Super clean cook drawer build

[qrohlf]

A recap for those who haven't seen my build thread: I spend 3-4 months per year on the road living out of my rig at various climbing areas around North America. I'm building out my 4runner as a minimalist "portable base camp" for these adventures.

I just completed my biggest project, a modular cook drawer system using 36" industrial drawer slides, sized to fit all of the components of my food prep setup. This project involved quite a lot of sketching, basic woodworking, some CAD+CAM manufacturing, and what felt like several thousand coats of spar urethane.

I'll be documenting the full process from concept to design to manufacturing in a couple follow-up posts, but for now here are some shots of the finished project.

Materials: 36" lock-in/lock-out industrial drawer slides, 1/2" baltic birch plywood, 1/4" baltic birch plywood, recessed d-rings, water-based spar urethane.

Build time: 6 weeks start to finish

Total cost: ~$670

Jump to:
- Design Process
- Prototyping & CAD

 

[theesotericone]

I spend 3-4 months per year on the road living out of my rig at various climbing areas around North America. I

As someone who spent the better part of 6 years on the road climbing I gotta ask if you sleep in your rig? If you do rip those back seats out and extend the platform to just behind the front seats. Shoot me a PM if you ever make to Bishop.

 

[qrohlf]

[MENTION=143526]theesotericone[/MENTION] I used to have a Tacoma that I slept in when I was "full-timing" as a dirtbag. I found that I actually don't love sleeping inside of a vehicle, I found that it works better for me to sleep in a tent for both practical reasons (less gear shuffling required, more room to move around), and personal preference (I sleep better in a tent, even in poor weather conditions).

It's out of frame in the pics above, but my solution now is the combo of a low-profile RTT for stopovers and trips less than a week long, and a North Face expedition ground tent with room to stand up in and rack gear for my longer trips (where I tend to be in the same place for two to eight weeks at a time, and in locations where theft is less of a concern).

One nice thing about putting the sleeping area up top is that it keeps my passenger capacity intact, I've lost count of the number of times I've been the only person in camp with a rig that seats more than two, since a huge chunk of the climbing community has switched to built-out vans. Room for five makes logistics way easier when you're shuttling a bike ride or rolling into town with a crew.

I'll definitely hit you up the next time I pass through Bishop, likewise shoot me a PM if you find yourself on the Front Range!

 

[theesotericone]

[MENTION=143526]theesotericone[/MENTION] I used to have a Tacoma that I slept in when I was "full-timing" as a dirtbag. I found that I actually don't love sleeping inside of a vehicle, I found that it works better for me to sleep in a tent for both practical reasons (less gear shuffling required, more room to move around), and personal preference (I sleep better in a tent, even in poor weather conditions).

It's out of frame in the pics above, but my solution now is the combo of a low-profile RTT for stopovers and trips less than a week long, and a North Face expedition ground tent with room to stand up in and rack gear for my longer trips (where I tend to be in the same place for two to eight weeks at a time, and in locations where theft is less of a concern).

One nice thing about putting the sleeping area up top is that it keeps my passenger capacity intact, I've lost count of the number of times I've been the only person in camp with a rig that seats more than two, since a huge chunk of the climbing community has switched to built-out vans. Room for five makes logistics way easier when you're shuttling a bike ride or rolling into town with a crew.

I'll definitely hit you up the next time I pass through Bishop, likewise shoot me a PM if you find yourself on the Front Range!

My road trip rig was an 88 Toyo Van. Purchased in 2005 for 600 bucks. I put 160000 miles on it in 10 years with 6 of those being true dirt bag years. Sold it last year for 1000 bucks. The whole sprinter movement cracks me up. If you got money to throw at a sprinter you aren't a dirtbag. lol

I need to get back out to Eldo. I learned how to climb in the Gunks. It's very similar as far as small gear and a long ways between pieces. When I first climbed in Eldo it just clicked. I spent a total of about 4 months there over the years. Fun place.

 

[MattJakobs]

Your attention to detail on these things make me jealous. They look very well thought out. I've recently been redesigning my drawers to better fit my current needs and this is definitely some good inspiration. Kudos to you.

