Van Builder HQ is live! (drawer slide box install)
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May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:00
on here so we'll just wait like about a minute but if you're already seeing this now we are putting in the uh drawer box
0:09
that we made for the step so it's a dual purpose we have a
0:14
500 lb drawer two 500lb drawer slides and these are designed to lock into place there's a box that has a
0:22
traction surface on it and this is going to allow you to get into the back of the van into the bed without having to have
0:29
a additional stool available so you can use the Box um the box is a box so we
0:35
can store stuff in it um what I've done off camera it's setting up right now but I've epoxied the lid onto the
0:43
top uh piece so it's kind of like a puzzle piece that goes on top and um once that piece goes on top it kind of
0:51
closes it up and makes it an actual box so there's no hinges or anything like that on top what we're going to do right
0:56
now is we are we've got the hardware Inside the Box and we're actually going to bolt it in
1:04
place for the first time um it might be permanent because goes in well then
1:10
we'll be uh moving on to the next next
1:15
task so multitasking here like I said the epoxy is setting up for this lid you
1:20
guys will see that in just a second um this has already
1:26
been painted and got a little bit of my towel fuzz on the bottom here so let me
1:33
wipe that off before I install it
2:10
okay so that's all good all right what I've done is I've just dumped all the hardware in here so
2:17
it's just easy for me to get to um this is the front of the box so once I get the box installed this plate is actually
2:25
this is epoxy to the front of the cabinet the screws are just as a back back up um you always want to have a
2:31
backup of adhesion or like bolting in a van
2:37
because even though we're using Birch um for this and we've clear coated it on the inside we've painted it we've sealed
2:44
it and we've epoxied this front um you really always need to take an extra step because the humidity
2:51
levels change in a van um it's in all kinds of different environments so to make sure you had the best chance at not
2:59
having something not warp um too bad you need to uh to do that so that's why
3:05
these screws are here um technically I could have just oox this in the front kept it clean but in my experience these
3:12
ends tend to want to give way over time and if you're doing a high-end build you
3:19
definitely want that to be taking care
3:24
of um what I do also is I will come back in here and do a little touchup paint
3:31
before um you know getting this van on the road these
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guys all right so here comes the fun part trying to get this Hardware in
3:45
here and yeah so the reason I touch up the
3:52
sides it's it's pretty obvious um it's going to rub against these rails as I'm installing it and it probably it's
3:59
probably going look fine but you know just a little bit of a
4:04
touchup no problem all right so what I'm going to try to do here is when I bolt
4:10
this through the rail and into the side of the
4:15
Box my question is how many washers can I put into the
4:23
reil uh and have the reil still function as it's supposed to
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sometimes the problem you find with Hardware is you'll buy some hardware and you'll get a piece of
4:39
Hardware that just needs just ever so slightly a shorter bolt or nut or screw
4:46
or whatever and sometimes they don't make it so for this you know this comes in
4:52
one inch inch and a quarter inch and a half but you know if you need like an inch and an eigh for example it might be
4:59
hard to to find something like that okay so we got the two middle ones in
5:05
first um I can't really see my phone so if you guys are asking questions um just
5:11
give me a minute and I'll hop back around all right so we got the two middle ones um we're
5:19
using stainless steel Hardware always want to use stainless steel in a van and I'm just putting a washer on
5:26
here and then this this uh nut it's pretty low profile
5:31
head it's about half of what you would expect believe it or not I got these from Lowe's and uh I think they're going
5:39
to work
5:49
out all right see if we can get this front one in now this is a very tedious process um
5:58
pretty much anything custom is is so when you're putting this together if
6:04
this doesn't fit it's possible I need I might need to take this out and uh open up the holes here to get my
6:13
alignment back in order
6:21
um so we just got to worry about that all right on the back rails you have to
6:27
slide it in and out because there's an opening on the rail that's going to have a little window and that's going to
6:32
allow you to put the bolt in there's different locations you can do that so again the hardest part of this
6:39
is the alignment of everything CU you got metal wood
6:46
um a lot of those components you know they don't want to be they don't
6:52
want to be perfect um okay it looks like that's okay
7:01
now it's better to have a tighter fit hole on something like this you really don't want anything loose because I
7:07
don't want the Box tilting down um and then rub making any rubbing on the uh on
7:14
the van like this aluminum cabinet so what I would do is uh if there's one
7:19
like this screw right here is tight um I'm going to force it in almost like a
7:25
screw not a bolt and as long as I have good alignment I don't really care that
7:32
I'm kind of forcing this thing to go into place I'm very accurate when I build
7:39
stuff anyway so I know if something's off it's
7:44
because um you know the wood has tweaked a
7:50
little bit uh if you guys have watched my
7:55
Craig uh Craig screw what am I trying to
8:00
say my Craig screw fabrication of the Kitchen Gallery I made for John and
8:05
Susan that's going of how I construct my cabinets um I didn't do crack screws on
8:12
this uh just because I wanted this to be clean inside so what I did is
8:18
uh a lot of people will underestimate the power of wood glue a good wood glue
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uh bond is you know almost stronger than any screw um
8:30
if you do it right so if you apply it right let it dry and have it clamped
8:35
overnight um you'll rip and Splinter this joint it'll be harder to B A Screw
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and uh so all these joints are wood
8:47
glued and then we have um pin Nails uh
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and all the joint sides and the main stress on this box is
8:59
not the bottom it's not the sides it's the this panel here and this panel here
9:05
so these two and the lid on top um you know we're
9:11
going to be confident that it's going to hold everything up um plus we got the these rails here
9:18
that are going to support it too
9:32
uh Baltic Burks would be an excellent thing to use for
9:40
this so let's see this Birch has one two three four five six seven uh ply this is
9:49
seven ply
9:59
so we're just going to move this around try not to pinch your
10:25
finger yeah feel free to ask questions I'll get to them in just a second
10:53
okay so looking good my goal was to measure this to where I could use these
10:58
acorn nuts so they're smooth on one
11:06
side and I think we're going to actually be perfect on yeah this is going to be
11:20
perfect now somebody were to open this
11:27
box it will look Overkill these bolts and everything but
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um you act act like you're you're making it for to carry 500 lb
11:51
okay all
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right yeah again this this the most tedious part is just uh making sure
12:06
that all the stuff is in
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alignment so we're using a washer on the outside of the bolt to kind of bring the bolt in the only downside about using
