[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Hi, I'm Phil, and this is "The Woodsmith Shop."

You know, it's safe to say that shop carts have a special place in our hearts.

We're always looking for the next great design that we can build and present right here on the show.

And on today's episode, we're building one that I think is one of our best.

What I like about it is that this particular version has a pretty wide, large work surface.

So, if you need to work on something on your car or in the yard or even on some woodworking projects, this is the place for it.

There's a series of large, spacious drawers that keep all of your tools dust-free and ready to go at a moment's notice.

Some storage pockets on the end for and bottles of various things.

And then, best of all, no good cart should be without accessories and options.

And later on in the episode, Chris is going to show a few that you can add to this cart to increase its versatility.

If you want to build along, you'll need some plans.

They're at our website, WoodsmithShop.com But right now, it's time to build.

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 -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... ...Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, one of the things I love about woodworking is being able to build a project customized to what you need for it.

Let's take this garage cart, for example.

The original plan is a little bit smaller, perfect size for you to use in your home garage.

However, I have a spot that I think is going to work really well in my shop for this cart, and I want it just a little bit wider.

So, that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna build this garage cart just hair wider than the original.

I'm gonna do another set of drawers on the left- and right-hand side, so it's symmetrical and it's going to offer a lot of storage.

So, this project starts by creating joinery for the case.

Now, I have the top, the bottom, and the back all cut to size.

And I'm here at the table saw, ready to cut some dados.

These dados are going to house dividers that are going to connect the top and bottom, and there's a matching dado in the back that's going to kind of lock everything together and make this a really sturdy construction.

Now let's look at the blade real quick.

I have a dado blade loaded up, and I've spent a few minutes doing some test cuts.

My test cuts include adding these shims.

These shims allow me to dial in the width of this blade to match the plywood that I'm using exactly, and that allows me to slip the parts together without them being too tight or too loose, and there's just enough room for glue.

Now, I have a series of cuts to make in each the top, the bottom, and the back.

But because everything's symmetrical, I make the same cut in each part, and I flip each part end for end to make the same cut on the opposite side.

So, I'm going to cut all those dados here, and we'll see how it fits together with the dividers.

Okay, those dividers fit really well, and that's why I take the time to set up that dado blade, even though I have to make a bunch of test cuts and fit those shims.

Everything slips together, and it holds itself really well, even without glue.

Now, I do have a couple of other things to take care of before we take this to the bench and glue it all together.

And that has to do with the joinery that fit the back to the top and bottom.

And that's going to be a tongue-and-groove joint.

So, first, we're going to cut a groove along the top and bottom edge of the back.

That's going to meet up with a tongue that we're going to form here at the back edge of the top and bottom.

Once those fit together, the dados in that back will slip over these dividers, and then we're ready to do some assembly.

So, I swapped out the blade for a 1/4-inch grooving blade.

We're going to make the groove first, and then I'll make a couple of passes to form the tongue.

Okay, now that the joinery is all cut, we can go ahead and do a little bit of assembly.

So, the order of operations here is a little tricky, just because we want to get everything together as easily as we can.

If we put the back on with the top and bottom, then you have to slide these dividers in, and there's a lot of surface area there.

So, my approach here is going to be to glue these dividers into the bottom, and then I'll put a bead of glue on the top of the dividers and put the top in place.

And then I can lay that entire assembly on its face and then snap the back in.

Now, once this is all together, I am going to draw a line across each of these dividers and sink a couple of screws just to hold it tight and act like clamps as that glue dries.

Now that the glue is curing on the case, we can turn our attention to filling out these corners.

Now these get pillar blocks installed just like so.

♪♪ And then once those are glued and screwed in place, we'll come back with another piece of plywood over the top.

And one of those pieces of plywood will have a heavy round-over on it.

That's so, once this is painted, we can add some protectant bumpers on the side.

That way, if you're rolling around the shop and you bump into something, you're not going to scratch it or ding up the cart.

There we go.

You can see how that round-over really adds a nice shape.

Now, like I mentioned before, that's going to get covered with a bumper in a little bit.

The final piece of trim to add is going to be this small 1/2-inch piece down here.

