A Progression of Sized Drawers: Furniture Design

http://www.bassettfurniture.com/images/catalog/ProductZoom/2417-0252S.JPG

As many art teachers know, the Fibonacci series (and the golden ratio) is often found in nature, art and architecture. As a woodworking hobbyist, I've often heard that it was common for traditional furniture makers to use the Fibonacci series to derive the size ratios of a stack of drawers - you know, how the deepest drawer is at the bottom, and the drawers get successively shallower as you get to the top drawer. It turns out that there are a number of other interesting ways to derive the progression of sized drawers.

While exploring the application of the Fibonacci series, I discovered three other systems, and a cool design tool

Being a tool fanatic, and a fan of a company called Woodpeckers, I stumbled upon this interesting tool for woodworkers to use for design and layout.

http://www.woodpeck.com/fibonacci.html

Along with the Fibonacci progression, there is also: the Hambridge progression, the arithmetic progression, and the Geometric progression.  Here is a visual example of these (thanks to Gravitar and his blog, Math Science Notes, at http://mathscinotes.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/calculating-drawer-heights/) At Gravitar's blog, he explains the math behind each of the progressions. Later, I will show you a link to a woodworkers site where there is a calculator widget for each of these progressions.

Again from Gravitar's blog, here is a quick illustration of how the Hambridge progression is constructed using a compass.

At first the Hambridge progression looks similar to the golden ratio (and rectangle), but it's different. Here's an explanation of the golden rectangle from http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/golden-ratio.html

Based on the above explanation, I made my own construction of the 6 drawer heights. Being a "visual thinker," I don't think I'd be able to do this with numbers. Except for the top 2 drawers, this looks very similar to the Fibonacci progression - I'll need to check with a math expert to find out if they are the same.

All of these calculations are available in a cool widget at http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/index.htm, where you can choose the kind of progression, enter the total height, the number of drawers, and the space between drawers, and the widget will give you resulting dimensions.