Sheet Goods & Wood Storage Cart
***RETIRED: February 2018***
The first lumber storage cart I made was one I found on a Lumberjocks forum (plans here). I liked that on one side there was a slanted support for storing sheet goods and the other side utilized adjustable shelf standards to allow storage of materials of various sizes. The plans were only $10 so I figured I had nothing much to lose. These were the first plans I’d ever bought from an online maker, and I was impressed with the amount of detailed measurements and instruction.
A stock image of what the completed cart looks like.
The bulk of the framing of the cart was made with dimensional lumber with only a few pieces of plywood for the floor, the stretchers and the adjustable shelves. The hardest part of the build was cutting the 2” x 12” boards to the odd shapes required for the vertical supports. I used a circular saw and a jig saw to make the cuts, but looking back now, it would have been much easier if I had a band saw (not for another few years on that one, buddy).
After a lot of struggles cutting the vertical supports with a circular saw that was very hard for me to handle, I broke down the rest of the dimensional lumber with the miter saw. Next I needed to make some half laps on the vertical supports and the horizontal supports. The cuts were easy enough for the horizontal supports using a dado stack on the table saw with a miter gauge. The same cuts on the bottoms of the vertical supports were going to be a bit more challenging.
Because the half laps were on the bottoms of the vertical supports, it was going to be very sketchy to do this operation on the table saw. Again, this would have been much easier and safer using a band saw. I didn’t know of any other way to efficiently make the half laps, so I was resigned to making due with the dado stack on the table saw. I took my time and lined up my cut on the furthest point from the edge. I had a kung-fu grip on the 2” x 12” and the miter gauge the entire time. I continued on the remainder of the vertical supports and eventually got all three half laps cut. My arms and shoulders were definitely feeling it after that. Looking back, if I had known about the trick of using a circular saw to make a bunch of cuts, hammering the pieces off of the board and cleaning up the rest with a chisel, I would have gone that route instead of the risky table saw maneuvers I opted for instead. Hindsight is always 20/20, and I was not as knowledgeable or experienced back then.
Assembling the whole cart was pretty straightforward, especially following the plans’ instructions. For the floor of the cart, I didn’t have enough material to make the exact-sized piece I needed, so I just fashioned what I could with the scraps I had on hand. After attaching the shelf standards to the backs of the vertical supports, all that was left was to make some simple shelves. Same as with the floor, I used what scraps I had laying around for those as well.
The last thing to do at this point was to flip the cart on its side so that I could install the casters. I used four cheap 3” rubber casters from Lowe’s. If I would build this cart again (not very likely) I would opt for six larger polyurethane casters instead. After sitting in one place for too long the rubber casters developed flat spots which made moving the full cart difficult. Four casters was simply not enough to support the cart and it was difficult to move around.
In the end, I had this cart for a few years. It made the move from the rental house to our new house and I kept it until I made the Panel-Cutting Lumber Cart. It served me well and was worth the $10 I paid for the plans. All-in-all with all things considered, this lumber cart was a success.
