Thickness of casing

Andy Kev. · 28 Mar 2018

The commonest thickness for most cases seems to be 3/4" (19 mm). In absolute terms one can see why: the wood looks neither unduly cumbersome nor spindly. What do you feel are the upper and lower limits for thickness which are still aesthetically (as opposed to structurally) acceptable?

I ask this because I was intending to use 3/4" boards for my shoe box but due to a planning error might find myself more in the range 9/16" - 5/8" - 11/16". My instinct is to think that for a smaller case you could probably get down to 9/16" but not much less than that. As for the upper limit: 1" ?

Tasky · 28 Mar 2018

Is this shoe box a piece of standing furniture, or a small box that you'll be picking up and carrying?
If the latter, there are plenty of old gun cases, writing boxes, cutlery cases and all manner of things that use ½" or even ¼".

If the former, it depends on how much you want a Fine Furniture look, I suppose. I've seen some very fine (and expensive) antique French furniture that looks lovely, but at the same time so very, very delicate.
So long as it's structurally sound, the rest is personal choice, IMO.

knockknock · 28 Mar 2018

The casing of my tool chest is made of 5/8" cheap HomeDepot laminated pine panels, which after planing are down to around 9/16". The overall case dimensions are around 36"H, 30"W, 13"D. The strength comes as much from the construction as it does from the wood.

- The case is dovetailed on all four corners, and the dovetails are pegged.
- The middle shelf is attatched with several through tennons (I think 1" wide, spaced 1" appart).
- The middle and bottom horizontal face boards are rabbetted and pegged.
- The tungue and groove pine back boards sit in a rebate, and are pegged with two pegs at the inner third marks, at the top, middle and bottom. The outside boards are also pegged down the case side.
- The drawer shelf and hand plane shelves are not structural, they have a fixed attachment on the left side, and are floating on the right.

The tool chest doesn't rack when I push it around.

AndyT · 28 Mar 2018

Go for the thinner boards and sound construction.

If it's a small box, thick wood will look too chunky. If it's a piece of furniture, 3/4" will guarantee it looks just like all the boring commercial stuff.

Andy Kev. · 28 Mar 2018

I've just had a measure of the wood and if I plane the blemish away carefully I should end up with 11/16" which obviously is just shy of 3/4".

To answer the above queries: I'm calling it a shoe box but officially it's more of a shoe chest. It's based on the concept of a Mule Chest as depicted on p 228 of Illustrated Cabinetmaking by Bill Hylton.

It's going to be 3' long, about 12" from back to front and about 18" high. The upper part is like a chest i.e. fitted with a lid and the lower part has a drawer. In Mr Hylton's book the chest to draw ratio is about 2:1. I'm going to have the chest being smaller (for normal shoes) and the draw bit a bit higher (for walking boots and shoes that get used less often). The chest in the book features two draws side by side but I'm going to have just one.

The model in the book is mounted on a low base but I reckon something with about 12" clearance from the floor would make sense here because then the shoes currently in use as well as slippers can go underneath it.

To get back to the original point, I think one could go down to 5/8" and it would look fine and one could possibly get away with 1/2" if the work was really fine.