
I also would be interested in the plans if care to share or sell.
You make this look and sound way to easy but you certainly have a handle on the process.
Bob Current
 

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You, sir, are not a "Lazyman". This is a great project and you should be very proud of the entire process-design, planning, execution and finishing.
 

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Great looking project you must be seeing drawers in your dreams, very nice work.
 

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Nice work. I saw one of these that is probably a hundred years old in a plumbing supply store last year. Looks like as much work as I thought it might be. ;-)
 

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Thanks for all of the comments. This was a really fun project and it really challenged my problem solving which is probably why it was so fun.

A couple answers and comments:
I don't really have a full blown sketchup plan because I was still learning how to use it at the time. One of these days that are too cold to spend much time in my uninsulated garage shop, I will try to clean it up a little to match the finished design and maybe add some of the things that didn't really require me to prototype in Sketchup. For example, I used Sketchup to draw a octagon of the size I wanted this to be and figure out the dimensions the drawers and vertical partitions had to be but I didn't draw the dadoes in the horizontal octagonal much less put all of the components into a finished stacked design. I mostly used Sketchup to work out the angles and dimensions on the more complicated components (I had to remember a lot of geometry for this) so that I could figure out how to cut them. I'll certainly share what I've got so far, just don't expect a fully finished plan. Send me a personal message if you would like a copy.

JoeinGa - I am very pleased that the drawers are actually very stable when you pull them out. I think because unlike those cheap plastic drawers units, the underside of the level above is solid. You literally only need about 3/4" inside the case and they stay in place. The weight of the drawer, even empty, holds them in place and then they don't seem to want to torque left or right even if the contents are not evenly distributed. I think that the thickness of the drawer sides helps here as well. I almost went with 1/4" sides but I am glad I stuck with 3/8". Here is a close up:

The ruler is 6" for scale. If you look closely, you can also see some of the flaws that the trim helps to hide.

AandCstyle: My Lazyman handle comes from a saying that I took to heart years ago that goes something like this: "Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that is because he will find a better way." Maybe I should make that my tag line instead of the Einstein quote. I've always thought that just the right amount of lazy is a good thing.

A couple of things that I would probably do differently with this design:
-Cutting the octagons accurately (i.e., consistantly) turned out be more difficult than expected I thought this would be pretty easy. I made a jig to hold the plywood that slid along my fence to cut off the corners of the squares. I think that making a crosscut sled that runs in the miter gauge slot would probably yield more accuracy. The very small variances I got from my jig made it difficult to get the dadoes that the vertical partitions sit in accurate which then made it difficult (almost impossible) to get them to perfectly lineup when gluing each level on the previous one. BTW, Here is the website that I used to determine how to cut the octagons:
http://www.htmliseasy.com/octagon_layout/
This made the geometry much easier to figure out as opposed to trying to lay it out from my sketchup diagrams. You basically just have to know the radius that you want to determine the size of the square to cut and then measure C from the corner to make the final cuts to get an Octagon (I double checked the calc in Sketchup).

-I didn't think through exactly how to trim out the edges well enough. Because I used relatively cheap plywood, it wouldn't look good to leave them unexposed. I originally designed a double bevel on the ends of the vertical partitions to match the corner of the horizontal piece but because of the difficulty of lining them up, I decided to leave them flat so that I could attach a piece of trim which helps to hide some of the alignment issues, though with close inspection there are some obvious gaps that I couldn't hide with the trim. Another approach would be to use solid wood instead of plywood, cut them a little longer and route a profile on the ends.

-I would probably buy (or make) a slightly larger label pull. It is tough getting enough description on these small pulls to be able to quickly find what you are looking for. Only about 1 3/4" x 3/4" is actually showing inside the frame. These were the cheapest I could find. BTW, I highly recommend D Lawless Hardware for great prices, especially if you buy enough to get free shipping. Even without the free shipping the pulls I used were about 1/10th what everyone else charges for the exact same pulls.
 

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