In between furniture projects I like to knock off some improvements to the shop that I’ve been thinking of for anywhere from days to years. These are three that I just completed.
The first one was to correct something about my main work island that had been bugging me almost since I built it a year or so ago. I had made the top of it out of crappy sheathing grade 3/4” plywood and a layer of 1/8” hardboard. It was a fine surface to get dirty and potentially damage but it was never actually flat. Because the plywood was pretty misshapen when I received it, if I was doing assembly on it square things would get out of true because they weren’t properly supported. I had taken to doing assembly on the cast iron surface of my table saw, this bothered me.
I decided to make a flat, rigid, top for the island and also add an overhang to make clamping along the edge better. I went with 2 x 6 red oak for cost reasons and I glued up a nice top that was oversize. It came out of the clamps pretty flat and I planed and sanded both sides checking them with a straight edge to make them both flat.
I removed the old top and the top frame from the island, I only screw together things for the shop so that I can easily modify or recycle them by just unscrewing them later. I reused the old 3/4” plywood top as the top skin of the island and screwed it to all the uprights and the center divider. I then attached the new top to the island using screws from the underside. I only put screws in where it was touching the plywood directly or where I could put in a shim. I was careful not to try to pull the top down to the plywood and deform it.
I cut the overhang to final size of 3” using my track saw and then I beveled the edges with a plane and did some cleanup sanding.
I put a finish of Tung oil on the surface since this type of finish was recommended for work surfaces. It is now nice and flat and very handy for clamping. And should I ever need to make it level, the leveling foot casters on the island make that possible.
The second improvement was to build a set of drawers for additional storage in a shelf unit that I built five years ago. When I built it I just made several deep tall shelves but I quickly found that to be cumbersome because organizing things was impossible, things at the back were hard to see and reach etc… I have been adding drawers into this unit to solve these issues for a while. This is the last set.
I had three sets of 18” full extension heavy duty drawer slides from a batch of cheap Chinese manufacture drawer slides I got a while ago from Amazon. So the drawers would be 18” deep, the case would be 19” deep for some clearance at the back.
I’ve been building these units as a free standing box with the drawers inside it because it protects the drawers from dust and moisture ( I paint them with mold/moisture resistant primer inside and out now as well…) It also makes them modular in case I rearrange the shop and want to put the drawer unit somewhere else.
The case and the drawers are all built out of 3/4” natural birch plywood, pretty good stuff, low voids, not incredibly heavy but strong. The drawer bottoms are 1/4” natural birch plywood. I ran out of the drawer pulls I was using in the shop so I used some shaker drawer pulls that I got a whole bag of at a guild auction.
This came together in a day including painting and it was dry and ready to assemble and install the next day. It has cleaned up that area and I now have some extra storage that is very usable.
The final shop improvement was a cart for a new tool. I have finally reached the point where I want/need a jointer/planer I got a combination unit that can operate on 8” wide material. This is perfect for the kind of work that I do and for the limited space in my shop. I donated my old table saw to the guild auction and that cleared up a space under the stairs to the basement of the perfect size.
I wanted to build a cart for this tool since I don’t want to be lifting it onto a bench every time I use it and I want it to be easy to move back to storage when it is not in use. I figured out the size of the cart to support it and prevent it from tipping and be at a good height for feeding material through the planer/jointer. I built the cart as a box with a center support inside and fixed shelves to provide internal stability. I used the same 3/4” natural birch plywood. I put a 1/4” plywood covering on one side.
I used 4” tall heavy duty casters with locking wheels for the wheels. I was able to screw the planer/jointer directly to the top so it is very secure. All of the manuals, accessories, tools, etc… that go with the tool fit in the shelves in the cart. It rolls easily around the shop and up and down the ramp to the garage with no problems.
The planer/jointer was easy to set up and the test cuts were excellent, this tool with help offset my relatively poor hand planing skills.
So that’s it for shop improvements for now and I’m taking a short break to do some non-workshop projects.