Van Conversion Cabinets that are (actually) Lightweight and Maximize Storage

so things are finally being bolted into the van and I thought this would be a good time to do a little video about how I like to do my cabinets I'm going to come out guns blazing and say this first thing I don't know anyone who builds cabinets lighter than I do I have a mild obsession with trying to keep my van conversions lightweight every single aspect of vanning is improved by having a lightweight conversion you're gonna have less maintenance better efficiency better driving characteristics on-road and off-road you can put more stuff in your van carry more cargo and if you ever need to tow you're not worried about exceeding any kind of capacity every single part of the van experience is better if you have a lightweight nice and Nimble conversion but building lightweight isn't easy so today I would just kind of like to talk about how I build my cabinets and give my opinion on the topic please remember build your van anywhere you like whatever makes you happy so I hope today is maybe more of a conversation starter or some food for thought if you're going to build your own van than fighting words so before we talk about the cabinets in my van I think if you get to talk about 80 20 aluminum extrusions which I'm going to crap on a little bit if you look up the stuff on the internet or if you Google how to build lightweight cabinets 80 20 aluminum extrusions will come up pretty quickly and there's three things about them that people seem to just tout over and over first is that it's lightweight next that it's extremely strong and then that it's easy to work with so let's start with the weight aspect in the van so far I've got these two cabinets installed this lower one is about 35 inches wide 27 inches tall and 23 inches deep on top of it on the right part the fridge will sit and on the left part of it I've got another cabinet and that one is about 37 inches wide total 39 inches tall on the right portion 31 inches tall on the left and it averages about 21 inches deep because it does get an airware towards the top due to the curvature of the wall now right before I installed these cabinets I weighed them this bottom cabinet carcass weighs 20.70 pounds and this top cabinet weighed 26.92 pounds now let's quickly talk about the weight of 80 20. well you can buy 80 20 in different sizes most commonly van people seem to use series 15. um that stuff weighs 0.1123 pounds per inch or 1.3476 pounds per linear foot and then the other series that gets used a bit less is series 10 which is a smaller Extrusion and it actually weighs uh 0.5088 pounds per foot that said from the reading I've done series 15 is easier to join together so it just tends to be a little more popular now I'm a left-handed Pollock so I don't really rely on CAD technology too much but I am a big fan of pad technology so let's just quickly draw out how you'd probably frame this cabinet using 80 20 and how much is that framing alone would weigh so that lower cabinet it's uh the wood one I've got is about 35 inches wide 27 inches tall and 35 inches front to back it's also got the center divider so we can have drawers on both sides so this is essentially kind of just sketching out what our aluminum 80 20 framing would look like for this cabinet as well though in order to mount some drawer slides if we have three drawers on the left here we need three more members like that and we need three members across from it for the other drawer slides and then since we have two drawers on this side you know we could probably mount a drawer side to each side of this but we need some on this side as well then we do need some horizontal dividers because you're probably going to be able to want to use some kind of latch system for your drawers in your van so across each of these fronts we'll have a essentially I guess we'll have two dividers on this side because this top drawer will latch off of this this drawer will latch from here this drawer will latch from here and then we need one more divider here for another Georgia latch here so if we calculate that all out we have a total of 650 linear inches of 80 20. and I know you're going to say right now hey idiot there's some overlap in these Corners because if this piece is an inch and a half wide this piece is an inch and a half wide this isn't really 23 it's going to be a 20. that said we are not including the weight of any of the brackets or the bolts not some bolts to hold this together so we're just going to allow that overlap and it will probably come out to a wash and again this is all just an estimate so for this lower cabinet we've got 650 inches and now if we look at a sketch of the upper cabinet we can kind of repeat the same thing all right 766 inches for this upper cabinet if we look at the weight of series 10 aluminum Extrusion and series 15 as we said series 10 is just over half a pound per foot and series 15 is 1.35 pounds per foot we can do the math about 63.83 feet of aluminum and if we take this other cabinet he was 54. 