Giant Rubik's Cube Drawer Box

Welcome to my Instructable on how to make a Giant Rubik's Cube Drawer Box. I initially came up with the idea while trying to solve a problem of mine. The problem was that I had a lot of Rubik's cubes and they were just shoved in a drawer, unorganized. I decided a way to solve the problem would be to create an organizer for them. While discussing with my dad, I thought of the idea to make a giant Rubik's cube for the design. My dad was able to spend time helping me with materials, tools, and machines. Of course, these drawers can also be for whatever you want.

Wood:
We used scrap wood, such as door trims and thin plywood for the majority of this project. This was nice because we didn't have to go and buy lumber, however sometimes we didn't have the perfect size pieces. Whether you buy your own wood or use scrap wood, you will have to figure out how much you need based on your design.

Glue: We used gorilla wood glue for the whole project.

Nails: We also used nails to better secure the framework anywhere the nails wouldn't poke through.

Paint: We used the 6 colors of a Rubik's Cube (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, White, Orange) along with black spray paint. We also used primer on everything before spray painting

Tools: We used a lot of different tools for different tasks such as a table saw, jigsaw, nailgun, square, tape measure, straight edge, etc...

When designing this I started with a few sketches. Before modeling in 3D, I had to decide on a drawer layout. To do this, I used some small blocks to represent the different drawers and their lengths. I set out all my Rubik's Cubes into sets of 1, 2, or 3. These sets will correlate with the drawers. For my design, I used 3 long drawers, 6 medium drawers, and 4 short drawers. This includes some extra drawers for Rubik's Cube I might get in the future. I took the block model and designed it online in TinkerCad so I could access it anywhere. With that part complete I started using SolidWorks. I made the frame that showed where all the drawers were located. I also modeled the drawers, bases for the layers, and a special top drawer. With all the models, I put together an assembly to show how the finished product might look (Not all squares will be red). Finished with the design, it was time to look at materials.

My dad had a lot of scrap wood available so we slightly altered the design to work with our materials. We drew up sketches of what materials we will need for each part. The picture shows almost all the wood we used in total.

Once we knew what our design was and what materials we needed, we started to cut wood. My dad showed me how to safely use each machine. We had to spend the first day just planning and cutting.

We started by assembling the drawers and an overall framework. Using wood glue and clamps to hold everything together. We also put pillars in the corner of the drawers for support.

Once the framework and drawers were assembled. We moved on to the main part. We glued and nailed the walls and base to the framework. We then placed flat tracks to support the drawers. We repeated the process for each layer. With the box and drawers finished, we can start painting.

Before we paint, we need to use sandpaper to make all the drawers fit smoothly inside the hole. We also rounded some edged to make them feel nicer. We also used wood filler to fill holes and cracks in the wood. Now that all the assembly and sanding was done, we could paint. We started with primer for the main box and the squares for the outside. We didn't bother painting the inside due to time constraints. The outside of the box was painted black. Because we were not doing a bottom, there were only 5 sides with colored squares. This meant 45 total squares. With all 6 colors, we had to make 7 of each color and an extra 1 of 3 different colors. (Red-8,Blue-8,White-8,Orange-7,Yellow-7,Green-7) Now we let the paint dry.

When we went to finish it up, we found a spider camping in our top drawer. We had to relocate him.

With everything painted and done we just had to attach the colored squares to the drawers and sides of the box.