It’s been a few months (actually maybe closer to a year), but I’ve finally finished building a cabinet for my collection. I’m no carpenter and I don’t have a lot of tools or a particularly suitable workspace, so it’s really been a labour of love.
The body is made out of 21mm ply, the drawers are pine and the drawer faces are made of oiled oak. Measurements are around 90 cm high, 80 cm wide and 40 cm deep.
There are 9 drawers, each with space for roughly 50 pencils. There’s a little hollow space at the bottom for packaging and boxes (which is already full ).
The drawer inserts consist of 2 layers of polyethylene foam; the top layer is made of 8mm wide strips with a gap in between each strip (the gap basically forms a shallow cavity which allows each pencil to sit in place).
I mounted each drawer on ball-bearing drawer slides for a (mostly) smooth opening and closing. This part of the process was particularly frustrating.
The drawer pulls are fairly basic, but their knurling matches quite well with some of the pieces inside.
There are quite a few flaws and many things I would change if I were to do it over again, but I am nonetheless very pleased with how it turned out and it’s enough to fit all of my pieces with a little space to spare!
This is very cool! Kudos to you! I’ve been looking at some options for my collection of late. Everything from printer’s cabinets to spool cabinets to blueprint cabinets. Only a handful really have been what I want and they were many thousands USD. I suppose it’s no different than finding those hard-to-find pencils. Patience is key.
Your build, however, is amazing! Exactly what I’d want.
Impressive cabinet! I like everything, from the slightly "external placement of the feet, to the colour combination, to the pulls.
The only solution I consider superior to a file cabinet for large-format drawings is one I myself would build, because nothing beats custom-made furniture.
I ended going a very manual way with the foam - basically I made a simple jig and then used a scalpel to cut out the strips. Then I arranged them on top of a second full sheet of foam and attached them with contact cement. The bond is not ultra strong but TBH it doesn’t need to be.
I will say that if you have access to a less manual way to make this work, or could get something that’s already pre-cut, do that instead - this took me a few days and The Pencil Files™ are significantly bigger than this.
Your foam-slot/placement idea is CRAZY perfect. It can be applied toward ALL future setups/constructs any of us have.
I applaud your ingenuity for discovering the most efficient, frugal, sensible, attractive method of storing pencils inside of ALL drawers…. I’m ashamed, yet stoked.
Thank you for sharing this. Once Im able to emulate your foam slots I’ll never need to fight my MP’s stubborn placements ever again.
BRAVO!!!
Edit: OH!!! And AWESOME knurled drawer handles…. I’m unable to slow clap with enough respect this all deserves
