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(Dan Cullimore) wrote in message . com...
I would cut dados across the horizontal shelves and fitting shorter
vertical dividers in the dados. This would make a stronger unit.
Might be faster, too. Put a back panel on it (to keep it from
racking) fitted in a rabbeted edge (to keep things neat). Remember to
subtract the thickness of the back from the width of the center shelf
and dividers, and add the combined depths of the dados to their length
and heigths (respectively).

I don't believe this would be stronger. The unit would be apt to fold
at the shelves, making the square cubbies into parallelograms on the
way to failure. Having continuous vertical members is stronger. Your
design rotated 90 degrees would work better, as another poster
mentioned. This way the shelves would be short and nest in dados cut
into the vertical members.

And yes, the dados or slots should be the same size as the board.

Actually, if you want to make a truely strong unit, the slots in the
shelves (not the vertical members) should be about 1/8" narrower than
the board. First you plough a 1/16" deep dado, the width of the board,
on both sides of each interior vertical board (inside only on end
boards), all the way across where they will intersect the shelves.
Then cut your half-width slots centered in these dados. When the
boards are joined, the dados in the vertical members will support the
slotted portions of the shelves, so you won't end up with any
unsupported structure. Technically, this does have the disadvantage of
weakening the beam strength of the vertical members, but that
shouldn't be much of a problem given how shelves are loaded.

For aesthetic reasons, the full-width dados could instead be stopped
dados, so that you don't see them from the front. This would require
widening that portion of the slot in the shelves.

Keep us posted, hero.

Ditto.

-Mike