[Rockhounds] Ideal Mineral Cabinet

Tue Apr 15 21:07:46 PDT 2008

I hired an expert cabinetmaker to build a custom display case for our
front hallway. It sits opposit the china cabinet. Hardwood, lighted,
with mirrored backs in the cabinet. It has eight sections (4 up, 4 down)
with glass doors and adjustable glass shelves. It houses my systematic
collection of minerals. Roughly 6 tall x 9 wide x 1 ft deep. My wife
insisted it be top quality, and it took a couple years of saving to pay
for it. It is starting to run out of room.

My very best specimens are in a small, wall mounted (at eye level),
cabinet in the living room. 

Most of the rest of the collection is in the basement. I have a bunch of
shelving mounted on walls, including 3 inch deep units mounted behind
doors, and the front couple inches of bookcases. I have several larger
cabinets. My micromounts are in flats stored in a large tupperware box,
and my classroom traveling collection is in flats stored in several
other tupperware boxes. 

Some of the larger specimens are yard rocks. The rest is in the garage
in boxes and flats.

I'm running out of room for the collection and hope to take over some of
the kids bedrooms as they move out; my wife says I have way too many
specimens.

Kreigh

Rock Currier wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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