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New to me gun cabinet

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    New to me gun cabinet

    So I have been trying to find a large gun safe or something to put all my guns in. I also really wanted something very large to put all of my gun and hunting related stuff in. I have been searching the internet for a while, missed out on some good deals naturally, but I finally scored on one.

    I found a guy who had a entertainment center for sale, one of the things I had been looking for, seen a few, that I thought might be good idea for gun storage. The entertainment center he was advertising, said it was made of teak, then 14.5 ft. long and around 7.5 ft. tall center and 6.5 ft. tall for the side piece. That sounded like what I wanted. But looking at it, I was sure, it was not teak, like he listed. Naturally someone else beat me and contacted the guy first. I was sure I missed out on the deal. But then the day, the other guy was supposed to pick it up, I got a call, saying the other guy had backed out on buying the entertainment center. So we went home got as many blankets as we could find, bought some more ratchet straps and took off, to go get it.

    I was still sure it was not teak even after we got there to look at it, the coloring looks like a dark cherry stain. Turns out that's what matches the closest. Turns out it had been stained. The story we got, is the guy used to work in US embassies all over the world, at one point he was working in the US embassy in Indonesia. While there, he had this piece custom built, out of teak. He said his wife designed it. The story seemed believable, but I was still sure it was not teak, by the coloring. Then I walked up to it and opened some of the doors, at that point, the smell of teak was very strong, no questioning it is teak.

    So we helped unload all of the stuff they had in it and then started working on getting the six pieces out of his house, then figured out quickly, my long bed truck was not going to haul all of this thing with one trip. I had to make two trips. The guy had it advertised for $300, so I gave him $300 for it.

    I took one of the pieces to my cabinet maker buddy, had him look at it. He looked up the price of teak, then did a calculation of how many board feet it would take to build it and concluded it would cost about $10,000 in just lumber to build this thing. He told me it would cost about $20,000 for him to build one like this. In the search for info on teak, we found out that Indonesia, is one of the biggest exporters of teak.

    I did not even come close to telling the old couple what I had planned for this piece. I am not done, but I don't have much left to finish it.

    Ever part of this piece, that has glass, the glass is beveled, and each of the pieces that have glass, have lighting in them.

    I had to figure out how they put it together and take it partially apart, one piece was too big to fit in my gun room, so I took it apart. kind of interesting the various techniques they used to build it. It was not built, with typical US cabinet shop techniques.

    So getting to my changes. First off, the two end display cabinets, with the glass doors. If I were to put them on the ends like it was originally, it would have been almost as long as the wall in the room, I put it in. So you would not have been able to easily see what is in the end display cases. So one of the end display cases went in the living room as a corner displace case. The other stayed in my gun room as a corner display case.

    Then the next changes, I made, were to the dividers in the drawers. It came with a lot of shallow dividers, that are removeable. The dividers make probably 5"X5" compartments, I did not measure them, just a guess. The dividers are only half the depth of the drawers. I removed a bunch of the dividers, from some of the drawers, then stacked the dividers two high and screwed them together, in one drawer, that I put brass in. I also knocked out every other piece of wood, to double the size of each divider. Then one, I knocked out all but one of the divider boards. The put AR buffer springs and other pieces in that one.

    Then I got into the bigger changes. I removed some shelves from the center piece, where a TV was supposed to go. I carefully removed all of the screws and took all of the wood supports and the lower stand out without breaking anything. Then I reused that wood and made my gun racks. So all of the wood is still teak. I need to stain the pieces I cut up, then glue some velvet on the insides of the gun racks.

    Once I am done with that, I am going to try and come up with a idea, to hang at least one, hopefully two bows from the inside top, above the guns, using left over wood. Then make some arrow racks, that won't be hard. I will also store my one piece cleaning rods, in the same rack as the arrows.

    Here are the before and after pictures.
    Last edited by RifleBowPistol; 04-06-2021, 07:07 AM.

    #2
    That is really neat, congratulations on good work!

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      #3
      Thanks. I am very happy with it.

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        #4
        Very creative and functional! Great job

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          #5
          YIKES ! That's really cool.

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            #6
            One other thing I need to do, that I keep forgetting about. There is one shelf that I need to raise up, about an inch. Right now, it's too short to get some of my reloading manuals in. My shorter reloading manuals will fit on either shelf, but the taller ones won't fit on either. So I am going to raise it up, then put the taller loading manuals and gun smithing books on the bottom shelf and the shorter books on the top shelf. That won't be hard to do. Once I have that done, then I can get most of my gun room stuff in that cabinet.

