[Rockhounds] Ideal Mineral Cabinet

[Rock Currier]

Some thoughts about mineral specimen display cases.

Armando,

OK, Now I know where you are coming from. Sort of where I was a few years 
back. Your collection is probably now worth more than your house and you 
have everything from micros to large cabinet specimens. I can't tell you 
what to do, but perhaps I can make a few comments and suggestions that you 
may find helpful. You may want to build some wooden cabinets, perhaps with 
drawers below and a small glass fronted display space on top. You probably 
should not stint on the quality of the wood and the craftsmanship of the 
cabinets. If you make them look like fine pieces of furniture, it will make 
your collection look important and this will help preserve the collection 
should ever fall into the hands of someone who doesn't know much about 
specimens. In other words it will increase the half-life of your collection.



Suggestions about materials & construction.

If you want you can make them all from good quality hardwoods, although I 
have found that using a good grade plywood with a nice hardwood veneer for 
the sides, top, bottom and the same for the drawers is OK. I think that a 
good grade of plywood may save you from some warping in the long run and I 
think  it is as strong as solid hardwood. Don't let whoever makes them for 
you use any particleboard or fiberboard for the backs of your cabinets or 
bottoms of your drawers. Make sure that the guy making them understands that 
the bottoms of the drawers should not be just tacked on. These will need to 
carry some weight. After all you are going to be putting rocks in these 
things. If you explain it to him in those terms, he will understand. However 
make sure that the fronts of the drawers are all a good quality hard wood. 
If you use fronts with a veneer, they will chip and peal over time. The 
front edges of the top, sides and bottoms of the plywood frame should also 
be covered with a half-inch thick strip of the same wood that the drawer 
fronts are made from to prevent chipping and pealing.  I personally don't 
like to use drawer pulls because in time one or more of them tend to get 
knocked off. I prefer an undercut on the drawer bottoms that your finger 
tips can use to tug open the drawers. Also drawer pulls collect dust. Use 
good quality fully extensible roller bearings with stops so that you can 
pull your drawers out all the way and have easy access to the specimens in 
the back of your drawers. There is relatively new kind that will roll the 
drawer closed after you have started it back and seat it firmly closed. Very 
nice. After I get my cabinets in place, I cover the tops with a sheet of 
plate glass. This makes it easy to keep the top clean and keeps the tops of 
the cabinets from being scratched by specimens that always seem to end up on 
top of them.



Notes on the size of the cabinets and drawers.

For those of us who collect different size specimens, there has always been 
the problem of how to accommodate different size specimens in the same 
drawers. To do this you need different size boxes for your specimens and 
usually drawers of different heights, with the deep drawers usually reserved 
for the larger specimens. You will have to find and select the kinds of 
boxes that you want to store your specimens in. Ward's boxes were designed 
to efficiently hold different kinds of specimens with two of the next 
smaller size fitting exactly the space of the next larger size.

The drawers will need to be of various depths to generally accommodate your 
different size specimens. Usually making them all deep enough for your 
largest specimens will involve a lot of wasted space and I don't know of 
anyone who has ever gone that rout. If you want to make cabinets for 
miniatures and micromounts you can make the drawers quite shallow and that 
will cover your needs. If you collect micros you should probably make the 
drawers not all that big and make them so that they can easily be removed 
and taken to a microscope for study. All my micro drawers can accommodate 
TNs and micros. To accommodate TN, I just lift out the wooden micro insert 
(tray) in the bottom of the drawer and this allows a little extra depth for 
the slightly taller TN boxes. The micro insert has little wooden strips, 
left to right on it that act as little separators for the micro boxes so you 
can pick them up easily. When you lift out the micro insert tray you see the 
little wooden strips that run side to side on the bottom of the drawer, to 
act as little separators for rows of TN boxes.



For larger specimens I would recommend that you make the drawers no 
shallower than 3.25 inches. As for the side to side and front to back 
measurements I would recommend the drawer be not less than about 24 inches 
side to side and no less than 18 inches front to back. These would be inside 
measurements. The reason for this is that those measurements will 
accommodate placing two standard size flats side by side inside the drawer. 
You don't have to place your specimens in flats and those flats in the 
drawers, but I have found this feature quite handy by experience.  I would 
recommend that some of the drawers be a little deeper, say 4 or 4.5 inches 
and one at the bottom to be at least six inched deep. You may wish to have a 
locking mechanism built into your cabinet. There are a number of options 
here and you cabinetmaker can probably give you a range of suggestions about 
these. You may wish to have doors on the front of your cabinet that you can 
swing shut and lock if you want. You may want to have a small glass fronted 
display shelf built into the top of your sets of drawers where you can 
display some of your larger or better specimens or just your most recent 
additions. I did this and had the back and sides of this little display 
section backed and sided with mirrors. This helps with the lighting. You can 
also put built in lighting in this section of your display case if you wish. 
You may wish to make your specimen drawers modular and stackable. I have 
done this with my micro cabinets and it has worked out quite well. The 
modular concept usually has a base unit that gets the drawers up off the 
ground by four or five inches and allows for a little kick space at the 
front floor of the cabinet. It also has a cap unit that covers up the top of 
the cabinets. This cabinet cap is usually no more than two or three inches 
high. The modular concept is also handy when it comes time to move the 
cabinets. If each unit is no more than 16 to 20 inches high, they are a lot 
easier to move than one large cabinet. Also you could have some modules with 
thin drawers for micros and TNs, some with 3.25 inch drawers and others with 
4.5 or six inch drawers. You can then stack those units in columns of 
various or the same height Usually the construction of modular units 
requires a higher degree of precision for their manufacture than regular 
cabinets.



I hope the above may be of some use to you.

Rock