I’ve been working on some shop storage. In this case plywood-based cabinets with drawers on casters at the (hopefully) exact height of my tablesaw so they can also serve as a longer out feed table brad and I worked on, but also with drawers so I can organize my tools in it. Given the shop space I have I wanted to build something that served multi purposes without sacrificing quality.
Many of the techniques I apply in hand tool woodworking transfer to this work. Of course using a power tool involves a different skillset, but planning, marking, order of operation are all processes I learned and transferred from hand tools first.
Of course started with a sheet of Grade B (paint ready) Birch sheet. Cut this stuff down on the ground using my deWalt circular saw and the Kreg track. It keeps things straight but the end result is nowhere near the flatness you want.
As you can see from the pic, as I designed the cabinet in Sketchup, I went to the sheet and used a chalk string thinggy to draw the lines to see how the whole thing would fit, and how many cabinets I could get out of it, including the drawers. Turns out: 2. Not bad if you consider this will be much higher quality than anything you’ll buy from Home Depot, and costs 82.00 for the sheet (which is stupid expensive these days), but 41.00 a cabinet plus cost of the drawer slides?
now you might be saying wait… he’s sawing this on concrete? yeah there’s some stupid in my head but it’s not that high. I use this lovely insulation sheet for this purpose
Trick here is to cut it all down to rough stock. I left between 1/4-1/2″ of stock so I can make sure I square things up on the Tablesaw. The two sets of sheets on the right are the sides and bottom. On the left is the stock for the braces and drawer structure.
Off to the shop I go and first BEFORE I get a sheet on the TS because I cut them with the circular saw is to use my jointer to get one side perfectly flat. Yes a hand tool on plywood… get a paper bag and breathe… it’s wood. Then take that reference edge and throw it up against the fence… weird I used a reference edge just like in hand tools.
(You can see the tiny out feed table @mongocrock and I put together, lovely little thing)
Then using a cross cut table I made from Incra spare parts (It can handle a board 22″ wide) and sing the same reference edge, I clean up the side to the height I need. Taking a little from one end, flipping, then marking and cutting to length on the other.
Now I don’t have as many pics for these are the others, but next step is to mark one board with where the notches need to go for the braces. I marked both sides. Then I set the width and depth of the cut on the band saw. Width with the fence, depth with a block of wood as a stop. Cut the first one, check the process and then go after the others. No need to mark anything in this case. Just trust the fence and stop.
After that I squared up the spare stock for the braces on the tablesaw, and using the bandsaw I ripped the board to size. Why the bandsaw? Because I felt more comfortable and could repeat the cut very quickly without moving anything. Just set the fence and cut the different width.
Stock is almost ready for glue up. I need to cut some rabbets in the bottom piece before I can do that.
Hope that helps others who are interested in this sort of thing. Shop cabinets don’t always have to be bespoke. Though if I throw some cherry faces, they will certainly look like it. :slight_smile:
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