Systainer Cabinet Making from Inconsistent Plywood?

[onocoffee]

I'm planning on building some Systainer cabinets that are 920mm high, 620mm deep with an interior width of 427mm. In my inventory of reclaimed plywood, I have some 18/19mm ply that is of nice quality that I repurposed from a project we build 25 years ago. Very few to no voids. The other stuff is mostly from harvested pallets, so they range from 12mm, 15mm, 18mm.

Ultimately, the idea is to line the cabinets together (let's say a total of six) and then drop a 600mm wide cabinet in the middle that will one day be the home to a KS120. The cabinets will each have locking casters to allow them to roll around as necessary. But instead of using stretchers and screwing a countertop to it, I'd like to use the ply to work as a top.

I'm thinking of using the Domino for alignment and screws to hold it all together. I'm wondering what parts I should use for assembly - meaning, should I save the thickest ply for the verticals or the top/bottoms?

Thanks!

 

[hdv]

I did something similar when I made my systainer cabinets from leftover underlayment (18 mm). I had about 10 sheets remaining after I extended my workshop and wanted to use them for this. Even though the quality really wasn't great (many voids and other deficiencies and "hairy/feathery" surfaces),

One set is placed under the stairs and doesn't need to be moved. The other set (7 cabinets of about 1 meter high with a solid 38 mm beech worktop on top of therm) are on casters and need to be moved once in a while, because the racks with my wood store are behind it. There is no problem with the cabinets when I move them. There is no racking at all. They are screwed to each other with patent screws (not sure that is what you guys call them, see picture). The backs are just 6 mm poplar ply in grooves (not glued). One thing I did was screw 2 sturdy strips of iron flat bar under the cabinets to prevent sagging and to make sure there was something keeping them together when I pull on the whole contraption. The casters (6 of them) are screwed to the metal bars. I edge banded the visible sides of the panels and pull-out drawers with iron-on fir edge banding to make it look better.

I built all cabinets as separate units, meaning there are always two sheets against each other. Even with 2x12=24 mm that should give you enough strength. The cabinets are dominoed and glued. No screws were used. Depending on how you are thinking of making the drawers you might prefer to use the 18 mm sheets for those. The 12 mm sheets will be able to carry the weight of a normal systainer (unless it is filled with metal parts or something like that). But you will need enough thickness to screw them to the runners without the screws breaking out when you put load on the drawer. That is, unless you use expensive undermount runners, or are willing to lose much useable height/width to strengthen the construction of the drawers. I wanted to keep the cost low and optimize for space, so I chose to do it like this. I would suggest to use Euro screws to screw the runners to the cabinets and long wood screws to screw the runners to the drawers. I also applied system32 to make rows of holes so I was flexible when it came to placing the systainer drawers in the cabinets. The topside of each drawer has recesses for the systainer feet and the underside has a recess that functions as a finger pull.

Maybe that gives you some ideas.

 

[Michael Kellough]

HDV makes good points, and good cabinets for his purpose.

Over here those fasteners are called “sex screws”, or at least used to be, but with careful design you can make the whole thing as a unit and won’t need these screws.

I’d reserve the thicker plywood to the tops and bottoms but I don’t know the material quantities so… You always want to be working on a flat strong surface and the casters will need to be attached to something strong. 1/2” plywood can support a lot of weight as long as it’s prevented from bowing. The drawers slides will take care of that. I’d do the same thing hdv did for drawers.