[ Power saw whirring ] [ Theme music plays ] Hi, welcome to "The Woodsmith Shop".

I'm Phil, and on today's episode, we're going to be building a clamp cart.

Now, a clamp cart has been part of our shop ever since the beginning, and there's a really great reason for it.

It's a great way to store all of your clamps -- well, most of them anyway -- to keep them in one spot for assembly time.

I think it's just as essential as the workbench or any of the power tools that we have scattered around the shop here.

However, a clamp cart all by itself feels a little one note, so this one holds a little bit of a surprise.

[ Drum roll ] [ Cymbal crashes ] On the front side, the cart still holds plenty of clamps.

These small bar clamps come in handy for jigs and accessories, or holding parts steady while you're working at them at the bench.

But as you can see, we now have a bonus work surface here for laying out your plans, staging tools and hardware.

There's a smaller shelf up above.

There are two drawers to stash some of the smaller items.

Keep them dust free and organized.

Then down below, on the other side, a place for your cordless tools and slots for other accessories and tools as well.

This multifunction cart does a lot and it takes up a small space, perfect for small shops.

We're going to get started on it.

If you're ready to build along, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ This cart starts with a plywood carcass, and this entire carcass is put together with a series of dados and grooves and rabbets.

Now, a couple of things about dados is there is a combination of both through dados and stopped dados.

So I'm going to show you a couple of different ways to cut those.

For the through dados and the through grooves we're going to cut those here at the table saw.

Now, I've already loaded up a dado blade and I've set this so that it matches exactly the width of our plywood, plus just a hair of room for glue, once we go ahead and glue everything together.

So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to cut grooves in the side panels.

Now, I haven't done any shaping on these side panels.

They're just cut to size.

I'm gonna leave them square while I'm doing the joinery.

Once I've cut that, I'm going to go ahead and apply an auxiliary fence onto this rip fence.

And then I'm going to bury that blade in it.

That's going to allow us to cut a rabbet on the bottom side, and that's to capture the bottom panel.

Now that we have that groove cut on the side panels and the bottom, as well as that rabbet, we can kind of see how this case starts to slide together.

Now there's going to be a series of stopped dados on the side panels for various work surfaces, dividers, stuff like that.

And we'll cut those in a little bit at the workbench with a handheld router.

Those will go from the front edge and they'll stop in this groove that we just cut.

But while I have this dado blade set up and it's dialed in to the proper width for this plywood, I'm going to go ahead and cut some dados in some of those dividers and work surfaces.

They're all centered, so I'm just going to set the fence for a centered dado.

And then I'm going to mark the edge I'm keeping up against the fence, that way when I go to do a glue up, I make sure I keep those in the proper orientation.

Now that we're done at the table saw, we've created all of our through rabbets, grooves, and dados.

Now we have to tackle those stopped ones that I keep talking about.

And you can see how I've laid those out here.

I've taken the two side panels and I've clamped them front edge to front edge, that way I can cut everything at once.

That's going to ensure that everything lines up when we go to do assembly in a little bit.

Now, I've laid out three of the dado spots.

These are common dados between the left and right side panels.

So by routing them here, everything's going to be in line.

And to do this, I'm going to use some plywood fences.

And I'm going to hold those to these side panels using clamps.

And then I can bring in the dividers that fit in these dados and use the actual divider piece as a spacer for the second fence.

And then once I remove it, I can run a dado cleanout bit, which is a straight bit with a guide bearing on top along the fence edges.

That's going to create a dado that's perfectly sized for the divider.

Now, those top dados are shared on the sides and I finished those up.

So now I have to tackle these lower two.

And these are only on the right hand side and the shorter middle divider.

So I've clamped the middle divider in place.

And the dado here on this divider is through.

So I'm just going to go ahead and do the same thing I just did, clamp those fences in place.

But on this front, I'm going to route clear through until I hit this groove and then come back.

And that will finish up all the joinery.

Now with all the joinery cut, we can go ahead and shape the sides.

The sides have this cutout here that's going to form where the drawer is and the work surface, and it also has some kind of dog-eared corners just to remove any of those sharp corners off the edges of it.

