A few days ago I received a memo from YouTube, "Happy 17th Birthday" it proclaimed. Wow, have I really been creating content for 17 years now and I still have so much more to do. Only last week, I forgot to charge the batteries on my wireless microphone, not problem, I can use the back-up mic.
Sadly, after looking all over for almost 30 minutes and not finding it, I came to the realization I needed to make a "Media Cabinet" to keep all my cords, cables, microphones, cameras, batteries, chargers and more all in ONE PLACE.
The Purpose
Currently they are scattered in my office, in 4 places in my workshop and some in my wood storage room. Yeah, I found the mic the next day, in yet another drawer I seldom use. As I started gathering together some 'used' 3/4" plywood for this job, I recalled how many times I have wanted to build a "secret storage cabinet" but, should I take the time now, or just build a sturdy utility cabinet, go ahead I thought, build the secret cabinet.
The Carcass
This part of build was easy, I have these for 30 years, though my methods have changed due to the Dowelmax Jig, quicker, stronger and easier. The 2 things I didn't have we old books I could re-purpose and suitable hinges. As a lover of books, I struggled with this part, until I found a stack of books headed for the recycling bin that would soon be turned into ??? pulp for paper bags, paper packing or cardboard boxes. I estimated I would need about 30 books (turns out I could have used almost double that amount). After collecting the books, I harkened back to my brief stint in the book publishing business and recalled that most hard cover books could be un bound and I could replace the heavy weight of paper with Styrofoam. An idea easier dreamed up than put into action, turns out not much and be used for glue with Styrofoam, it either melts the Styrofoam or won't bond to it. The best product I found was a Fastcap double sided tape, not cheap but a super sticking double sided tape and it REALLY did the job for me.
Fastcap Double Sided Tape from Amazon - https://bit.ly/42xTSo5
The other product I struggle to find were appropriate door hinges.
I finally settled on some Blum Hinges, Inset Type for door thickness 5/8 or 3/4, and 100 Degree, for a frameless cabinet.
They do have some adjustments for should fit what you want, but some people might come up with a better solution for these.
I affixed to "swing arms" then attached the face of the cabinet to these. The face of the cabinet was paint flat black
The Finished Cabinet
I found the cabinet was more work than I expected, mostly because I was doing things I had never done before, first of all making the door was a bit of a challenge, finding the right hinges, making it inset so that it would look like a book case, then finding and eventually cutting up books and re-attaching Styrofoam inserts into them, figuring out which glue (or in my case double sided tape worked best), running out of books and figuring out how to use old VHS tape covers as replacement, but it was all fun and really worth it for me in the final analysis.
