Kitchen Cabinet, Post 5
There is a slight bow to the plywood that I've cut the countertop from so using the 10-32 sized T-nuts to help straighten it as it's tightened down.
Here's the countertop with the drop leaf piece next to it.
I'll use a piano hinge to join the two together. Choose the piano style hinge because I hadn't worked with one before.
Positioned the hinge and started screwing it into place when I almost made a big mistake. The plan is to laminate the countertop and drop leaf. That laminate layer between the ends of the two plywood pieces changes their position on the hinge. Almost forgot that. Cut out several small pieces of laminate and use them as spacers.
Use wood screws to hold the hinge in the correct placement. I'll be changing this to T-nuts later on.
Need some way to support the drop leaf when it's in the up position. Gave this a lot of thought. Looked at several kinds of folding supports but decided to go a different way. When the drop leaf is in the up position it is blocking the front half of the side door. I have no doubt there will come a time when I'm going to want to duck under the drop leaf to go through the side door. A folding support will partially block the path under the drop leaf. Instead I'm going to use drawer slider hardware to hold the leaf up. This square steel tube is what will be against the bottom of the drop leaf.
The drawer sliders will be at an angle so the square tube will snug up against the bottom of the drop leaf as it slides into it's final position.
Will have to fabricate some brackets for the drawer hardware so I'm trying to figure out all the dimensions. The square tube is to be flat against the bottom of the drop leaf so there is an angle between it and the slider end.
The slider has to high enough, everything here is upside-down, to clear the angle iron frame.
Take a bunch of measurements.
Using the measurements, cut, drill and weld four brackets to the cabinet frame to support the drawer sliders.
Weld onto the square tube two angle iron pieces that will bolt to the slider hardware.
Do a test fit. Here the drop leaf is in the full up position supported from underneath by the slider. The drawer hardware is rated for 100 lbs so that should be more than sufficient for how I'm planning on using it.
This is how it looks when the drop leaf is down and the slider is fully retracted. The countertop has a overhang to clear the square tube.
Double check that there are no under counter conflicts.
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