17 feet so if we multiply that that's series 10 27 .56 pounds and with series 15 we get 72.999 [Music] 49 pounds or 73 pounds and for this that's for the lower cabinet and if we do the same thing for this cabinet 32 point four eight pounds with series 10 and with series 15 we got 86.02 pounds and if you remember when I weighed these cabinets right before I installed them you would compare this to the weight of my wood cabinet which is 20.70 pounds and this upper cabinet is 26 0.92 pounds and keep in mind these aluminum measurements do not even include the weight of all the panels you would need to complete them so they look finished so anyways as you can see 80 20 aluminum even using series 10 is considerably heavier than the cabinets I've been building all right after weight the other thing that people seem to love about 80 20 is how strong it is and I can't really argue with that you can watch these videos on the internet of people doing pull-ups off their overhead cabinets and that is something that on many wood cabinets I wouldn't try and especially on these lightweight ones they are not designed for that at times like this I kind of think to myself like how many times have I walked into my house and been like man I'd really like to do some pull-ups on my furniture or gone down to the Home Depot and been like where should I store these sandbags or oh wow I gotta put some patio pavers in perhaps I can fill my kitchen drawers with them even me a fairly immature adult I do not see times when I need this kind of strength for anything useful like clothes food climbing gear hiking gear or even like cases and cases of beer this furniture is plenty strong and finally there's the Simplicity aspect of 30 20. I can't really touch on this and I can't disagree with it either I think looking how these cabinets are built it is sort of like using Lego blocks it's really simple um the only thing I would kind of say is if you are paying somebody to assemble your van for you it's kind of like if you pay at a Furniture Builder and you find out they went out to Ikea your con you know what are you really getting if someone is using the most basic building system possible so that part if you're building your own van you maybe don't have very many tools you're not a very experienced woodworker you know that can really be a benefit because you will make a nice and strong product and finally one of my main reasons for not liking 80 20 is just how inefficient it is and I'm not even going to touch upon the fact that with 80 20 framing you're basically limited to right angles and making squares which just makes it really hard to utilize all the nooks and crannies and curvature of the van I'm just going to strictly focus on what kind of cabinet space utilization you get by using it so let's look at this lower cabinet I've got built here it is exactly 35 and 3 8 inches wide and then if we measure the inside width of the two drawers the one on the left is 13 inches wide and the round on the right is 20 and a sixteenth inches wide so if we use do the math we essentially have 33 and a sixteenth of an inch of usable drawer space and a 35 and 3 8 inch wide cabinet which means we actually get to use 93 of this width four storing stuff however if we draw out what this cabinet would look like made out of 80 20 we would first have three sections of vertical 8020 supports which is four and a half inches of series 15 and then assuming you're using half inch plywood for your drawers you'd lose two more inches to that and you're probably using drawer slides so that's another two inches gone so as a result you're getting a realistic 76 utilized even with series 10 you're only up to about 80 percent that you can use isn't that just kind of disappointing you just lost a quarter of your cabinet to some aluminum Framing and how you've decided to build your drawer boxes all right so my 80 20 rant is over so now let's look specifically at how I've built my cabinets and uh how I can make them strong enough and what kind of techniques I use first and foremost material selection this can't be overstated when I first got into Woodworking and especially Vans a lot of people will say use Baltic Birch it's way stronger so instead of you know in a place where you would traditionally use a three-quarter inch piece of plywood you can now use a half inch piece of Baltic Birch but if we look at the weights of this you're not really saving a whole lot of weight from my local Big Box store three quarter inch Maple plywood weighs 1.79 pounds per square foot if we compare that to 12 millimeter Baltic Birch it weighs 1.68 pounds per square foot so sure you are using a thinner material but it's actually she only saving you about six percent in like material weight which is fairly negligible so let's talk about some Alternatives first off I would say just get away from Baltic Birch half inch Maple plywood is 1.14 pounds per square foot which is essentially a third less than three quarter stuff which makes sense because it's the same product just the third thinner that said my favorite plywood that I have driven across the country to get before is uh to get some Poplar core plywood I cannot find this stuff anywhere between Salt Lake and Denver and I live basically right in between the two but there's several Seattle and Portland area Distributors