Need file cabinet plans or thoughts

[Bill Ragosta]

OK, newbie here. I'm very much a beginning woodworker and I'm trying to replace some cheap furniture in our home while teaching myself some skills that will surely be needed in the future. To that end, I built a coffee table for the house using very basic joinery and also built a very rustic farm-style desk for one of my sons. I'll be starting a similar but slightly more refined desk for my other son this week, also using very simple joinery.

After finishing the desk, I'd like to build a small file cabinet to replace a piece of trash that we've had in the house for years. For what it's worth, I do have some nice cherry lumber (rough-sawn) and should have a limited supply of oak soon, but I think I'd like to use the cherry for this project. What I'm interested in is a small, side by side cabinet that will hold two standard sized file drawers on the left and either a door on the right with shelves behind it or a small open bookcase. I'm thinking 20" deep and possibly 35" wide total, maybe 28 or 30" high (basically whatever's needed for two standard file drawers, although I could elevate the whole cabinet several inches with legs I suppose).

I'm sure that many or most of you are thinking, "well then, you know what you want, just draw it up and build it", but I have to admit to being so green that I'm a bit hesitant/anxious to do so and would prefer to work off of plans. Simple joinery would probably be best, but I do have a fairly decent shop with a jointer, planer, table saw, router with table, etc. and as I said before, I'll need to learn other types of joinery eventually. I'm definitely not ready for handcut dovetails or anything like that and I don't have a dovetail jig (and would prefer not to purchase at the time being), so we're either talking biscuits, pocket holes or possibly rabbets and the like.

I've seen the Ted's Woodworking plans for $37 online and also saw the Today's Woodworker collection that's for sale $24.99 with mixed reviews. Are these good deals for a beginner or are there better options out there? Thanks in advance for advice, links or opinions.

[arose62]

I'm pretty sure that a search will produce warnings about Ted's being a scam.

So, how about a compromise - draw up your plans in Sketchup or similar, and post them here for comments and feedback.
Take that on board, refine your plans, then build from them.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Bill Ragosta]

I'm pretty sure that a search will produce warnings about Ted's being a scam.

So, how about a compromise - draw up your plans in Sketchup or similar, and post them here for comments and feedback.
Take that on board, refine your plans, then build from them.

Cheers,
Andrew

Thanks for the response, particularly about Ted's being a scam. Regarding your proposition, I may give that a try. To be perfectly honest, I don't always visualize things as well as I'd like and I'm still inexperienced enough that I don't always know what types of joinery will be strong enough, what dimensions that I'd need for strength (while still trying to keep things under a ton) and what joinery and dimensions would look bad, but I guess that's how you learn and I'm sure that people will correct the dumb stuff and make suggestions about the rest.

[DaveVman]

Ted's is definitely a scam. The other one probably is as well. When I say scam, I mean that they steal pictures from the internet and dump them all into a huge document and then sell that to you as if it was something useful. It won't be useful and it is all either stolen or it is pictures you could have found yourself.

If you don't want to learn SketchUp you could just draw something and scan it, then post it here for feedback. Start with just a sketch.

I am also a beginner and I have been trying to teach myself not to over engineer everything so I know what you mean.
Pocket holes can be used to build what you have in mind. You just need to think carefully where to place the pocket holes so that they will not be seen.

If you are not very good at conceptualising things in a drawing, you could make a rough sort of model to help you. What you could do is get 6 pieces of scrap wood/plywood/MDF. For example, re-use something someone threw away. Cut them all to be about 12 inches/ 300mm square. (Or just big enough to get your drill inside to screw it together). Then pocket hole 5 of them together into a box. The 6th would be the door, to help you consider where to place the hinges.
Even if you cut the scrap too small to pocket hole together, (or don't have any) you could just use 3mm MDF and tape it together and mark with a pen where you would have placed the pocket holes, if it was full size.

This will give you a 3D model of the basic cabinet you are going to build out of cherry. It will be a learn by doing exercise as to where to place the pocket holes. It will help you visualize how to assemble the real thing. It might be enough just to look at your model or you could use the model to help you draw your own plan to your own dimensions.

I made a rough cabinet with pocket holes last year as a quick fix for something. I'll see if I can find some photos and/or video of it and put it on YouTube - however it might take me a couple of weeks to actually edit and publish that.

[malb]

Just a quick note about your project, 20" is very deep for a bookcase, 12" would seem to be the limit unless you want to rack up a lot of large format coffee table books or similar. Not saying don't do it, just suggest that you consider what you need to place in it and how you would access it. A false back might be a good way to reduce depth but keep the bookcase user friendly. To my poor legs and back, there is nothing worse than having to get down to floor level just to find something on a bookshelf, which is basically what would happen if you placed a fairly normal sized novel into a 20" deep bookcase, on the bottom shelf it would be virtually hidden to a standing or kneeling person by the shelf above or the top of the bookcase.

[Bill Ragosta]

Good point about the books being too close to floor level, also about the false back to keep them forward in the shelf/cabinet. Thanks to DaveVman as well for the good ideas. As for the Today's Woodworker plans being a scam, I don't think that they are because they're actually the designs from the old magazine back in the 90's, but reviews are mixed, some suggesting that they're great and well worth the money and some suggesting that they're hard to find, not properly indexed and of questionable value because they're older designs. I know that new jigs and types of joinery have been developed, but it's not as if woodworking has really changed that much.