I’ve run into a bit of a snag in my project. I’m currently making a design for a sewing machine cabinet for The Boss to give her a place to work. Basically the bottom panel will come out, have fold down legs, and turn into a work table, with her sewing machines in the upper compartment (and more importantly not on the dining room table).
Long story short, after building up the cabinet in Sketchup, my plan for the legs changed and now the inside width of the cabinet isn’t wide enough anymore (the 774 mm Dimension). I’ve spent the last hour or so digging through youtube tutorials to try and find a way to do it, but the only way they mention is with the scale tool.
Since I don’t want to have to go back adjust every vertical board thickness after the fact I figured I’d give the forums a shot before I redid the whole model. I’m guessing there’s some magic tool (similar to the dimension tool in Inventor) that I just haven’t found. Thanks in advance for the help!
If you modeled the piece using components for each part you’d make in the shop, you can move the parts on one side to make the piece the right width. Then you can adjust the lengths of the horizontal pieces. I did this a couple of hours ago to show someone what a desk I modeled would look like with some additional width. It took less than a minute to make all the modifications.
Excellent! Thanks for the help. Do you have a link to the tutorials? Wouldn’t hurt to have a guiding hand in the process.
As for why there is four legs, I didn’t want all of the weight to be resting on the four small screws of the hinges, or the hinge itself for that matter… I was a bit afraid that on a tired day too much weight would be put on that side of the table. Now that I look at it I could also do some sort of latch system or something which would help transfer the weight into the shelf system.
What about using a piano hinge? So many screws, it would probably take the weight.
I’d be interested to know how the legs are folding to get them:
a) to fit inside the cabinet; and
b) to avoid conflicting with one another when folded.
My wife does a lot of work on a sewing machine too and, like you, tends to use the dining room table. If I were designing something like this, I think I’d try to find a way of making the door hiding the machine fold down to become the work table with maybe pull out legs to support it.
Is there supposed to be access to the space behind the vertical panel above the table top? Are you intending this to fold down and close? If so, where do the legs go when the top is folded down?
As Simon suggested a continuous hinge could be used and would probably support the weight of the top. Use suitable screws into a piece of solid wood if you are concerned about holding power.
I’ve gotta admit, I went down a bit of a hinge rabbit whole with this project.
The space behind the upper panel is the “Sewing Machine Garage”. I was looking at hinges which are used for horizontal cabinets. Originally I wanted to use a parallel lift hinge, but those hinges cost over 100 euro for the pair. In the end I landed on These Ones from Ikea.
I thought about the piano hinges for the bottom panel, however I wanted the panel to be flush with the inside shelf that the sewing machines would sit on. I ended up deciding on these ones.
My plan with the legs was to use barrel hinges. One would fold down right at its base so it sat under the table panel. The top portion of the other leg would be fixed to the panel, then I would cut it 5 cm down and use that as the hinge point, so it would sit on top of the other leg. I was going to inlay magnets to get them to stay in place, both when they were in the extended and storage positions.
However, DaveR’s idea is both simpler and more elegant, and in the interest of KISS I’ll be using that one. I knew that when I started getting magnets involved that there had to be a better way
Well, pretty safe to say I got my practice changing dimensions on this one. I got both the legs in before I realized I needed a place to put the hinges. Thanks all for the help, now to just build it
I’ve got boards going back. I was more talking about the hinges for the table panel. They’ll be mounted on the underside of the shelf and table, and there wouldn’t be any clearance between the leg frame and the shelf. The choice was to either put them outside of the frame, between the frame and the cabinet wall, or try and find some creative styling for the top portion of the frame which would allow the hinges to pass through.
I thought about it, but I would run into clearance issues with the upper door panel. It would mean I’d have to either leave an 18mm gap between the panels or leave the top door open the whole time the table is out.
