I'm planning to build a new entertainment center to accomodate a large screen TV. One of the details I'm looking at now are the drawers I'll be storing our CD's and DVD's in.
Because of the depth of the cabinet, the disk cases will stand on edge in rows running front to back. Everything is fine and dandy when the drawer is filled to capacity, but I'm looking for ways to keep a partial row of disks from toppling over as the drawer is opened and closed.
It'd be a bit complicated, and might affect the size/design/ construction of the drawer, but you could do a file-cabinet type thing and put a length of threaded rod just under the floor of the drawer, or along each side. Many file cabinets I've used have a piece of rod with a friction-fit plate of some kind that holds up an end piece to keep file folders upright. A piece of threaded rod with some nut/ upright holder contraption might be easier if you didn't want to design a friction-fit system. (Sorry if this is just confusing - hard to describe, but look at an old metal non-hanging file cabinet and it's not a complicated concept).
You could drill holes for pegs along the sides or bottom of the drawer, and use removable dowels to hold the back DVD upright. Kind of like the adjustable shelf supports. You could either do both sides and the bottom, so 3 short dowels would hold up the DVD, or 1-2 rows of holes on the bottom with longer dowels, or holes just on the sides with some kind of DVD-sized panel to create a back.
Just a few ideas, let me know if I didn't explain them clearly, Andy
DIY Network is running hatcheted reruns of The New Yankee Workshop, and among the Season 13 offerings (the only season they have, apparently) is a CD storage case. Fortunately, they've left enough of the original intact to give you an idea of how he did his. I think the episode has a couple more airings this week (13 May 2007).
It's a pretty elegant system. In the drawer itself, sized to a slightly greater width than a standard CD jewel case, he has two small rails let into the sides of the case, approximately 1" above the bottom. The rails support the CDs, so the vertical dimension of the case will have to be sized to include the space below the CDs.
There is a piece of wood on the bottom which runs from front to within about 3/8" of the back panel, and is shaped like a dove tail (widest part on top).
Then a piece of ply (Baltic birch would be great), about 1/4" thick, with a notch cut out of the bottom slightly larger than the dovetail shaped board in the drawer, and two notches on each side to clear the rails is used as a back stop.
It's function is that when held straight up and down it slides back and forth easily over the dovetail strip and along the rails. When it is tilted back (as with a partial drawer of CDs leaning against it) the dovetail slot jams along the sides of the dovetail strip and prevents movement.
The gap at the back of the drawer is so you can insert and remove the sliding panel after the drawer is assembled.
That may not be particularly clear, but if you see it in action on DIY, it will be.
Heh, you must not have very many CDs and DVDs. I built custom cases for all of mine, I have floor-to-ceiling units that hold nearly 800 DVDs each and 1400 CDs and I'm 90% full in my CD unit and just about full in my second DVD unit. Gotta make some more!
An l-shaped strip of stainless (say 2"x6", bent around 2/3 of the way down) will do this in and attractive and simple way. Slide the longer end under the cd cases and the short upstanding end will act as a stop. Good idea to round over the corners...
Since I've been too lazy to drive 140 miles to organise a few of those so far, I just use a few blank CDs in 'crystal cases' as backstop, lying on the flat ;-)
I didn't mention it in my original post, but whatever design I end up using needs to be removable. In other words, I want to be able to use the drawer for other purposes until I need the space for DVD/CD's.
The dowel approach would let me cut a board to fit inside the drawer and drill a series of holes in that. I could simply remove the board if I didn't need it, and there wouldn't be any need to modify the drawer itself.
But, I'm still investigating other ideas before I make a decision.
Yeah, I suppose the simplest approach would be a series of spacers, whether those be empty cases, wood spacers, or something similar. I actually do that with my current entertainment center using old cassette tapes. :) But, it would be nice to find a more elegant solution.
Kind of like a standard bookend? Hmm... Simple idea, easy to implement, and no modifications needed to the drawer. Sounds like an option worth investigating.
Heck, I could probably pick up an ordinary bookend at an office supply and use one of those. I may give it a try with my current entertainment center and see how it works.
I've seen several ready-made dividers at places like Rockler, but they all seemed to leave a lot of space between the CD's. I could probably fit another 2-4 CD's in the space they waste. :) In addition, they don't exactly fit the out-of-sight when not needed requirement.
I don't know if it would work, but I had an idea last night of lining the drawer with a thin steel sheet (painted black probably). Then I could make a simple wooden divider with a magnet on the bottom. Easy to move and position wherever I need it, and easily removeable when I don't need it.
I also thought about insetting one of those T-track bars in the drawer bottom (or an insert I could set in the drawer), and building a simple fence that could be moved and tightened in place with a knob. This would probably work great for partial rows, but I thought I might run into problems when the row was mostly full and there wasn't room for the fence at the end.
The more I think about it, a simple system of fillers seems a lot more inviting. :)
The way I ended up doing it on my CD cases and it works fine, is to take some of the long metal shelf standards like these:
formatting link
routed a dado down the length of each shelf and installed the standard so that it was level with the rest of the shelf. Since everything is black, it's difficult to see if you're not looking for it and once the shelf is full, it's completely invisible. I made a wooden end piece with a flat metal post underneath that fits into the track and you can move it along the holes as you get more CDs. When you fill the shelf, remove the end and move it down to the next shelf to continue filling.
It also does a lot to strengthen the shelves. CDs aren't all that heavy but you get absolutely no deflection whatsoever. I wish I had thought about that before I did my first DVD case.
I had thought of something similar also, though with a different type of shelf standard. In fact, I already have a few shelf standards I bought years ago for a project and then never used them. So this may be a good place to put them to use. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!
I used 1/8" plywood to make an "egg crate" that slipped into the drawer. Each square of the egg crate was the width-of-a-cd X about 4". Each square is loosely filled. This allowed me to space out the CDs so I could flip through them and see the fronts. (As opposed to tighty packed where you can just read the spine. So this is is a good idea if you expect to have some excess drawer capacity. Of course you may eventually fill it to tightly packed. (I have a store near me that buys used CDs. It's better than holding on to CDs that I would never listen to.)
They criss cross. For example if I wanted 9 squares I would use four strips of plywood oriented like a tic-tac-toe board. I use the table saw to create slots halfway across the width of each strip. Then they fit together and the whole tic tac toe board is dropped into the drawer. No need to anchor it to the drawer. If you ever need the drawer for another purpose, you can lift out the tic tac toe board.
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