Hi all,
I'm in the middle of designing a bunch of furniture for my office (3 drawer boxes, 2 desktops, 2 bookshelves, 3 wall cabinets).
I got the basic ideas from a book I bought on office furniture. The authors basic desk design was to create torsion boxes for the desktop, and lay them across drawer boxes. His design for the desktops was a torsion box with 1/2" skins and 1" ribs, making them a total of 2" thick. The drawerboxes will be a total of 28" high, so the total desk height will be about 30" high.
I've gotten the 1/2" ply for the bottoms of the desktops, but when trying to find 1/2" oak ply for the top skins, I can't find it in my home center, and the other suppliers are asking more than I WANT to pay. Now, my local home center happens to have some pretty nice 3/4" oak ply right now, (and it's less expensive than the other supplier's
1/2" oak ply), so I'm wondering if there is any reason that I can't use a 1/2" bottom skin and a 3/4" top skin. It seems to me that it should still work fine, but I just wanted to double check and see if there were any 'gotcha's' that I don't know about. I'm still planning on staying with the 1" high ribs, so the overall height will increase by 1/4", but I'm kind of a tall guy, so a slightly higher desktop won't hurt.Second, I'm building the bookshelfs in two parts, an upper and lower to ease moving. The top and bottom will be bolted together with furniture connector bolts.
The units will be 3/4" oak, 36" wide. I'm currently planning on making both halves 42" tall. Is that short enough that I won't need a fixed shelf in the middle of each half. If not, what is the max verticle height for a bookshelf that size where I wouldn't need a fixed shelf. There will be a 1/4" back on each half of the units, glued and nailed into 1/4"x3/8" rabbits.
Thanks in advance!!!
Trace Wilson