This for a drawer that will hold 75 CDs (arranged in 3 rows of 25). The drawer bottom would be about 16" x 16". 5 CDs = 1 lb. What is the thinnest board which could hold this weight (15lbs, .06 lb per in^2)? Is plywood the preffered choice?
Drawer slides are going to be side mount. I'm planning on using 1x6's for the sides and back
How should the bottom be attached? Nails? Sitting in a notch?
thanks Sathyan
Sathyan...
1/4" plywood should work well. Try arranging four pieces of 1x? stock in a 14-15" square, set a 16" square piece of plywood on them, and top this construction with your 75 CDs - it's an easy experiment.An alternative might be to incorporate partitioning into the drawer frame, and go with a three-piece drawer bottom, with each of the three pieces held in a dado (groove) on all four sides (you could probably store rocks in such a drawer!).
The drawer bottom should sit in a dado cut into the drawer frame members. Nailing the bottom would almost certainly produce problems over time.
I just grabbed some CD's (in jewel cases) and threw them onto my kitchen scale. I get almost exactly 4 to a pound.
Depends on what you mean by "hold this weight". There's a difference between being strong enough not to fail, and being stiff enough not to sag visibly. You probably mean the latter.
Check out the sagulator
Personally, I'd go for a 1/16" thick laminated panel with carbon fiber skins over aluminum honeycomb core :-)
Wrong span type. A shelf is supported on two ends while a drawer bottom is supported on four sides. No comparison.
Mike
If it's supported on all four sides spread out over that area of approximately 1.5 sq. feet, then even 1/16" plywood/veneer core will probably hold fine, but my recommendation is to use 1/8" thick material. As well as being entirely sufficient for your 15 lbs of CDs, it lends itself to fitting the kerfs made by most standard carbide tablesaw blades.
Personally unless I needed to shave every possible gram of weight or every possible cent of cost out of something I wouldn't worry about it--using the shelf calculation will give you a conservative number, which is usually goodness in stress calculations.
If you are going to use 1x6 for the sides (actually 5-1/2" deep) there is no reason to worry about the thickness of the bottom. You've got some doozy answers apparently by people who never built a drawer. 15 pounds in a 16" x 16" drawer is practically nothing. Cardboard could support that weight, for a while. Actually 1/8 inch pressboard or masonite would work well with little sag. But I would use 3/16 plywood. By standard wall panneling which is cheap but make sure it is the kind with a plywood structure and you get the added benefit that the bottom would be finished. For maximum depth in the drawer, put a 3/16" rabbit up from the bottom 3/16" to hold the bottom on the sides, back and front. That will give you an interior depth of 5-1/8" and you could use 1 x6s for the front also. If you want simpler and more depth within the drawer, then use glue and nail the bottom on. But then you couldn't use 1x6s for the front. Good luck. Bytheway, the 3/16 panneling would easily support 40 or more pounds.
It will overestimate deflections, true. My point is that the answer isn't to be relied upon if someone thinks it will be something like correct. If you know that it's an upper bound, then go with that.
People blindly plugging numbers in to equations (or calculators) can result in interesting, if unexpected, results.
Mike
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