like edin saw or Continental Hardwoods it has a higher ply count like Baltic Birch for the 12 millimeter stuff it's just over a pound per square foot quarter inch stuff it's 0.505 pounds per square foot and the three mil is 0.247 pounds per square foot in terms of Vans I essentially never use three quarter inch plywood anymore for the sheets that I ordered through my shop about 75 of them are either three mil or six mil sheets and the other 25 percent is 12 millimeter sheets I think there's just very few applications where you're going to need to use three quarter inch Sheets if you understand how to stress the plywood correctly so how can I get away it's using such thin materials I think the first key is to start using wood glue for all the strength aspect of your wood joinery early on you might be using screws to hold everything together but when you're trying to join like a three millimeter and a six millimeter piece of wood there's just no meat there for any kind of Fastener to hold so you're going to have to use wood glue don't get me wrong I use tons of brad nails to hold my cabinet together during the assembly but for any kind of surface that you're actually going to see it's just clamped and weight it is generally accepted in The Woodworking world that glue the glue is stronger than the wood basically always the wood fibers that are failing before the glue that fails so the glue is extremely strong but you need to do a few things to be able to use it well primarily being you need to be precise if you have a big gap in a joint you're trying to bond together you can't just squeeze glue in it and hope it works wood glue does not work well for Gap filling and then using oil glue is a pain especially if you come from the world of just like screwing things together it is such a Time sock not only do you have to wait for the glue to dry but all the prep Works to make sure things are going to fit just right you know like once you put glue on something you got to go after the glue dries you got quite a bit of cleanup you're going to probably have to resand things and it is just quite the process all right and then the other important consideration that you've always got to think about as you're something in this cabinets is how can you actually stress these joints and these thin materials that you're using in a way that takes advantage of their strengths so if you go to Wikipedia and you look up mechanical stresses it gives this great graphic of five different forms of mechanical stress the first two tension and compression plywood is great for in fact almost any van Building Material that's you know feasible to use does great on this you know you can take this plywood you can't really compress it and then if you try to uh put it under tension you know you would essentially have to like pry these Plies apart in order to get it to expand in this way as well if you've ever heard a joke about a board stretcher you know I can't stretch this thing apart and I I can't shorten it by pressing it together so those first two plywood is great for Shear forces as well plywood is fantastic for you know when you look at that image we can't take this thing and manipulate it to basically become a parallelogram it will keep this shape like this it has great Shear strength but the last two which would be bending and torsion these thin materials are terrible for you know I can twist this as much as I want I can bend it and these are the two kind of ways to stress these thin materials that you want to avoid the other thing to consider is how we are stressing our like glued up joints together and let me just give you a quick example of this we've got a couple glued up Corners here and if I have the plywood in a form where it's just going to see a lot of Leverage with kind of like a big lever arm here like it doesn't take too much strength to break these joints right but if I also try to use this is essentially like position this in a way where I actually have to Shear this joint off you know like if I just try to slide this apart in any direction this thing is incredibly strong like I cannot just slide it apart but if I have a lot of Leverage it's easy to break in so let me show you how I kind of use these principles in the cabinets that I've got installed in the van all right so we've got a refrigerator sitting on this cabinet this fridge is about 70 pounds but this cabinet side is made out of uh eighth inch plywood that I've been neared so if we were to imagine this cabinet failing What would most likely happen is that this wall would have to fail however and from a compression standpoint as long as we can minimize those outward bending forces the compression of this cabinet has got plenty of strength so let's look at how this cabinet is built and how I've managed to do that so to prevent this cabinet from having bending forces if we remove these drawer boxes foreign we look at this that we've got these Runners essentially across here and across this top and to prevent even small bends here I've got these small extra strips of wood glued on so I've effectively here we've got the strength of like a three-quarter inch piece of plywood along the edges here so if