            I also need to come up with a good idea for hanging rifle slings and ear muffs, in the middle piece. I have a few things left to do, I need to figure out the bow rack or racks, then the sling holders and ear muff holders, the rest I have figured out, or pretty sure I know what I am going to do.

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              #7
              Originally posted by TxHamJello View Post
              Very creative and functional! Great job
              It was pretty close to the perfect piece to start off with. Has not taken much to make it into what I have been needing. I really like the large drawers with the removeable dividers.

              There are some cabinets that I want to turn into drawers. The fact they are so deep, you either are going to put things in the cabinet and have a bunch of wasted space, or pack things in the back, then pack things in front of the stuff, in the rear of each of the shelves, in the cabinet. So when you need stuff out of those cabinets, you are going to be digging lot of stuff out each time, then having to put it all back. I don't like that idea at all. So I talked to my cabinet maker buddy about converting those cabinets to drawers, he said he can do it. So eventually I am going to have more drawer space. I need more places for different types of brass and I have a lot of other small pieces, that I really don't want to pack two or three rows deep in those cabinets.

              So there are some shelves, that are going to stay shelves, just have the height adjusted for different size books, then as much as possible, will get turned into draws. The smaller pieces to each side of the center are something like 28" deep. The center piece is around 36" deep.

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                #8
                Super nice!

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                  #9
                  Good job RBP !

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                    #10
                    Sweeter than sweet.

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                      #11
                      Very nice!

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                        #12
                        I have some teak left over from the stuff I removed. I am going to make an arrow rack for one side, maybe one on both sides. Then a bow rack for the top. I raised up a shelf, in the left cabinet, so I could put some of my taller books on a bottom shelf. Got the books in there and then did a quickie stain job on the non finished wood, inside the cabinet. Was not really worried about the appearance inside so much.

                        I took some one piece of the teak to my buddy with the cabinet shop and had him cut the piece off at 21 1/2" long, then slice it into two 7/8" wide strips. Those two pieces, are what I used to move the one shelf up 7/8". I just pulled the shelf out, since it just sits on two pieces of 7/8" wide pieces of wood, that are attached to each side. I just screwed the two pieces my buddy cut on his table saw, to the bottom of that removeable shelf, then put it back. So now I can get my taller books, like my Lyman reloading manuals and some of my grandfather's old gunsmithing books on the bottom shelf.

                        Been working on shotguns this past week and this weekend, so I did not work on the gun cabinet this weekend.
                        Last edited by RifleBowPistol; 04-06-2021, 07:07 AM.

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                          #13
                          Dude!

                          Great work, I was totally expecting a bubba'd entertainment center holding guns as I started reading.

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                            #14
                            Sweet!

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by SmTx View Post
                              Dude!

                              Great work, I was totally expecting a bubba'd entertainment center holding guns as I started reading.
                              Thanks. I had plans to build a very large, very nice gun cabinet, but it would take a lot of money to build and a lot of time. But I was determined I was going to have it built. It would have been about the same size as this cabinet. When I saw this thing listed and saw the dimensions, I quickly realized they were very close to the dimensions I came up with, for my very elaborate gun cabinet, that I designed.

                              My cabinet maker buddy, has been very busy for a long time. So my guns and gun related stuff, have been scattered all over the place. I forgot I had a couple of them. I have been on my buddy's case for a couple years, to build the cabinet I designed. It has been obvious, it was not going to happen anytime soon.

                              Then my wife has been on my case, because my gun room has been a mess, since I had no place to put a lot of stuff I have. I had been hearing about that since shortly after we moved in two and half years ago. I basically gave up on my buddy building my gun cabinet and decided I was going to try and build it myself. Knowing I am not very good at working with wood and my design was quite complex. I saw that turning into a many month project or longer, probably a lot longer. So I would not have my gun room neat and organized for quite a while longer, so my wife would be on my case for quite a while longer.

                              So then me searching facebook market place all the time, every so often I would see entertainment centers that looked like they could make nice gun cabinets. The more I thought about the idea, the more buying one and converting one into a gun cabinet sounded like a good idea. Then I found this one and had to have it. It is probably about the best one I could have started off with, it is close to perfect, for my needs.


                              I could spend more time sanding and making the pieces I cut for the inside look pretty and may go back and do so later on, but I really needed to get my gun stuff organized. All of the pieces of this thing are heavy, so moving them around to make changes to them, such as running screws from the sides, or back, requires help to move them. So for now, I got most of the pieces cut out and screwed together in the cabinet. So I am finally getting my gun room organized, I still have more to do to the cabinet. Once I am done cutting and screwing all the pieces together, I will finish arranging my gun room and redecorating it.
                              Last edited by RifleBowPistol; 02-02-2021, 09:26 AM.

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