Drawers Part 2 (Design and Framing)
Well, when we left off (quite some time ago), I had installed the Goose Gear Plate system and was moving forward with that as the base that the drawers were going to be designed around. I also shared a few photos from the CAD design I was working on. So lets start with that.
I went through countless designs, revisions, and changes to this mockup before I decided to move forward with things. I felt like every time I was nearing a solid design, I would see some aspect of someone else’s drawers that REALLY caught my eye. It finally got to the point where I was just like screw it, if I don’t start ordering up some parts to build this thing over the winter, it’s never going to happen. I designed everything in Google SketchUp, and I’ll share some of the initial napkin drawers followed by the screenshots of the final-ish product below. There were definitely some day-of tweaks that had to be made, but all in all, it is a really close representation of the final product. If you’re interested in the SketchUp file, let me know and I might make it available for download later!
So now that we’ve got the design out of the way, I ordered up some 8020 and got to framing. I used their 10 series aluminum t-slot, which is just their 1 inch x 1 inch square tube. I figured this 1x1 tube would be more than sturdy enough for the weight I would be putting on it, it would keep the overall weight down, and it would be incredibly easy to work with from a design and installation standpoint. Lucky for me, I was right on all accounts! And because Goose Gear uses the same type of 10 series t-slot for their drawers, you can simply bolt this right up to their plate system with some standard mounting brackets and 1/4-20 bolts.
Once I received everything from 8020.net, it was time to start assembling everything. This is where the real time suck happened. Working with t-slot is fairly easy, but it can become incredibly complicated once you start adding various pieces together. The main issue I kept running into was I would bolt something together and effectively “close” one of the t-slot channels on the tube. And then I would realize I needed that slot later down the line. Maybe it was just my brain failing to understand how this entire drawer frame was going to be put together, but I probably assembled and disassembled certain pieces half a dozen times. Once things started to come together, I laid out the drawer slides to see what they would look like. More on that in Part 3!
As I was building things out, I started to think about the forces that were going to be applied to the drawers. Since things need to slide in and out, I was not just dealing with a single lateral up/down force. I had to take into account that while off-roading, the fridge on the slide would be applying a fair bit of force side to side while bouncing around. And once pulled out, all of the drawer slides would be applying a torsional load across the 8020, pushing down HARD on the front and pulling quite heavily on the rear. So with that in mind, I added in two bits to the design. The first is a set of 45 degree pieces in each of the 4 outer corners to provide some rigidity to the base. Simple stuff, but I figured tying those pieces together was probably for the best. And second, a moveable lateral support for the fridge slide. This is a piece of 8020 on a hinge that folds down and then uses a latch to stay in place. When engaged, it pulls the lateral support into the upright, providing some additional rigidity to the kitchen slide. And then when the fridge needs to come out, I can simply undo the latch and lift it up to fully clear the fridge.
Once I got the framing wrapped, I installed everything into the back of the 4Runner and boy oh boy, did it fit perfectly. I am incredibly happy with the final result, the frame itself weighs like 30-40lbs (not exact lol) and cmon, the black just looks awesome haha. Stay tuned for Part 3 where I build out the drawer slide-outs themselves!