this wall wanted to bend out it would have to essentially you know break the connection that all these horizontal points and to make sure that this Bond doesn't fail if you imagine this I would essentially have to Shear the bond between here and between here for this thing to be able to pull away and I've got another one down here then I've got the same thing in the back of the cabinet and as a result this is an extremely rigid and strong structure and now let's take a look at this upper cabinet here this entire left portion here is floating you know I'm really happy with the fit I managed to achieve here this is one of those examples where if you're using 80 20 aluminum like you know just making the step in the back that goes around the pillar but I can push that cabinet further back to get more storage this is a nice curved surface that just matches the door perfectly to just maximize any amount of storage you can get but this entire left portion is floating and the reason I feel that this is a strong bond is I've got an incredible amount of glue surface area right here if this was to give out if I overloaded it it would have to Shear this load along the whole thing as well it doesn't want to deform because each of these panels is solid so it's essentially a big Shear plate that does not want to change shape as well the cabinet does not you know if you were to load it left to right each of these bottoms is glued in and as a result that's like another Shear plate that is resisting this cabinet being able to warp so it's an incredibly stiff structure if you understand how to stress this plywood nowhere in this cabinet do I have large areas that are susceptible to either bending or torsion forces and as a result this is just a very stiff and strong structure even though it is incredibly lightweight so finally let me just touch on a couple other things related to these cabinets first Poplar plywood I wouldn't say is ugly but it is not like a finished grade plywood it's a very boring looking it's a very light colored wood and at least for me locally about any interesting looking plywood I can get like a walnut veneer or a cherry veneer in these thin eighth inch or quarter inch thicknesses if I can get it it's going to have an MDF core for any like regular building cabinet application like kitchen cabinets MD of course basically fine you know it is heavy but it's extremely stable and makes just beautifully flat panels however in a van MDF is a horrible Choice it's just not structurally very sound so in about the last year I've started playing around with veneering my own panels if you are a woodworker you know building out a van I think learning to veneer stuff is just a very fun thing to do you do have a little bit of an upfront cost to get a vacuum system put together but it just really kind of opens the door to be able to just use really cool pieces of wood you know pieces of veneer that you know to buy a slab of like some really showy Walnut could be thousands of dollars but you could buy a other cool piece of Walnut veneer for less than 100 bucks and then you can also just use extremely thin stock and it just makes nice beautiful bands but you know in the end it's frustrating I've spent hours and hours veneering panels for this van and at the end of the day you know the first day out of the shop I could go crash this thing which is just uh you know what's the point of life like what am I doing with my hours of my day and then the other thing in this van that I'm trying out relate to the drawers the first thing is I'm building these drawers at a six millimeter Plywood And I'm using finger joints to essentially hold all the corners together finger joints are extremely strong I have zero worry that the bottom of these drawer boxes will kind of give out which is kind of the big worry with most drawer bottoms and by being able to do a six millimeter plywood I've essentially cut my drawer weight in half the complication there was I couldn't really attach drawer slides to six millimeter boxes but you know as I've become you know a better woodworker I've built several pieces of furniture for my house where I just do wood slides there's no metal drawer slide it's just wood on wood you got to be pretty precise with this if you have you know too much slop you'll have problems with the drawer binding and if you have too little slop you'll have problems with the drawer binding it took me a bit to get in my woodworking kind of life here to be comfortable doing this but this Van's got six millimeter drawer boxes and no drawer slides and for perspective all the drawers in the slower cabinet there's five of them weigh only 15 pounds and I've also saved an additional 14 pounds by not using metal drawer slides anyways the take home here is that building lightweight is pretty time consuming but it's not really all that difficult it's just really kind of becoming aware of the techniques and what you could pull off so I hope that this video you learned something and you found it useful thank you

Channel: Project of Science

Views: 306,471

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Id: 5h8FdX0l6x8

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023