Put in a few hours this week and finished up the fliptop tool cart. First item on the agenda was to mill up parts for 3 drawers:
With all the joinery cut and test fit, I glued up the boxes with matching 1/2" bottoms. I used pre-finished plywood for all the drawer sides and bottoms. Unfortunately, my scrap pile came up short on plywood for the drawer bottoms so I had to buy that new. However, I found some damaged half sheets of matching 1/2" pre-finished plywood in the offcut area of my local lumber yard so it only cost me $28--though now I have more scrap in the pile! 22" over-travel drawer slides installed (note the direction of these drawers, save that for the "lessons learned" on this project):
Next came the fliptop itself. I built a torsion box, however, I later regretted it (again, see lessons learned). The narrow channel in the middle was spaced to fit a length of 1/2 black pipe as an axle:
Once the skeleton of the torsion box was built, it was glued up using hardwood edging and mitered corners. That might seem crazy for shop furniture, but...
- Wouldn't you know...I had an old board of walnut left over from another project! It was starting to warp, so this was a good project to clear it out of the garage.
- Hardwood edges intentionally gave me really good material to drive screws into when the eventual hardware was put in place.
What's that about woodworkers saying you can never have too many clamps?
Fliptop installed and tested (another lesson learned):
I also installed these nice butterfly clasp things (I dont know the proper name???). We often receive devices at work which are shipped in custom built crates using this type of hardware. For years I have been scavenging the crates for the good stuff and I have saved up a nice collection of these little guys. This was the perfect application! I even saved the screws to be reused!
I milled and glued up drawer faces, again with walnut edging. This time, just because I could. I had a bit left over from the original board, so I figured I would have some fun and dress this baby up with matching trim:
Drawer faces installed with handles. I tried to pick the best of what was left from the scrap plywood I started with, but I couldn't find anything without holes. I think it just adds to the charm, especially when its wrapped in expensive wood!
ANNNDDD here it is, basically finished (also literally finished with 3 coats of waterbased poly). I added a 50ft extension cord wired into an outlet box so I can easily plug things in as needed:
One of the drivers for the dimensions of this cart was finding a good place to store this giant #7 Record hand plane. At 22" long, it doesn't fit much of anywhere easily, but that is why I built such mega drawers!:
On to the lessons learned for this project:
- I should have built the drawers to open towards the front of the cart, not the side. I think I originally designed it like that because I wanted to the two sides of support against the fliptop to stabilize it. However, in practice it makes it so that the drawers cannot be opened when it is pushed into place against my workbench.
- The torsion box fliptop was a nice idea, but in reality, not only was it harder to build, but it prevented me from hiding the mounting hardware for the machines. Had I used a solid top of sandwiched plywood, I would have been able to countersink the nuts and keep them out of the way.
- Using a blackpipe axle worked perfectly, however, I forgot to mark out and drill its location on the edging before I wrapped the torsion box up. This pushed me to do some really careful measuring and "guess" drilling from the outside. I was surprisingly accurate and everything worked out, but the above mentioned plywood sandwich would have been more straight forward. I could still wrap it in walnut for style points!
- The replaceable hardboard top under the disc sander was pointless. I figured it might take a beating over time and need replacing, but because the sander is mounted with bolts that go through the hardboard, I doubt I will ever have the energy to remove the sander to change the top. That HF 10" disc sander is like 75lbs!
- Speaking of weight, I might go back and add a second drawer slide to each box to just make sure they can handle being totally filled with tools. 22" heavy duty over-travel slides were over $50/set at my supplier, so I went with the substantially cheaper $8 alternative. Doubling up will be plenty strong and still cost only a fraction of the price!
Total build cost = right around $95:
$58 for drawer slides and the extra 1/2" pre-finished plywood.
$6 for the hardware to bolt all the machines down.
$15 for a new can of Poly as the old can on hand had given up the goose many months ago.
$5 for the extension cord hooks
$10 for the extension cord
Everything else was pulled from existing "garage stock": butterfly hardware, 1/2" pipe, screws, and heavy duty casters all included.
This was my first true dedicated shop furniture build and overall, it was a really fun project. The fact that this was intended for the garage made the actual work of building it really relaxing. I found that removing all the stress of getting corners perfect, hiding screw heads, and making edges line up allowed me to just to just have fun building something and be free to change things on the fly. It also left me room to practice more "high end" techniques without any consequences for failure. I will 100% be building at least one more of these carts for my grinders and more storage.
I'll stick with lightly used dogs that already are house broken 