I'm just going to nail that into place.

What that's going to do is it's going to create a cubby store stuff on both ends of the cart.

And then the final task on this, before I hand it off to Phil, is going to be to add a couple of casters on the bottom.

Now, I'm going to mount those on strips of plywood as blocking.

That's going to add strength and give me somewhere to leg screw those to.

There are a few stages along the process of building any project where you really start to see it take shape, and getting the casters and flipping this up onto its feet is one of those.

The next stage is to add drawers to the three compartments that we have here in the case that Logan made.

Now, those drawers, because we want full access to them, are going to run on full extension metal drawer slides.

These are great because they hold a lot of weight.

They operate smoothly and will work for years to come.

And you can easily adjust them.

The thing that you have to pay attention to, though, is the thickness of the two slides.

Usually, these slides are about 1/2 inch thick, so once you have them in place down into your case, you're going to need to size your drawer components so that they're an inch narrower than the overall width of the compartment.

With that said, we're ready to start tackling the construction process on these drawers.

If you have a method that works for you, roll with it.

But I'm going to show you a method that we use on a lot of our shop projects, and it starts at the table saw.

The type of joinery that we're using is called a tongue and dado.

I have the drawer sides here, and I'm going to use this grooving blade in the saw to cut a dado at each end of the drawer sides.

Those are going to hold the front and the back.

On those pieces, we'll cut a matching tongue -- just cut with a rabbet -- that will fit into that narrow dado.

And that'll create an interlocking joint that has a lot of glue surface and resists getting pulled apart, because we're going to be using this cart quite a bit.

Now, the other thing that I want to talk about here is keeping yourself organized.

Considering how big the cart is and how many drawers we need to make, it's really easy to kind of get mixed up with all the things going on.

So, right here I have a stack of all of my drawer sides.

Back over there on the jointer is a pile of all the drawer fronts and backs.

So, you want to keep those separate so you're not making mis-cuts in any of the other pieces.

Actually, Miss Cut is who I had for art in third grade.

[ Rim shot ] Anyway, I'm going to start by cutting a dado on each end of all these drawer sides.

Then I'm also, with this exact same setup, going to cut a groove on the bottom edge for the drawer bottoms.

I'll take care of the drawer sides first, and then do the drawer bottom groove the fronts and backs as well.

The second part of our joinery operation here at the table saw, uses the same blade and has just one addition.

I put an auxiliary fence on the rip fence, and that allows me to get the blade right up against the fence without cutting into it.

I can also fine tune the width of the cut, and then I had to adjust the blade height.

It takes a couple of test cuts to be able to dial in what you're looking for, but this is the goal that you're shooting for -- something that you kind of have to slip into place.

It doesn't just drop in there.

You'll see that these outside surfaces are flush and that the tongue that I create matches the size of that dado and fills it in really nicely.

So, what I'm going to do now is cut a tongue, basically just a rabbet on each end of all the drawer fronts and backs.

What's important here is that you remember to keep the groove for the drawer bottom facing up.

If you can't see it, don't cut that piece.

And I've set all my pieces up that same way so that I can just work through these all in a batch.

The next stage in the process is bringing all of our pieces together.

There are eight drawers, so you can imagine there's quite a few pieces here.

So, what I like to do is to stack them up by drawer.

So, you're going to need two sides, a front and a back, and then a hardboard bottom which we just cut to size here.

For the assembly, what you need is a nice flat space to glue up, and if you're going to try and do all of these drawers at once, quite a few clamps.

So, what I have is -- you can see it's set up here.

I got the back, the bottom, and the front, and then the two side pieces.

My first step is to run a bead of glue in all of the grooves for the drawer bottom, as well as the dados that will hold the front and the back.

If you want to, you can brush it out a little bit to avoid big puddles in different places.

But if you can lay down a nice smooth bead, you're all set.

Then what I do is bring the front and back and attach those to the bottom, because they're the exact same width.

Then I can bring the side pieces in one at a time.

I'll apply a clamp.

Here I have clamps that are big enough that we can give me a good solid grip all along the whole height of the drawer, and then just check for square, and then you can set it aside and get to work on the next one.

