# Miter saw/Planer flip stand



## jonlruss (May 9, 2015)

I finally finished the building that's going to be my shop and I'm very slowly starting to get everything organized and building what I need to make everything mobile. I plan to make a couple of flip top stands for a few of my bench top tools and I had an idea regarding one for my miter saw and planer. I've seen plenty of ones with the drop down extension wings for the miter saw, but I had the idea that those same wings with removable fences could make great infeed/outfeed tables for when the planer is being used. I've searched and haven't found any plans, pics, or anything else indicating someone had done this, so I thought I'd throw the question out to all of you. Have any of you seen where someone's done this? I can't imagine it'd be terribly difficult to do, I'm mostly curious what potential problems others ran into. The only one I've thought of is maybe having to have the top offset (or just one side built higher than the other if there's enough of a difference between the heights of the miter saw table, and infeed/outfeed tables of the planer (I just haven't dug out the planer to measure it yet).


----------



## HokieKen (Apr 14, 2015)

I did just exactly what you're contemplating and in theory, it was a good idea. In practice, not so much… The biggest issue I ran into is the different working heights of the tools. I made a secondary table that I fastened to the wings to bring them to the level of the miter saw and had the wings at the height of the planer. If I were doing it again, I'd shim the planer (or whichever tool is shorter) up so they both were at the same height.

Major problems are (a) the table doesn't "lock" in at precisely the same angle every time it's flipped (at least in my build). So while it's puts the tools really close to planar with the wings, they aren't dead on every time. (b) Same thing with racking of any sort in the structure. Your miter saw fence won't be aligned with the extension fences if there is any. (c) Your wings have to have a very rigid pivot and something to lock them in at the exact same angle repeatedly.

Any of these could have been overcome by designing more precision in but to me, it wasn't worth it. I found I didn't even us my miter saw enough to justify it living there so I pulled it off and put my combo sander on that side. The planer works well on the cart but I found that the wings weren't necessary for it and if a board was bowed even a little bit, it would catch on the end of the wing when it got there.

Now I have the bench grinder I use to sharpen my lathe tools fastened to one of the wings. When I turn, I roll the cart to the lathe and swing that wing up. That has actually worked out exceptionally well 

This is all of course just my experience. Yours may be completely different. Good luck with it whichever way you go. I have to say, I do really like the flip top cart. Just not for my miter saw and not with a bunch of moving parts that need to realign perfectly and do so repeatedly.


----------

