Stacking Display Trays - DIY Divided Collection or Tea Storage

These stackable trays are perfect for tea storage or collections of rocks, beads, trinkets, etc. You can easily customize the size of the dividers and trays during the build to suit your needs. It makes for a fun build, complete with shop made dowels, handles, and some working with plexiglass for the lid.
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Background on the build: My brother is a rock hound, and has a massive collection of purchased and self collected minerals, gems, and crystals. He needed a stackable tray design that he could build to store his collection. I prototyped a design in Fusion 360, and landed on a design we were both happy with.
In this video I show how to make the wooden trays, custom handles, dividers, and finally a plexiglass lid with wooden handles.
There is also a special segment about a local business owner who just retired. I planned to pay for the plexiglass he cut for me, but in the end he gave it to me for free. Thanks Jack!
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Twitter: / dnhandcrafted
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Website: dnhandcrafted.com
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Music Credits:
Country Cue 1 by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: audionautix.com/

[@giatros123]

Apart from the lovely design and professional filming, I found the modesty in the narrative very appealing. Well done !

[@seanreidy143]

great tip about brown paper bag! thanks! and a nice heart-warming segment on the local shop. those places are very important!

[@bryanjarboe8920]

Hahaha I’ve been looking everywhere for a video on organizer boxes like these… for a rock collection! Love the build. Thanks for the great video!

[@billmailtube]

We enjoyed watching your video. The editing for viewing was excellent, and your commentary on ways in which you might change things if you were to make it again was instructive. Having downsized to a small condo, we no longer have our woodworking tools (we never DID have many of the tools you reference for this project!). While we do have a sizable collection of rocks from different countries and parts of the US, we will find another approach to displaying them that won't be nearly as attractive. Thanks again for an informative and creative U-Tube.

[@JolienBrebels]

Great tip to use a pair of pliers for your homemade dowels! These are some beautiful trays!😊

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Jolien! I’m not sure where I first saw that tip, but it makes sense - premise dowels already have the notches.

[@joemccoy6318]

Your video, and audio, production are top notch.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Joe!

[@42Fab]

WAY more patience than I have, turned out great.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Haha - all perspective I’m sure. You’d happily weld a grid together :) and thanks!

[@johnneiner3170]

Fine work, Doug!! Wow, the beautiful trays may detract from the minerals they hold!! ;) great job.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Now I just need to ship them to you! And I’ve seen your collection, hopefully any beauty just presents the specimens even better!

[@kathrynnewton8721]

You are a thorough, quality worker thank you!

[@XavierZinzen]

Hy, cool project. For the plexiglass, donc bother polishing, after à rough and lighter sanding, heat up the side with a flame, it’ll go back to transparent like magic! 😉 it is a little more brittle, than polishing. Cheers

[@africancichlids3011]

misting the wood is a great way to prevent tearout especially on certain woods , i saw the tip in a magazine a few years ago .

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks for the tip!

[@FishersShop]

Great job, Doug! Very sharp looking! And your attention to detail is off the charts! :) I'm sure your brother is loving it.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Drew!! Glad you liked it! He’ll enjoy them more once I get them shipped, haha. Also, attention to detail? Says the guy that made those crazy detailed cutting boards??? Well, that makes you certainly qualified to identify it I guess :)

[@estebanarthur931]

sorry to be so offtopic but does someone know a way to get back into an Instagram account..? I was dumb forgot the login password. I would appreciate any assistance you can give me.

[@abdielernesto9051]

@Esteban Arthur instablaster :)

[@estebanarthur931]

@Abdiel Ernesto thanks for your reply. I got to the site thru google and Im waiting for the hacking stuff atm. Takes a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@estebanarthur931]

@Abdiel Ernesto It worked and I now got access to my account again. Im so happy:D Thank you so much you saved my ass !

[@HeatherJGummer]

Great projects! Just what I was looking for to store xmas decorations!

[@DarinBeard]

Really nice work. Your videos are excellent. Good info, excellent cinematography, woodworking skills on point, vo is very well done... A testament to your detail-ability. Another great release, Doug.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks for the encouragement Darin! Feels good to finally have it done!

