The Mitersaw Bench #2: Construction Begins

Ok, so I went over to Menards and they had 4×8 baltic birch ply for 69 bucks a sheet, and with my 25 dollar gift card, I decided that was a good deal. I hadn’t seen it there before, so I don’t know if I wasn’t looking hard enough or if the plywood fairy knew I was coming, but anyway, so I’m using baltic birch for the cabinets afterall.

This first picture shows the flex hose installed to my saw as well as the new length of green pipe that will run to my band saw.

Ok, so I began to construct this the other night, its a simple construction, really based on how Norm did his lower cabinets. I used screws instead of my nail gun because I felt screws and glue would be that much stronger, and you know what, it is! I wasn’t concerned about squeeze out at this point, that will be covered by the top. Also I used 90 degree blocks to help me keep the corners square and tight while I drilled the holes and drove home the screws.

Here is the cabinet in place, not installed yet, still want to add another support at the top and maybe another one at the bottom, but that might be overkill, I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t take any pictures of cutting the dados because my wife had the camera with her that day, but I did all the dado cuts on my new router table, and they came out perfect… That router table turned out really good. One thing that I might be a bit concerned about is the width of that cabinet, its 24 inches wide… which on paper didn’t look as big, but dang its a big space. I’m putting my pancake compressor in there as well as a few other things… I might have to put a shelf in there too just to hold some odds and ends…

And as you can see here the cutout in the back of the cabinet on this side is much larger, its also rounded over and smooth so I can reach in there and plug things into the outlet if I need to. I also plan to run the hoses from the compressor out through that hole as well. Ok, only one hose… but thats why that is like that. I also cut all the holes for the dust piping to 6 inches even thought the pipes are much smaller than that, but I didn’t know if I’d be changing to bigger pipe later or not, so I kept my options open in that regard. No it wasn’t a mistake, though it might look like it.

Thanks for looking.
Chuck

-- Chuck [Elgin, IL]