Table Saw & Router Cabinet
I was in need of some kind of storage solution for my saw blades. For the longest time I was just laying them on top of my miter saw station inside of their original packaging. This is quite inconvenient and just not practical given that the tool was on the complete opposite side of the shop from the blades. At the same time, I was in need of a better way to store all of my routers and their accessories. I had most of the router stuff in the large top center drawer in my assembly table or just laying on top of my now unused old Rockler router table frame. Since I now had my router table attached to the table saw, it would be much more practical to store all of these things in one location, if possible.
I always planned on making a small cabinet that would sit under my table saw which would house all of the saw’s accessories. The big problem with that now was the addition of the router table to the table saw. With the router table dust collection box under the saw, this all but eliminated the little usable space I had left under the saw. I needed to find another way.
Divide and Conquer
I was in the shop one day showing Lisa something and I brought up the problem I was having. In going back and forth on things I could do given the current shop layout, I found a great spot against the wall under the wall storage panel right near the table saw. I’d been walking by that area the entire time and didn’t think to use the space. I would need to shift everything in that section of the shop over a few inches to make sure I could pull out any drawers in the cabinet, but it was a perfect solution.
I got busy in Sketchup working on a way to store both table saw and router accessories in the same space. I drew a bit of inspiration from the table saw storage cabinet that Brad Rodriguez at Fix This Build That made for his saw. I liked the idea of having a slim pull-out drawer that could hold all of my various circular saw blades, the table saw blades and miter saw blades.
I did have some dimensional constraints that I wanted to stay within for this project. The width needed to be no more than 4’, the depth no more than around 2’ and the height needed to be a bit under the height of my table saw. This was important in case I changed things up in the shop in the future (little did I know that would happen a few months later). Now I need to see exactly what all I have to store in the cabinet and figure out the size and number of drawers I need.
I have a set of dado blades, but they’re inside of their own dedicated case and would need a drawer. I simply took the measurement of that and made a generic representation in my Sketchup drawing. I also had all of the various push blocks and push sticks that I’d accumulated over the years, so those would need a drawer. Next came the featherboards and all of the various Mag Switch items I had gotten in the previous few months. These would get their own drawer as well. I had my Betterley UNA-GAUGE Universal Alignment and Adjustment Gauge for fine tuning all of my power tools. This would get its own drawer as well. Lastly, I can’t forget the spare SawStop brake cartridges and insert plates for the saw. Those would get their own drawer as well. That makes one vertical drawer for the saw blades and five regular drawers for all of the table saw accessories. This was perfect. Now what to do for the routers.
I didn’t need as many drawers for the routers and accessories as I did for the table saw. I need one deeper drawer to hold the three routers that I currently have, but with a bit more room in case I get more (of course this is likely to happen because who doesn’t need more than three or four routers in the shop). I definitely wanted a dedicated drawer for my router bits so I can better organize them. Right now the bulk of my bits are from a set I bought a long time ago that have their own case. For now, I’ll keep them in there and just lay the case in the drawer. That still leaves me with all of the other various accessories like edge guides and my Mortise Master. I had that in a huge drawer in my miter saw station and wanted a dedicated place to store it. This cabinet makes perfect sense for that task.
I finally decided that I would make two identical cabinets that are the same overall dimensions. The only difference would be the number and types of drawers in each cabinet. Once they are finished I could place a double-thickness top made from 3/4” plywood and place a piece of hardboard on top as a replaceable surface. I had plenty of hardboard on hand from a very old project and I was trying to use it up anyway. With both cabinets screwed to each other it would make one large cabinet. With the addition of more Rockler caster plates I could use the same set of casters as my assembly table.
It’s All in the Prep
The project called for three sheets of 3/4” Baltic birch for the carcass/drawers and one sheet of 1/2” Baltic birch for the drawer bottoms. I made my way back down to Hardwood Lumber & Millwork to gather my materials. I opted for soft-close drawer slides for this project as I’d always wanted to try them. I found some at a great price at CabinetParts.com. I only needed nine sets of slides, but it was cheaper if I bought a set of 10 instead. This was fine since I thought I might add the extra set to the router drawer in the future should it get loaded with a lot more routers.
The plywood breakdown was uneventful. I kept referencing my cut list constantly, double-checking those numbers with the ones from my Sketchup drawing.
I went with dados for the tops, bottoms and backs. This would make for a rock solid cabinet and allow me more practice with making cabinets (always a good skill to learn for future projects). Before cutting the dados, I laid out the toe kicks and cut those with the band saw. This was easier and left a cleaner cut than the circular and jig saws.
I set up the table saw with the dado stack and got to the tedious task of getting the width dialed-in. This is the one thing I hate about using the dado stack on the table saw, but I didn’t think using the router and track was a much better option. They are both a bit tedious in their own ways. After A LOT of trial and error, and a ton of use of the new magnetic shims I bought, I finally got a good fit (or so I thought, more on that later). This was a perfect opportunity to use my JessEm Clear Cut Stock Guides. This would help me keep the plywood against the fence and help me keep pressure over the dados to ensure a constant depth of cut. I made sure to label each side panel since I couldn’t simply reverse them if I screwed up. If I hadn’t cut the toe kicks already, this wouldn’t have been an issue. I cut all of the dados without incident, so on to the next task of gluing the cabinets together.
