Question on Lateral Stability

[Eliot Sennett]

Hi All,

I want to make an entertainment center like this one: https://www.thomasville.com/i312302-media-console, except without the back. I'm not sure about lateral stability - even with nothing on the shelves it seems that a good push from either side of the top would send the thing to the floor with broken shelves and vertical members all over the place. Can I avoid this risk just by using strong joinery, or do I need a vertical cross-member of some sort? Thanks!

Eliot the novice furniture guy

[Sam Murdoch]

Hi All,

I want to make an entertainment center like this one: https://www.thomasville.com/i312302-media-console, except without the back. I'm not sure about lateral stability - even with nothing on the shelves it seems that a good push from either side of the top would send the thing to the floor with broken shelves and vertical members all over the place. Can I avoid this risk just by using strong joinery, or do I need a vertical cross-member of some sort? Thanks!

Eliot the novice furniture guy

I'm dubious. Even tenons with generous shoulders of the vertical pieces to the horizontal piece will (I believe) eventually fail. Not that the unit will fall apart but it will pretty certainly develop wobble. I think a good option to no back is to incorporate some custom right angle irons at the 4 corners of the outside verts. The longer the arms of the angles the better the racking resistance. AND - it would be better still if the angles are securely mortised into the wood so that the wood creates shoulders to support the angles - so nothing less than 1/4" thick metal. If you surface mount you will reduce the effectiveness substantially and be depending only on the screws/lags to eliminate the movement.

My 2¢ anyway.

Good luck. Sam

[Jamie Buxton]

Usually I tell folks that backless cabinets will be wobbly. But that one has vertical and horizontal parts that look to be 2" thick or more. With solid joinery, each joint does resist a lateral push. And there are lots of them in the cabinet. So I think you'll be okay.

[Gene Davis]

Two threads right now from guys that must like to see cables.

Put the back on it! You'll be glad you did.

[Eliot Sennett]

Thanks Sam, Jamie and Gene. I'm inclined to compromise and use a back, although I may not make it full height. I don't like the idea of wobbly furniture and I don't have any experience with metal yet. Re cable management, I'm going to put curved cutouts in the backs of the shelves and either routed slots or grommet holes in the vertical pieces both to conceal cables and provide ventilation. My plan is to mount a power strip on the middle shelf in the back and feed its power cord out one of the cutouts in the back to an electrical outlet, so there will only be one cable exiting the unit. The TV will sit on top and cables will feed through a grommet in the top, so there won't be noticeable cables from the top either (I don't want to wall-mount the TV). I'm going to make the grommet visible and a design element of the piece - I really like some asymmetry. I'm also thinking about making the vertical pieces off-center, to complement some end tables I made for the same room (see photo). The wood will be the same, but I'm going to reverse the use of it - maple verticals and cherry horizontals.

Once again, thanks so much for your input. I should be done with this piece in about three years - given how many mistakes I'll make along the way - and I'll post it then.

Eliot

IMG_2196.jpg

[Jamie Buxton]

On a nice piece of wood hand-made furniture, don't use one of those plastic grommets. Make your own wood one, either of the same species, or of some contrasting species. And there's little reason to make it round either.