So what I've done is I've clamped the two sides together.

I find it easier to cut them both at once, that way they're exactly the same shape.

And cutting out a shape like this out of a fairly large piece of plywood can be a little tricky.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a Forstner bit to define the inside corner right here.

And I'm going to drill clear through.

That's going to give me a nice smooth radius there.

And then I'm going to bring in a track saw.

And I'm going to use the track to line up with my layout lines.

And I'm going to set the blade as deep as I can go.

That's going to give me the most vertical front edge of that cut, and I'm going to cut into that recess that I'm going to make with the Forstner bit.

Then flipping it around will complete that shape.

Now, if there's any little bits holding on in that area, I can cut it out with a jig saw pretty easily and then I can sand it away.

I'm also going to use the track saw to create those little dog ear cuts.

They don't have to be super accurate.

Like I said, just to remove that sharp corner.

Now that the joinery is all cut, I can go ahead and do a dry assembly.

Here, I'm checking to make sure everything fits how I want it to, and it allows me to take some measurements for these internal dividers.

Now, one of the things I like about this clamp cart design is you can customize the storage to be whatever your shop needs, but there are a couple of pieces that you need to decide before we do the assembly.

It'll just be easier down the road.

And those two main ones are these dividers here.

On the original, this upper divider was used as a power tool holder somewhere to stick your drills, your nailers, your jig saw, stuff like that.

And I really like that design.

So I think we'll do that here as well.

Now this lower divider actually broke up this lower space into a bunch of cubbies.

We use that to hold cases for pneumatic air tools, stuff like that.

And I could do that on this one.

If I was going to, I would route those dados in right now.

However, I think I might leave this as an open space.

You could store larger power tools under there or even an air compressor, but the option is always there to add that into cubbies.

This power tool hanger starts off by laying out where you want your tools, and this is kind of gonna depend on what tools you have in your shop.

I find that three is spaced out pretty well and it fits most things.

Now what we're going to do is create a notch to be able to slide in something like a drill.

And to do that, I'm going to define the radius on this back side using a Forstner bit that matches the size of our slot.

In this case, it's 1 1/2 inch.

So I've set the fence that I can just drill each position, and then once I've defined the ends of the slots, I'll head over to the bandsaw and remove the waste to make that long slot with a rounded back edge.

Okay, so the power tool holder is in shape.

So now we can go ahead and do some assembly.

What I usually like to do on a case piece like this is do subassemblies.

But unfortunately, the way that this case is designed, there's only really one subassembly that we can do.

And that's this cubby for these drawers.

And I've already attached that together.

So at this point, usually it's a good idea to have a plan.

But I'm going to go rogue on this.

And we're going to start applying glue, driving screws, and adding stuff as we can.

What I'm going to do first, though, is apply glue to all of the dados on this piece on the sawhorse, and then I'll start adding these dividers.

And as I add them, I'm going to drive screws where I can reach.

The main attachment points here are going to be this large divider panel that slips into place, and all those dividers are going to be screwed through that.

And once I get this opposite side on, obviously, we will drive screws there as well before flipping the entire thing over and driving the other screws.

Okay, there we go.

As I said, I was going to proceed without a plan and it worked out okay.

Just a little sweaty now.

But all this case is assembled.

I have screws holding everything together so that glue can cure.

And really, all the screws are doing is acting like clamping mechanisms to hold that joint together while that glue does cure.

But at this point, the case is pretty much all together.

And now we just have to decide how we want to deck it out with some storage, which is going to be some drawers and clamp holders.

♪♪ Logan's work on the case of our cart provided some good bones.

It's time to fill it out with some extra details, though.

The first of those is to attach the base.

But before we do that, what I did is used a handheld router and a flush trim bit to round the corners.

That keeps them from being too sharp and becoming ankle catchers on there.

Then we can attach the base to the cart.

And I started by drilling a few screws down from the top into the base.

Then I laid this back onto its back and attached more screws, driving them in through the base into the main part of the case.

While I was down there, I took the opportunity to attach the casters.

Those go on with lag screws for a solid connection here.

You really don't want those to fall off if your wheels catch on something.