Armed with the knowledge from the Scrapwood Cabinet build, I opted to use TiteBond III for this glue-up. This would give me a bit more working time since I was going to try to glue up each sub-assembly at the same time. Again, looking back at everything now, I wish I would have done the glue-up in stages to minimize the stress. One of these times I’ll actually do that, just not this one.
The dados were a snug fit even before the glue was added, so I knew the plywood would swell a little making it an even tighter fit. I added the glue and hurried to get the bottom panel in place. It was very hard to get the bottom seated all of the way, so I clamped the hell out of it and everything seemed to be okay. The top stretchers and the backs went together without much problem since they were set in rabbets and not full dados. I left everything clamped up overnight and called it a day.
Congratulations...You Suck
When it came time to take the clamps off, I immediately noticed a huge problem with the two cabinets. I apparently didn’t get the middle of the bottom panels seated all the way in the dados and with all of the pressure I put on the fronts and backs, there was now a noticeable bow in the side panels (one cabinet was worse than the other by a lot). I was beside myself with anger. I didn’t want to have to start over, but I knew my plans for screwing the two cabinets together was out the door because of that bowing. If I had caught that bowing in time before the glue had started to set, I could have put a few screws in through the sides and pulled them in tight with the bottom panel. This was definitely the gold medal of bonehead builds.
Aside from the bowing, the cabinets came out alright. I now need to figure out what I could do to get the cabinets fastened together. They wouldn’t be butt against each other anymore, but the gap that would be left between them wouldn’t really be seen with the drawer faces attached to the drawers and with the trim added to the toe kick, no one would be the wiser. I figured that once I attached the top securely to each cabinet it would lock everything in place and I could continue from there.
With a bit more confidence in the project again, I attached the heavy duty leveling feet to both cabinets and set both of them in place on the floor. I got them level to the floor and to each other and measured for the plywood top. I was using some scrap plywood from the old shelving that was removed from the garage for the doubled-up top. I cut one to exact size, one slightly oversized and flushed it up with my router. I placed the top on the cabinets, got the proper overhang all around and screwed through the stretchers and into the top. I now had one cabinet (or so I thought).
You can see the gap between the two cabinets in this picture.
I still needed to install the two vertical dividers that would partition the space for the vertical blade drawer and hold the drawer slides. There wasn’t as much light in that corner of the shop at the time and it would be easier doing this on my assembly table. In hindsight, I should have installed these and the slide before gluing on the back, but I digress. I glued and screwed some scrap plywood pieces to the sides of the one cabinet and attached the caster plates. I engaged the casters and began slowly moving the cabinet across the floor. I noticed immediately that the bottom of the two cabinets were spreading apart while moving them across the floor. The top was rock solid, but there wasn’t anything helping to hold the bottoms in place. I was worried that with more weight added I might damage the cabinets further. I got the cabinet on the floor and needed to find a way to attach the inner sides of the cabinets to prevent them from spreading while moving.
There’s a Solution to Every Problem (well, most of the time)
I remembered that for a similar cabinet setup I made in my basement shop in Maryland I used some connector bolts and cap nuts to hold two cabinets together. The more I thought about it, the more I liked that idea for this application. Finding connector bolts that were the right size was a challenge, but I found some at Rockler. I drilled the holes for the bolts and cap nuts and screwed them together. I added one each to the front and the back. This was made much easier since I hadn’t installed the toe kick trim yet. I tightened the bolts just enough to make an equal gap in the front and back. I didn’t even bother rolling the cabinet around again to test it, I was that confident in my solution (ballsy, I know).
I decided my next course of action was to install all of the drawer slides. I worked on the vertical drawer first, as that was going to be the most difficult. I hadn’t thought about attaching these drawer slides ahead of time, so I put myself in an awkward position. Luckily I have a right-angle attachment for my drill which made things a little easier. I got one screw attached on the bottom slide and tried my best to clamp the back in place, however I found a bit of a problem when going to attach the rear screw. I laid out the vertical dividers in such a way that they would be in a good position to attach the drawer slides...traditional drawer slides. I was installing soft-close drawer slides and the holes for the screws in the back of these slides were further forward because of the soft-close mechanism. What else is going to go wrong on this project???
The vertical dividers were pocket screwed to the bottom and to the stretchers at the top. It wouldn’t be too difficult to move the rear divider forward to properly fit these slides. I needed to add an additional piece of plywood to the underside of the top to take the place of a stretcher. I got the divider moved and secured in place without too much trouble. Now, back to your regularly scheduled drawer slide installation.
Getting the rear of these two slides screwed into place was such an awkward task. It was a narrow space and even with the right-angle drill it was difficult. I eventually got the drawer slides in place and pressed on to the other drawers. These slides were par for the course so there were no issues with their installation. Next up was to make the drawers.
