23 January, 2007:I have recently purchased a couple of tools and received a couple more as gifts and I need to find room for all of these in my crowded shop. I am in the early stages of designing a mobile cart where they will be used and decided to record what I actually end up building and using in this thread.
First of all the tools. They are:
Here are some rough drawings that show what I am thinking of building:
The cart will fit under the Festool Multi-Function Table which means that it can not be very high. The middle of the top surface will be an indentation into which the bases supporting various tools will fit when I am using those tools. The sander will be stored in the cart itself. The sharpening tools and the router table insert will be stored elsewhere.
That's as far as I have gotten.
25 January, 2007:After spending more than two hours yesterday at my favourite woodworking library
(that is, my local Lee Valley store), I have decided upon a cart that will serve as the basis for mine. The cart that I picked is featured in the 90th Issue of ShopNotes. I assume that it is OK to show a magazine cover without breaking copyright
(in fact, it is good advertising), so here that cover is:
The ShopNotes cart is very heavy and solid and that's what I am looking for. My cart will have to smaller than theirs in order for it to fit under the Festool MFT; but I think that the plans in the magazine can be easily adapted.
28 January, 2007:OK, I have now built the carcass of the cart so and am able to test it out. Here is picture of the cart under my Festool Multi-FunctionTable (MFT):
I am going to have to put the MFT up on blocks in order to accommodate the cart. But, that's not a bad thing because I would like the MFT to be a little higher anyway.
The cart carcass is made of 18 millimetre thick baltic birch plywood. There are double thicknesses on both the top and bottom. The following parts will be added:
- Hardwood trim on all edges
- Two layers of ? inch MDF on the top and some 1/4 inch tempered hardboard on top of that.
- A square indentation will be cut into the top layer of MDF and hardboard and this ?slot? will accommodate the base of all the tools to be used on the cart
- Shelves on both ends as well as on a portion of the back
- Drawers in the smaller of the two openings
Here is a picture of my partly completed router table positioned on the cart:
3 February, 2007:I made good progress on the cart in the last little while. Here is an account of progress showing some of the steps in the construction.
01) All the plywood edges of the cart were trimmed with hardwood. I used a couple of large rough-sawn boards (probably Beach) that a neighbour gave to me last winter for helping him clear and clean up his basement and garage. In the photo below, I am preparing to put one of the boards through my planer.
02) The corner posts are substantial. In the following photo I am drilling a hole into one of the posts to support a handle:
and here two posts and their enclosed handle are being installed:
03) The cart will be heavy
(about 200 pounds without tools or contents) so I installed 4 rotateable lockable casters each able to hold 125 pounds.
Three of the four screws holding each caster are screwed into the hardwood framework.
04) There is a double layer of ? inch MDF on the top with a rectangle cut out of the middle of the top one of these.
I wanted to preserve the cutout so had to be quite careful making the cut. I did this by first drilling a couple of small holes right on the line near a corner then using a very small jigsaw blade to make a plunge cut. Here is the first such cut:
05) I have a profiler attachment for my Festool linear sander that makes it very easy to sand the dowels
(which were recycled from a previous life):
06) I attached a layer of ? inch hardboard on top of the MDF. The idea is that this can be replaced in the future when it gets beat up. The plans suggested that I do this using double sided tape. I did try this:
but, it did not work very well; I subsequently screwed down the hardboard from the top surface with slightly countersunk screws.
07) Here is the cart with the insert that will be used when the cart is being stored and when it is being used as an assembly table, etc.
08) Here is the cart with the spindle sander insert:
09) Here is the cart with the partly completed router table insert:
The wood on top of the router cabinet is just there to give me a feel of the location of the table top and the fence.
11 February, 2007:I finished the cart this week.
First of all, here is a picture of the finished cart stored under the Festool Multi-Function Table:
Now, I will continue the description of the construction steps picking up with the numbering where I left off above.
10) Locking slides were installed for five small drawers:
The small chuck adapter on my drill came in very handy here.
11) Lee Valley had some roller strips on sale this week for $3.50. I bought some to try them out in support of the sander insert:
They make the sander really easy to slide in and out. I went back and bought 17 more roller strips.
12) The cart was finished with two coats of Spar Urethane. The top had an extra coat of urethane followed by three coats of Johnson Past Wax.
I thank Rick Thom for the tip about the wax.
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