I want the drawers to be accessible from both sides of the bench. That complicates things quite a bit because that means the drawer guides can't be attached to the cabinet and just a groove in the sides of the drawers. Actually, I could go that route but it would require notches in the drawer faces,. something I don't want to do if I can help it.
BUT - if the guides are attached to the side of the drawer and the stiles (or are they the rails?) were notched and had internal tracks for the drawer guide to ride in ...
AND - if the guides attached to the sides of the drawers extended out in front of the drawer faces it would give me another inch and a half or so of drawer support when the drawer is pulled out and that means more of the inside of the drawer easily accessible and the part of the guides that extended out in front of the drawer face could, with a little playing around, function as drawer pulls ...
So off to SuperPaint to do a little scaled drawing to work out how this idea might be done. The rails (or are they the stiles) are two inches wide and an inch thick. If the guides are 3/8" wide and 3/4" tall. That would leave 1 1/4" between the notches on the center rail/stile - more than enough to leave some strenght. Start with 1 3/4" x 2 " stock and route a 3/4' wide, 3/8 " deep dado on each side. But this is going to be hardwood and I'd hate to have much of it ending up in the dust collector, there will be three of these and six half versions for the outsides - 14" long plus 3/8 inch for each tenon on the ends - that's 14 3/4" each, times 9 that's 10 lineal feet of 1 1/4 x 2 hardwood - not easy to find and I'm not going to use any of the spalted maple plank for stuff that won't show.
OK what about an I-beam? two 1/2" x 2" x 14 " long for the top and bottom parts PLUS 1/4" thick x 3/4" + 1/4" for a dovetail top and bottom - thats a 1/4"thick x 1 1/4" wide x 14" long. Need two of those for each of the center guides and one for each side guide. Here's that idea in graphical form - with some dimensions. (and maybe half blind dovetails for the drawer spacers/dividers?)
Here's another illustration of the idea.
Now all I have to do is make all the parts, rip, cut all the dadoes right, cut the mortises and tenons, dovetails ...