Now speaking of, this is a good opportunity to spend a few extra dollars on some nice casters so that they roll around smoothly in the shop.

And as you can see, this set is wheel nice.

Now our next step is to add a few other storage features.

The first is drawers up here in these small little cubbies.

Even though they're relatively small, I want full access.

So we're going to use full extension drawer slides on there.

When it comes to the joinery on the drawers, I'm going to start at the connection between the drawer front and the drawer sides.

It's the most visible and the one that sees the most stress.

Now there's a couple of things going on here.

First, the drawer front covers all the way across the opening.

Kind of seems obvious, but one of those functions that it has to serve is to cover up the drawer slides.

So I'm going to route a rabbet on each end of the drawer fronts.

That's going to account for that overlap.

I've set a straight bit in the router table here, and it's just slightly more than the thickness of the drawer slides here.

As deep as this rabbet needs to be, I'm going to do it in two passes.

I have the bit set low.

I'll route a pass on each end of the two drawer fronts.

Then I'll raise the bit to its final height, make a second pass to complete that rabbet.

After the rabbet, we can now concentrate on the connection between the drawer front and the side.

For that, I've switched out bits to a drawer joint bit.

It's related to a straight bit, but you can see it has a little step in section down on the bottom, and that's going to form a tongue on the inside face of the drawer front.

The key thing here, though, is setting the bit and the fence relationship.

What you need to do is account not only for the thickness of the drawer slides, but the thickness of the drawer sides.

So I used those two pieces together, aligning the cutting edge of the bit with those two combined pieces to determine the fence position.

I'm going to use a push block here to back up the cut and stop, tear out, and hold the work piece square to the bit.

To cut the joint in the drawer sides, I'm using the same bit at the same height.

The only thing that I needed to do is to change the fence setting.

For that, I brought up a spacer block so that that bottom edge of the bit is in line with the front edge of the fence on the router table.

Now, to make this cut, instead of having the piece laying flat, we need to hold it vertically while we pass it across the bit.

To provide some support and backup, I have another support piece here that I can hold it in place and help drive it through the bit and make the cut.

I want to show you how the drawer lock joint comes together, because it's pretty snazzy.

As you bring the pieces in, you can see that the two parts are drawn together and is a little bit self-aligning and self squaring, which helps with the whole assembly process.

And you can see with this interlocking connection, I have a lot of glue surface, and this drawer is going to be pretty strong, even though it's pretty small.

What I'm going to do to assemble the drawers is run a bead of glue in the grooves that will hold the drawer bottom.

Then I'll grab a brush and I'm going to brush glue onto the tongues on the front edge of the drawer sides.

Then the drawer back is captured in a rabbet.

So I'll brush glue onto there, and then bring a couple of clamps into place to pull everything tight.

Don't forget to check it for square before you walk away.

I have one of the drawers installed here on our cart, and you can see why it's really handy, even for such a small drawer, to go with the full extension slides.

With it pulled all the way open, I have full access to any of the contents that are in this drawer.

And because they're really shallow without the slides, it's all too easy to just pull this all the way out, dumping the contents of the drawer onto the floor.

Now, installing these can seem a little crazy because of the mechanical bits that are going on here.

However, there really are two components.

There's a case component here that gets installed on the inside of the cabinet all by itself.

This smaller drawer component gets screwed to the side of the drawer, and then you can just put the drawer into place bringing them together.

So you don't have to try and reach around different things or, you know, any kind of complication that you might think of here.

It really does go pretty quickly.

The way that I'm doing it for these drawers is that I've drawn center lines on the inside of the case, that way I can align the drawer slide vertically just on that center line.

I'll drive some screws through the drawer slide into the case to hold it in place.

The component that goes on the drawer side is a similar sort of setup.

Just draw a center line, align the slide with that, and drive a few screws to secure that in place.

And then you can just push the drawer in.

Yeah, just don't forget to put a tape -- temporary tape handle on there.

You just fold over some tape on the inside, bring it around, and then you have this nice little tag here to be able to get into the drawer.

Otherwise things get a lot harder.

You can see that our clamp cart is already serving one of its primary purposes -- to collect the detritus of daily shop life here.