12:28
acorn nuts is there's only so much depth you can go in and you don't want to tighten it up to where it's hitting this
12:33
back of the nut and you're thinking it's tight um you need to give yourself
12:39
adequate room so our backup Nylock nuts we're not using them CU everything looks
12:45
like it's doing well all right so I'm just going to hand
12:52
tighten before I
12:57
actually completely tighten it
13:04
down okay so here's our
13:11
box so looks good to
13:21
me okay let's do it we're not going to put any weight on it until we we'll put weight on it when we fully tighten it
13:27
down and then we have had the lid on but the lid the epoxy is drying right now so it should be done it only needs 15
13:35
minutes to set up but um it's always been set for an hour so it should be fine to show you guys on this
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video okay so feel
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something hitting just a little bit it's probably the bolt see here
14:01
yeah just barely okay so I have to make a mental note of that that the bolt
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orientation Okay so
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right so we're finding out that this outside Bolt the back bolts this one and this
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one in the middle one are fine the front bolts
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however there is
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so we're going to take these front bolts out because it looks like we're going to have to get a 1
15:21
in uh even more low profile bolt actually we're going to take the washer off maybe that's the
15:27
issue I did test this before I get this whole assembly together
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so figure out why it's not working I didn't use the washer the
15:42
washer is something I added okay
16:03
today we're doing three things at once we are bolting the water frame into the van we are
16:13
gluing the final Plumbing in and then we're putting this box in then we're Drilling and tapping these two holes and
16:19
then this whole area will be complete
16:30
all right let's see taking that washer off
17:29
so it looks like we're going to have to go with a button head for these front
17:37
screws I'm going to leave those screws in there I'm going to tighten up the back
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here that way I get a good alignment and then that way when I come back these new
17:49
bolts everything will be in alignment
18:47
[Laughter]
19:06
so now let's take these front bolts out and we should be able
19:18
to close and lock
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this so what's happening is there's a little there's a little rail finger that's when
19:32
it closes it's catching the bottom of this head um so I just have
19:40
to it's custom figure out what is problem
19:48
solving
20:01
okay so now it should work should
20:07
close that feels good
20:36
in
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so now I think the back bolts the back bolts are catching
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we're still going to use a quarter 20 we just need to
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uh tweak the heads of these
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bolts uh what I'm also doing is I'm removing the washer
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so again when I designed it didn't have the washer but I'd like
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to offset it as much as possible okay let's try
22:10
that
23:06
okay [Music]
23:23
[Music]
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so now we're just troubleshooting where this thing is
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getting hung up
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[Music]
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that
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you're going do some a little
25:07
weird I barely put that screw in there so I can maintain alignment let's see
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the back bolts are taken out now okay so that's it so the back
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bolts back bolts are an issue for
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okay that's good
27:25
okay box is perfect we have our 8 inch G over here but we've lost it over here on the right
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side so we're going to have toess that it looks like these front
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bolts are okay doing what they're [Music]
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doing so we're going to go ahead and tighten them down
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um I'm going to get our lid and put it on here and then we're going to double check our
28:04
clearance up here if there's enough clearance I'm going to raise the Box uh
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up so let's go get our lid
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so this is a lid for a box it's got dust and everything on it uh these are all going to be painted black and then we're
28:52
going to clear clear coat this bottom wood part there's a big end and a tight end tight end goes to this back side big
29:00
one is this bigger side so this just comes in here fits just like that and
29:06
you can just take it off a very tight fit almost kind of like a it fits so well it's almost like a
29:15
apple like box unboxing he got that nice like kind of vacuum pull to it um so I
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don't don't think I'm going to use actually felt for this I think I'll be fine but we're going to go through
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here and yeah definitely looks like we've got plenty of room
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to uh make that
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modification okay
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and what I'm probably going to do is I'm going to make a new hole I'm going come back one hole and come
30:28
up uh eigh of an inch and so what that's going to do is move this top part of the
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Box um because the back back is doing
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good see I catch it
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on all right take a second and see what questions you guys have
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all right no questions
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okay
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for
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all right guys we're GNA modify that back side and then we're going to get
34:32
some new bolts the front or for the back and we'll be able
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to uh move on to the next part but um yeah that is the uh the drawer here with
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a
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lid so storage and also to
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allow you to get in the bed as well and enough room to unlock remove
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the step back
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all right guys that's it for the video today for the live stream might do another one if we move to the plumbing
35:35
side when that's all finished up this afternoon um yeah so hope you guys enjoyed the video don't forget to
35:41
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35:47
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