Musical Storage Cabinet

This project was a commission for a musician looking for a compact storage solution for 3 electric keyboards, as well as supplementary storage for cables and foot pedals. After consulting with the client on the required dimensions, maximum size, and weight of the keyboards and materials, I forwarded a digital 3D model of my design and started construction upon approval. I again utilised my local timber supplier, Timber Zoo for a dozen 1400 x 19 x 110mm recycled messmate boards, which I laid out, looking for complementary colour and grain contrast.

Initially, I wanted to achieve a miter waterfall edge join to have both the top and sides of the cabinet seamless, however, the narrow thickness of the board made the join difficult to attain without an internal edge spline. This led me to opt for a simple rabbet edge join which provided me with two faces for a strong join and a seamless top surface.

For assembly, I fabricated my own 90° internal/external brackets to assist the glue-up process and used a series of ratchet straps to apply a steady force to the edges.

Heavy-duty locking casters were added to the underside of the cabinet with M6 furniture bolts to improve mobility and to allow for simple removal or replacement.

The cable holders along the left external panel of the cabinet were hand-turned from a laminated block of Tasmanian Oak offcuts to a diameter of 50mm, and glued with a two-part epoxy to extruded aluminium rods.

Using my router table and a 12mm slot cutter, I cut and glued 5 biscuits along each board face for a strong edge-to-edge join. The boards were clamped in place for 18 hours, and after 3 days I had five 1100 x 19 x 410mm boards which were cut to their appropriate size and run through the planer to meet the required thickness of 16mm.

The cabinet features three vertical 1100 x 410 x 120mm keyboard drawers and three smaller drawers along the base for microphones, foot pedals, and cables. I fabricated the drawers using the same laminating and routing technique as the cabinet boards and used a 6mm routing bit to inset a plywood base. To assist the glue up I added some brad nails in the drawer edges and included a laminated board cut into thirds as a front panel for each of the drawers. The three top drawers were fitted with push to open draw slides, and the smaller three were fitted with soft-close drawer slides.

The cabinet was sanded incrementally from 40 grit to 800 grit and the edges were lightly deburred to maintain a sharp profile. I added two layers of matte varnish and a thin layer of boiled linseed oil over every face to reveal the warm straw colour of the Tasmanian  Oak.