Tinkerman

My wife and I want a new entertainment center for our living room. We couldn't find one that we felt would be suitable to buy. Most were too flimsy or severely overpriced or just not what we wanted. So she asked me if I could design one to build for her, which I did. I've gotten the basic design and dimensions down, but really need some help nailing down the particulars. I don't have a lot of this sort of woodworking experience and I was hoping you guys could help me with a bit of it.

First off, if you would like to see it, I have a pdf with major 2D views and a couple of isometric 3D views here: http://web.bvub.com/~azaron_flare/EcentProj_rev1.pdf
And for those of you that use Sketchup, I have the model here:http://web.bvub.com/~azaron_flare/EcentProj_rev1.zip

So, my major questions were:
1- What sort of material would be best for this project? The model is drawn with mostly 3/4" plywood in mind, but I can modify it to use any material. Preferably, the material would be relatively easy to work with. This thing is going to have to be cut and pre-fitted in one place, and actually put together here in the house.
2- The bracing scheme I have in this project is atrocious, imho. I know I probably put way too much bracing into it, and would like to see if you guys could offer up some suggestions on how to cut that back without sacrificing stability.

I'm sure there will be questions about what I was thinking when I drew this one up, and I'll be happy to answer. :)

woodnthings

Your quote: So, my major questions were:
1- What sort of material would be best for this project? The model is drawn with mostly 3/4" plywood in mind, but I can modify it to use any material. Preferably, the material would be relatively easy to work with. This thing is going to have to be cut and pre-fitted in one place, and actually put together here in the house.
Do you mean that you will build it in one location dry assemble it and permanently assemble it inside the house? This would be a little unusual in that glueing and clamping is usually done in the shop. A piece this large may not permit it however, so I could see why you might want to finish the assembly in your house. The thing that I noticed was the the internal bracing was "stick built" rather than dadoes and solid sections as I would expect. The unit is a corner unit and I wonder if you made drawers or slide out shelves with front faces or a door to conceal the shelves, centered on the front face, rather than trying to utilize the corners, which are a weird shape. and not very useful.
A thought on that would be to have swing out side panels to access the corners if you really want to. I know I'm changing your design, so don't be offended by my suggestions, just throwing out some ideas. bill

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Tinkerman

I'm not offended at all! I love hearing what others think especially when I've hit a proverbial wall in the creativity department. Isn't it funny how you can always have all kinds of great ideas when dealing with projects for others, but then you go to draw up one for yourself and it's a great big square box in a corner?
You actually gave me a couple of ideas there and I'm going to start working on those. :)