 

[danwyl]

My road trip rig was an 88 Toyo Van. Purchased in 2005 for 600 bucks. I put 160000 miles on it in 10 years with 6 of those being true dirt bag years. Sold it last year for 1000 bucks. The whole sprinter movement cracks me up. If you got money to throw at a sprinter you aren't a dirtbag. lol

I need to get back out to Eldo. I learned how to climb in the Gunks. It's very similar as far as small gear and a long ways between pieces. When I first climbed in Eldo it just clicked. I spent a total of about 4 months there over the years. Fun place.

Great to see some climbers on the forum. Hopefully some projects go down this season at bishop

 

[SHagood]

Love the simplicity and practicality of this setup. Awesome work.

 

[apohl17]

Always nice seeing a killer drawer setup, and a Partner Steel to boot. Those things are wicked awesome... Thanks for sharing :cheers:

 

[theesotericone]

Great to see some climbers on the forum. Hopefully some projects go down this season at bishop

There's a few of us around here. There's actually a climbing specific thread in off topic that we should keep the climbing chatter in.

4Runner Rock Climbers
[MENTION=367360]qrohlf[/MENTION]

Nice build on the drawers and swing by the climber thread some time.

 

[wolf1776]

Wow, very nice!

 

[fixxor]

Looking really forward to the build details on the drawers. need to get started on mine, Very nice!

 

[qrohlf]

Design Process

This project started while on the road in Squamish BC. I'd been thinking about some kind of drawer build for the cargo area for a while. Being in Squamish where I had to setup and teardown my stove setup every day (you can't leave anything with food smells out due to bears) crystalized the notion of a cooking-specific build.

My goals going into the process were

- Access. The #1 goal of this build is to be able to quickly and easily access my cooking supplies, stove, and utensils without having to shuffle any gear.

- Modularity. I put a high value on being able to engage with the community when I'm posted up in a climber camp, and sometimes that means cooking together in a communal spot (the Smith Rock Bivvy immediately comes to mind). I wanted to be able to easily detach my stove & utensils from the setup, and cook somewhere else when the situation called for it.

- Purpose-built storage and organization. My current cook setup is the result of years of field use, and my gear isn't likely to change any time soon. I wanted a system where everything had a specific place that it lives, rather than the standard "chuck it all in a bin/drawer" approach, which involves a lot of rummaging.

- Minimum viable footprint. While my cooking gear is largely constant, the gear load-out that I have for any particular climbing trip will vary greatly based on the objective, season, partners I may have along for the ride, etc. I wanted to keep as much open storage as possible in my cargo area available for piling big duffels of gear into.

I also did some trawling of the internet, looking for similar projects to take inspiration from.

With all that in mind, I started sketching. When I sketch a project, it's an iterative process; each sketch brings up new questions (How to route the propane hose? What type of retention mechanism are you going to use for the cutting board? How will the drawers stay closed?). Eventually, solutions start to click into place with each drawing. I probably did about two dozen sketches for this project, at varying levels of scope and detail:

 

[AntleredRuin]

Geez, the neatness and attention to detail is impressive!

It's like Monica Geller and Adrian Monk hosted an orgy in a Container Store...

 

[thezentree]

What the hell kinda notebook is that?! I must have one.

 

[brillo_76]

Impressive. I never pictured a 3rd gen as a sleeping or camping rig. Excellent job OP!!

Sent from my SM-J337V using Tapatalk

 

[qrohlf]

Prototyping and CAD

After doing a whole bunch of sketching and thinking and sketching some more as part of the design process, I had a pretty good idea of the overall dimensions for the drawer system. At this point, I brought the project out of my notebook and into a CAD program so that I could more easily make changes without re-drawing each time.

I built a box out of cardboard to test fit, shaved down the length from 40" to 37.5" so that it would clear the back seats better, then built a full-sized prototype box out of plywood at 37.5"Wx37.75"Dx10.5"H, and went camping to see how it worked out.

After camping a couple of nights with the prototype box, it was pretty obvious that having a deeper drawer was mostly wasted space - stacking grocery items 8.5" deep meant having to dig for stuff, and the whole point of this drawer system is first-order retrievability.

Luckily everything was already in CAD and easy to tweak, so I shaved the outer box height down to the absolute shallowest possible container that would clear 3" sliders, my 4" tall Partner Steel stove, and a 1/4" clearance on the top and bottom. That gave me final outer dimensions of 37.5"Wx37.75"Dx8.5"H. The 2" difference might not seem like much, but it's huge in day-to-day usage (makes the difference between being able to easily see out the back window while loaded, sometimes).