Optimizing the den ...

Would like to share the latest improvement to my den with you gents.

My den is a old farmacy cupboard from Warshava, Poland, made of steel and glass back in the 60ies.  It is placed in the basement of our house where I use to shave.



The cupboard has glass shelfs and it is used for storing razors, brushes, soaps and fragrances. Most of my razors were just placed on the upper shelf but space was running out.
The idea was to organize the razors safe and secure in some kind of drawers so I started defining a shape that would fit most of my DE’s and SE’s and than multiple this shape to a pattern optimize storage of the the collection.



While the first idea was to build some drawers fitting the existing cupboard and than made some inserts for the razors, a building project left me with some pieces of 26 mm birch plywood. This material is so firm and solid, I decided to drop the drawer / insert idea and went with a one piece solution.



A 22 mm round nose bit and a electric router was used to cut the pattern into the birch plywood. While groves for handles and for grabbing the razors are 16 mm deep, the groves for the razor heads are 20 mm deep. I was tinking of creating a stencil for the electric router but ended up with simply glueing a 1:1 print of the pattern to the plywood and use a spirit level to guide the router.





The solid plywood was quite a challange for the router so the 16 / 20 mm deep groves were made in several passes.





After creating the pattern on two boards, a lot of machine- and handgrinding was necessary to get the plywood and all the groves smooth and ready for final surface treatment.

I went with several layers of high gloss varnish normally used on wooden boats and yachts. Fine grinding between each layer and long drying / hardening periods finally gave a smooth surface finish pronouncing the layer structure of the plywood.





While full extension rails were sourced from Gernany, a local machinst made custom brackets to mount the drawers inside the vintage cupboard. Bracket were painted cream white to match the color of the vintage cupboard.





All pices are mounted with stainless hardware and the plywood pieces finally get their tight fit inside the cupboard. They are placed right in the midle so access is overview is as optimal as possible.





And here some final shots with razors in place.





Should have made more then just two ...

Best Regards

This is terrific. Thanks for sharing.

motto That is amazing and I showed my wife and told her, SEE, me with my plastic tackle box trays is normal compared to some of these guys..........................yeah, she wasn't buying it ! AMAZING job

Dave in KY was worth a try for sure. 

Dave in KY was worth a try for sure. 

Very nice work indeed.

I really like the steel and glass cabinet.

And you did an excellent piece of work with the razor pullouts.

Thanks for sharing

Amazing work!

BRAVO! That is spectacular!

And now I just sit here and covet.....l