[Nhcoll-l] Heavy trays in Viking Cabinets for mammal and bird collections?

Tue May 2 11:46:45 EDT 2023

We ran into a similar problem when we bought a bunch of new cases with metal drawers about 10 years ago. (From Delta Design, I think.) All of our drawers before that had been wood. I love the metal drawers. They don't absorb oil or odor and don't produce splinters. Fur and feathers don't catch on the slick painted metal. However, they are HEAVY!!! I don't know if I've ever weighed them. 15 lbs?  20 lbs? Heavy enough to do some damage if they fall on someone's head. They are also slicker and slide much more easily than a wooden drawer. An asset, unless you're pulling one out that's higher than your head and you misjudge the amount of force needed.

We stack our cases two high. To avoid bad accidents, we have a "rule". The upper cases can have metal drawers up to about a typical person's shoulder height. Above that, they have to be wood. We have a wide variety of wooden drawers acquired over the past century to accommodate a variety of slightly different cases. Some of the wooden drawers would work in the newest cases, some wouldn't. It took some sifting and shifting of drawers to find enough wooden drawers to fit all the new metal cases for the shelves above shoulder height without buying new wooden drawers.

For drawers with unusually heavy loads, like those packed with glass vials holding mouse skulls, we use the metal drawers in a lower case, even if it puts some drawers out of our usual sorting order.

If I were doing it again, I'd order 75-80% metal drawers, and about 20-25% wooden drawers. I'd also be absolutely certain that the wooden drawers would fit before making a big purchase, since you'll probably need to go through a different vendor for the wooden drawers.

Dr. Kelly M. Cassidy, Curator, Conner Museum
School of Biological Sciences
Box 644236
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-4236
509-335-3515

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Zhuang, Mingna
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2023 9:24 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Heavy trays in Viking Cabinets for mammal and bird collections?

[EXTERNAL EMAIL]
Hi all,
Does anyone use Viking cabinets for their mammal and bird study skin collections? We were just sent a sample tray (23lbs for a slightly longer than standard Lane science style cabinet tray) and it's just so heavy. I really worry that if a student (or even me!) were to hold the tray, with specimens in them on a step stool that they would drop the tray or injure themselves. It would especially be an issue if they're trying to move the tray into/out of the cabinet when having to line up the tray edges. We were planning to get full size cabinets as our room for a taxidermy collections is really pressed for space. We were told that Spacesaver does not make lighter trays anymore so that they can accommodate more collections, but these heavy trays seem really unfeasible for researchers and staff that take whole trays out. I can see how these might be great for geology/paleo, but not sure if they really work for lighter collections that have lots of tray removal/reorganization.

If you are using these trays in full size cabinets, are you changing your protocols with regards to specimen removal? Another thing we've thought of is to get the Viking cabinets and then buy our trays somewhere else to get lighter ones.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!!

Vicky (Mingna) Zhuang PhD.
Biodiversity Collections Manager
UTEP Biodiversity Collections
B209 Biology Building
University of Texas at El Paso
500 W University Avenue
El Paso, TX 79968
phone: 915-747-5479
email: mzhuang at utep.edu<mailto:mzhuang at utep.edu>
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