Flip-Top Tool Cart
***UPDATE: September 2018***
The idea of holding multiple tools on one rolling cart only makes sense, especially in a garage workshop where floor space is limited. Plus, living in Florida, everything needs to be able to move around to fit the vehicles just in case a storm comes through.
I’d seen Brad Rodriguez from Fix This Build That build a flip-top cart for holding a planer and a sander and that design piqued my interest. I already had a planer, and I was planning on getting an oscillating spindle sander down the road. I bought the plans and began making subtle changes to fit my tools. It wasn’t too terrible of a build. The hardest part was installing the metal pipe, which is used as the pivot point, into the body of the cart. I got it installed, bolted the planer in place and I was good to go. Weeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllll, not quite.
I opted to use barrel bolts instead of the system shown in Brad’s plans. I screwed up when I was laying out where to put the holes for the barrel bolts and they didn’t quite match up. I had to make a couple of extra holes, so it didn’t look quite like I had planned. The cart was still fully functional, it just wasn’t cosmetically very nice. No fault to Brad and his plans, it was bad execution on my part for changing things around a bit (unnecessarily).
Here is the only picture I have of my old flip-top tool cart. I had not yet installed the spindle sander on it at this point. The piece of plywood leaning up against the cart is actually slated to be the drawer front, which wasn’t installed yet either.
***UPDATE: April 2019***
After eventually getting the spindle sander and installing it, I was very uneasy when it came time to flip the tools over (which isn’t very often, thankfully). I was worried that I might lose my grasp on the shelf or either of the tools and the whole thing might slip out of my hand one day and the tools would hit me with enough force to do some damage. I needed to come up with a different solution. Thankfully, Drew Fisher at Fisher’s Shop took care of that for me.
Drew’s take on the flip-top tool cart was one I’d never seen before, or since for that matter. The tools still pivoted on a metal tube, but because of the design of the table on which they sat, the table moved in a hinging motion instead of a revolving one. I loved the look and design, so I ponied up the few bucks to buy a copy of the plans.
Drew Fisher’s take on the flip-top tool cart.
I was able to reuse most of the old stand to make parts for this new one, so that saved me a bit there. I made the modifications I wanted to the plans, and set out making the new cart. It was pretty straight forward. Drew’s plans were quite detailed and made some of the trickier aspects of the build easy to follow. Not to mention, his build videos are a great reference (and ALWAYS entertaining, I might add). Overall, it went together with virtually no issue. I say virtually because I miscalculated the depth of the drawer. I planned on using a set of drawer slides I had leftover from another project and now they didn’t fit. I opted to use a set of shorter slides I had on hand and the drawer just didn’t offer full extension, which is fine (I eventually replaced the shorter slides with some longer ones later on when I ordered more for another project).
Here is the finished flip-top cart with both the sander and planer installed:
Here you can get a better look at the window sash locks used to hold the tools in place. The lock on the left holds the planer in place when it is on top, while the lock on the right holds the sander in place when it is on top.
The single drawer holding both planer and sander accessories.
I’m extremely happy with the end result from this project. This is another build that is still in use to this day.
***RETIRED: June 2021***
The most recent version of the Flip-Top Tool Cart, as constructed in this article, has now been retired and completely disassembled. The two tools, the planer and oscillating belt sander, have now both been placed under my Rockler Workbench, freeing up some valuable floor space. While I had no complaints about the form or function of the Flip-Top Tool Cart, it was simply time for a change as I opted for another layout change in the shop as of June 2021. If I ever decide to go back to this type of cart, I would not hesitate to build another one exactly like this one.