I wanted to get the panel for the saw blades done first, again, because it was the non-standard piece in this whole setup. Armed with my cut list and Sketchup drawing it went together without a problem.
The biggest slowdown was the layout of the blades themselves. I had a rough plan for this in Sketchup, but that’s not the same thing. I got the holes drilled for the dowels that would hold the blades, but some of the dowels were just a shade too tight in the arbor holes. I had to sand the dowels a bit to allow easy removal of the saw blades. I got the dowels glued into place and all was good.
I decided to change up my approach to drawer construction this time. I opted to cut a groove to hold the plywood bottom instead of gluing and screwing them in place. I also went away from pocket screws and just glued and nailed the drawer boxed together. I really wanted to try my hand at this type of drawer construction again. The last time I tried it, probably three years earlier, it was a disaster. I made sure to get all of my measurements and THEN cut the drawer parts to size. Previously I made all of the cuts based on my cut list, not taking into account the varying thicknesses of plywood. I was NOT going to make that mistake again.
I got all of the drawer parts cut to proper height and then cut the sides to length over at the miter saw. As with the scrapwood cabinet drawers, I took two pieces of scrap Baltic birch plywood to offset my measurement. However, I also subtracted about 1/16” from this measurement to make sure that I would not have the binding problems as with the scrapwood cabinet drawers.
After cutting all of the drawer sides and fronts/backs, I dry fit one for each cabinet together to get a measurement for the bottoms. I cut the bottoms about 1/4” shorter than my measurement to make sure they would fit the drawers (I really wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have the same problem I did three years earlier). When I went to assemble the drawers, I was dry fitting everything together and the back was inset from the ends of the sides by about 1/4”. This just meant my drawer were going to be a tiny bit shorter than I wanted, but not enough to cause any problems.
The drawer assembly was similar to my pocket hole drawers. I applied some Titebond I to the ends of the drawer front and clamped the two sides in place. I then fixed them in place with some brad nails. I turned the drawer around, inserted the drawer bottom (no glue applied) and attached the drawer back. This one drawer went together quickly and easily, so it was rinse and repeat for the remaining ones. I left all of the drawers aside overnight to allow for the glue to dry.
Did ANYTHING Go Right With This?
The finish line was almost in sight. Next up was to install all of the drawers. First up was the panel for the vertical drawer. This was the first time I’d actually installed it and the first time I got to try the soft-close slides. WOW!!! Such an improvement over standard slides. I think these are going to be my go to drawers slides from now on...well, once I use up all of the extra standard ones first. I installed the drawers just as I had done previously. With the extra 1/16” I gave myself, the drawers went in very smoothly. The last drawer went in and I shoved it closed. What a beautiful cabinet, even with the couple of problems I had earlier. The only drawer that didn’t really work was the large router drawer. The slides were nice and smooth, but the soft-close feature wasn’t working. I think it might be due to the overall size and weight of the drawer. I very well might add that extra set of slides later.
I went to take a couple of pictures of my creation to this point. I wanted one with all of the drawers pulled out in cascading fashion, but I failed to think that through. When I started to get the top half of the drawers pulled out, the whole cabinet fell forward. Because it wasn’t attached to the wall and had nothing in it, all of the drawers in the open position made it overly front heavy. Oh well, so much for that picture.
Next I installed the toe kick and the hardwood trim around the top. I just used glue and some pin nails for this. The glue would be doing all of the work with the pins doing the clamping. The only thing left was to cut and install the drawer faces. Oh joy...my favorite thing in the world to do (rolls his eyes). I can’t complain too much about the drawer faces this time. They went in a lot better than my assembly table ones did. I still need some work when it comes to this step, but I’m gradually getting better. So far, all I’ve done are flush-mount drawer faces. My first time doing inset drawers faces is going to be the REAL test of my skills, but I’ll leave that for a future project.
With all of the drawers finished, I added the drawer pulls and the Table Saw & Router cabinet was complete. I definitely had a couple of hiccups along the way with this one, but I worked through them and finished the project. I definitely need to make dados just a shade wider to allow for easier gluing-in of panels. That was the biggest thing I took away from this project. I’m really glad that I made the overall height less than my table saw, because I wound up moving my whole shop around a few months after this build and using it as an outfeed table. Without anyone knowing any better, just looking at this cabinet one might say it came out perfect. I’LL know it certainly isn’t, but I learned to improvise and work around/fix my mistakes where I could. Overall, this was definitely a win in my book.
***RETIRED: June 2021***
The Table Saw & Router Cabinet, as seen constructed in this article, has now been retired and fully disassembled. It was replaced with my Rockler Table Saw & Router Cabinet instead. I am much happier with the newer cabinet overall, and it’s mobility is far superior to that of its predecessor. A good portion of the materials from the old cabinet were used in the construction of the three large Rockler projects I completed in 2021, so the material did not simply go to waste. Baltic birch plywood is far too expensive to just throw away.
