Aluminum or wood for drawers.

[BurbanAZ]

I'm about to build a drawer set up for the back of my 4Runner. Im plannin on just building a faily basic box with 2 drawers but I'm torn between making the drawers out of wood or aluminum. I'm comfortable working with metal because that's what I've always built my projects out of in the past so the wood drawers would definitely be a learning experience also. What do u guys think?

 

[rayra]

Metal's nice if you have the skills and access to affordable metal. But it will be noisier in use, won't it? And if you line it with something like neoprene or some other sound deadening material, the costs will certainly be much more than wood products.

I've seen some projects where folks have used foil-backed butyl rubber weather sealer sheets meant as a window flashing sealer in home construction as a less expensive substitute for 'Dynamat' and other such car audiophile -dedicated material and reported very good results.

http://www.lepageproducts.com/ProductDetail.aspx?pid=150


The one serious benefit for metal would be minimal loss of storage space due to the structure of the thing. A lot of these drawer within a slider withing a box contraptions we're seeing here give up ~~30% of the storage volume to just the structure itself. That's just way out of proportion, IMAO. Well executed metal construction would take very little of the storage volume.

 

[MANUCHAO]

I build the frame out of mild steel 1"Wide * ¹/₈"thick.
The drawers were built from ³/₁₆" marine aluminum...
Painted white on the inside, lined with thin clear drawer mat from Ikea.
These are quiet.
If I was to do it again I would do the frame out of aluminum too and the drawers from ¹/₈" thickness...
Drawers are 18"wide by 42"long by 10" high.
I lost/used about 4" of space in slides and material thickness..

 

[BurbanAZ]

Yea saving as much usable space as possible was a big concern for me. I'm not too worried about the price difference because I'm hoping to get them built right and hopefully last us a long time.

Also already having the experience working with metal will make the design and construction go way faster than learning as I'm going.

Sounds like aluminum is the way to go, thanks for the opinions. I'll post up pics here as I build it.