The next stage in the process is to install the pulls on the front of our drawers, after taking care of any fine tuning that we need to do with the slides or the fit of the drawer fronts.

Now, these bar pulls have a pair of holes on the back side for mounting screws, and I want to locate those pretty much centered right on the front of the drawer.

To do that, I'm going to use a hardware installation jig, which has a pair of adjustable drilling guides that I can set to match the spacing on our pulls.

There's this fence at the top that controls the location of those holes, up and down on the face of the drawer front.

Now, what I've done is marked a center line on the drawer front, and this guide has a notch on the front and on the back that I can align with that center line.

And now hold it in place to drill the two mounting holes.

The clamp racks capture the bars of the clamps between opposing sets of grooves in two pieces of plywood here.

I'm going to set these up and cut them here at the table saw using a dado blade.

The arrangement of the slots that you see on here are symmetrical, so I only have to do three different setups here.

I'll cut one side, flip the piece over, cut another one before repositioning the fence, working my way across the piece and the other parts that I need for the clamp rack.

I've been working on extra wide blanks for this process.

Now, to create each of the clamp racks, I'm going to take this piece and rip it now into two narrower strips that we'll use to assemble into the clamp racks.

I have all of the pieces here to assemble the clamp rack, and it's going to start with one of these pieces that I slotted over at the table saw.

On the bottom edge, I'm going to add this smaller strip of plywood -- gets glued and tacked in place.

And that's to help keep the clamp rack from sagging under the weight of the clamps.

I'm just going to run a bead of glue here.

Generous bead.

And set that in place.

It'll be flush at the front and on the ends.

And then I'm going to tack it down with some pins.

I'll clean off the glue here.

And then this gets attached to a couple of side pieces that add some rigidity and form part of the structure of our clamp rack.

Those get screwed into place.

And I have one of those already here.

So you can see how that's going to end up.

The next piece is one of those same strips that's been grooved, and that gets installed in the opposite direction at the back here.

And now you can see how those slots line up on our pieces.

And that's what captures the bars of the clamp.

So I'm going to flip this upside down so I can make sure that that's flush with the top of the sides.

And then I'll drive some screws in to make the connection.

Now that they're assembled, the clamp racks fit horizontally in the compartment on our cart.

To attach them, it's just a handful of screws.

There are a pair of screws at the front and then another pair farther in the back.

They're easier to get to than what it looks like here.

The key, though, is getting them spaced consistently and making sure that they're level.

To do that, I have some scrap pieces of plywood that the racks are resting on.

Now I can just reach in, drive a screw on either side at the front, and then a pair at the back.

That leaves us with the clamp racks installed.

Now you can see how the bar clamps fit on the inside.

They nestle there.

The clamp heads are towards the outside.

Really easy to get to.

A clever way to solve a storage problem.

♪♪ We spent most of the time on this episode talking about what I'm calling the front side of our clamp cart.

We've got the bonus work surfaces, drawers, clamp racks, some power tool storage, and even a blank space there for you to fill in your own needs.

But on the back side of the cart, there's plenty of room here for all of your longer bar clamps and pipe clamps.

Those are held by really simple racks.

They're an L-shaped plywood assembly that have a range of slots cut in them, designed to suit your clamps.

So for, like, these quick action clamps with the narrow bars, just narrow slots spaced closer together.

You can get a lot of them in there.

For our heavier duty aluminum bar clamps, the notches have to be considerably larger, spaced a little farther apart, so you can get those clamps in and out easily.

One thing I do want to point out, though, is when you're working with the longer clamps like this, don't forget to make a second set of racks to put down below.

That'll control the lower end of the clamps as you move it around so that they're not going to jangle about and potentially fall off the cart.

One last item to point out is this box here.

You'll find that in the plans.

That's great to be able to store some glue bottles, brushes, maybe the other gear that you need to go along with your project assemblies.

A cart like this works great in a small shop, multi-purpose to suit all kinds of needs.

If you're ready to build along, the plans for this clamp cart are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

That's also the place to find all kinds of woodworking inspiration and information to give you plenty to do in your shop until we can gather right back here for another great project in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Announcer: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