Wood Utensil Organizer Shim

thingiverse

Let's keep things simple (Pro Tip from the Future - I can never keep things simple): I have two utensil drawer organizers made of wood, and they fit perfectly in my kitchen drawers when fully expanded. You can see that they are well-loved. This style of drawer organizer is fairly popular. I'm posting this Thing to help folks with a similar need use my fabulous design. I call it fabulous because whenever I add fillets, curves, and tapered extrusion, I feel like Jony Ive - without the hundreds of millions of dollars. But yes, design is good. Good design is fun. It fills a specific need: the stupid organizer kept contracting in the drawer, so it didn't look perfect. To fix this issue, I needed something to keep it open. At first, I thought "dowel!" But I'm not great with saws and wood. Then I thought "3D printer!" So I grabbed my digital calipers and measured the inside of the expanding/contracting side at 84mm in one drawer and 82mm in the other. I wanted something dowel-like, so I grabbed a pen. A standard Bic pen was too thin, diameter wise, so I chose the cap-end, which was about 10mm. Perfect! Initially, I thought I'd put these shims into the bottom, front, and back. And that would have worked (if it weren't for me!), but then I realized that the shims fit perfectly into the grooves in the front and back. Because of the slight taper, and the 3D printing layer lines, these just snap into place and have the perfect amount of resistance/friction to stay put. If you like this shim and want it made up in a different size, just let me know. There's the "height" (currently 10mm), the "width" (10mm), and the "length" (82mm and 84mm). These dimensions should be fairly obvious. Leave a comment, let me know what you'd like, and I'll work one up for you. If you can think of a way to improve this shim, please let me know!