[@AdelKhen]

this is a beautiful channel, i hope you'll continue to make videos, they're really nicely done and have a lot of information in there. i hope you if you've stop, you're still enjoying your workshop aniway !

[@tooljunkie555]

That's a really nice looking tray! Love the way the feet look and contrast of the oak and walnut

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Joe!! I like the contrast too!

[@mrjasonrowland]

Wow! Well done! This was so much fun to watch. Thanks0 you for the incredible amount of time and planning it took you to bring this to us. :)

[@randythomas3580]

You did great but the only thing I would change is that I would put dado runs on the top of both sides and one end and have the plexi glass slide open as the top for each box. Just my idea but I love the amount of time you spend on your projects, they show!!!! Thanks Randy

[@ralphtrites3724]

Beautiful trays! I suggest turning the tray upside down on the table saw. Carefully (which you clearly can do) create a rabbit in the exterior side of the walnut so it has a "little more play" when stacked. Rotate the tray(s) and repeat.

[@derekdodson5623]

What a cool and creative project. Thanks

[@africancichlids3011]

another quality video . thanks

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thank you for watching!

[@craftedworkshop]

Doug, this turned out awesome! Your work is really impressive, both in your woodworking and camera work/editing. This would also be a great tea storage system, might want to throw that into the title as I’m guessing more people need that than mineral specimen trays 😁

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Johnny! I really appreciate you taking the time to watch and for the suggestion! Tea storage never crossed my mind, and it would be perfect for that. I agree more folks would be looking for that or even “collectors” boxes or something than mineral specimen trays specifically. I’ll revise the title. Thank you!

[@YouCanMakeThisToo]

Those came out just outstanding. Really great to see the video!

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Caleb!!

[@Pryorfab]

Dude. This was another home run! They turned out great!! And so did the video!

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks for the kind words Jake!! Glad you liked the build and the video.

[@Pryorfab]

DN Handcrafted my brother likes rocks too, might need to build him one of these

[@DNHandcrafted]

You should! These were 12x18 inside dimension, but it would be easy to make in smaller/different sizes.

[@LetsPrepTogether]

Excellent video and project! You got a new sub!

[@DNHandcrafted]

Awesome, thanks Alex!

[@tenderlovellcare]

Awesome work bro! They’re beautiful! ☺️🖤👊🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Matthew!

[@BruceAUlrich]

Excellent as usual, Doug! I really liked some of the tricks you talked about. For instance, hammering walnut through a single hole in a piece of metal resulted in dowels good enough to use as plugs. Good to know!

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks Bruce! I enjoyed trying to figure out the dowels for the project! Still might buy a dowel plate one of these days.

[@oldmanpottering]

Bloody terrific ! Subbed from Au 👍

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thank you! Welcome aboard!

[@Hatchmade]

I like the contrast between the oak and walnut. It's more subtle than walnut and maple. I think walnut and maple is a little much...

[@DNHandcrafted]

I really likes how the contrast turned out too.

[@MiniBelnor]

I'm a mineral collector. How much for a bunch of these trays?

[@Thomas-uw4ot]

I know this is pretty old, but would you ever consider making and selling one of these? With a separated box and a flat box?

[@CTTutorials]

5555 Subs!! 😉

[@DNHandcrafted]

I noticed that too! Haha.

[@FullSailDale1]

I've not seen that tip about using brown paper to sand between finish coats. Is there more to it, or is that it?

[@DNHandcrafted]

That’s all there is to it! It doesn’t work to actually level out uneven finish, but for knocking down the fibers/dust bits before the next coat it works great.

[@FullSailDale1]

I'll give it a try! Thanks! (...and, happy anniversary!!)

[@DNHandcrafted]

Thanks!

[@6BlackWings]

My favorite part is where you basically didn't show more than 20 % of the form or function of the finished product for more than 3 seconds.

[@DNHandcrafted]

Ha - now that you point it out I guess I didn’t. Was focused primarily on the build. I’ll try to keep that in mind for next time!

[@kevincinnamontoast3669]

Google why should I NEVER use one side of a dado stack.