You only need to leave the drawers in the clamps for about a half hour to an hour for the glue to set up enough to be able to do the next step here, which is to install them into our cart.

Now, I already said that we're using full extension drawer slides, but what a lot of people don't know if you're not real familiar with using them, is that even though they look like a pretty complicated mechanism with several extensions on it, there's really two halves.

There's an inner part that gets attached to the sides of the drawer, usually called the drawer component.

The outer piece, the case component or the cabinet component, fits inside and gets attached to the inside of whatever kitchen cabinet, shop cart, whatever that you're building.

This makes it really easy to install because then you're not having to fumble around with that whole mechanism, getting it on one part and then on the other.

The other thing is that I mentioned earlier that they're adjustable.

So, you can see on the drawer component here that there are slotted holes in addition to the round ones.

So what you can do is use, say, the horizontal slotted holes on the drawer component and the vertical slotted holes on the case component.

That allows you to be able to fine tune the position of the slides and the drawer so that they all look right, especially when you're building a bank of drawers like what we have here.

The next thing is consistency.

Now, on this cart, the top three drawers need to be all in the same alignment and sitting level with each other.

To do that, I have a piece of MDF here that's cut to the length so that I can just set the cabinet component in place and attach it with screws.

This again keeps you from fumbling around, and also makes sure that the drawer slide is level front to back, and then also consistently located from one side to the other or for all the drawers that I need to install at that same height.

So, once I drive some screws into this piece, I can just unclamp it, clamp it on the other side, and install the next part of the drawer slide.

Keep working my way down until all the top drawers are in place.

Then I'll just take this same spacer, cut it down a little bit, and then do the second drawer, and then so on.

Once we get back together, we'll show you how to finish off these drawers so that they have a nice clean look.

The false fronts on our drawer boxes do several things.

First of all, they're covering up the drawer slide mechanisms that you can see on either side of the drawer box.

They also provide uniform surface to the drawer front, because now we're going to be covering up the exposed end of the drawer sides and also this groove that holds the drawer bottom, so we have a clean, even surface.

This is going to be really good, especially since we're painting this project.

The other thing this does is all together we're providing and creating a uniform surface all across the front of the cart.

So, the drawer fronts now are flush with these corner pieces that Logan added to the case of our cart.

The key thing here, again, is because we're dealing with eight different drawer fronts, is consistency and uniformity.

So, to locate each of the drawer fronts, we have a thin spacer that we made that we can use to set the top-to-bottom distance between each of the drawer fronts as they go on.

Side to side, you're basically looking at it to eyeball it or measure it so that it looks uniform.

We've also found a spacer, again, that we can slide in there.

That's going to give us the positioning that we want.

Now, to hold things in place, I'm going to use a pinner to just tack the drawer front to the drawer box.

Once that's in place, I can pull the drawer front out and add a pair of screws from the inside that will do the lion's share of the connection.

A single centered drawer pull finishes off the work on the drawers here.

Now, there's a couple of things that I like about these pulls.

First, they're pretty sturdy and large enough to be able to get your whole hand on there.

The other thing that's nice about them is that they install with a pair of screws right through the front.

I don't have to drill in from the back side, which makes this pretty easy.

Now, in order to get all of these pulls lined up and centered, you could do a lot of measuring and drawing, or you can use a drawer installation jig.

This one has a stop at the top as well as one on the side.

And then these bushings here are adjustable to match the spacing on the pull.

What makes it easy is that once you've set it up for one of these drawers, especially these little ones here, I can just hold it in place and then take a drill and drill out each of the two pilot holes that I need for the screws.

Then it's just a matter of driving the screws in place.

And then finally, one added feature of these pulls is that there are these caps that slide in from the edges to conceal where the screws are, giving it a really clean look.

To finish off our garage cart, I'm going to make two accessories.

One is a base plate for a large machinist vise.

And the other one is going to be a tool panel, a tool panel that can hold a few wrenches, a can of spray oil, whatever you need.

Now, that tool panel is going to consist of a base, an upright panel, a shelf, and the brackets of the shelf will hold a stick light.

Now, I've got the base here glued up out of inch-and-a-half plywood.

I've rounded the corners, and I've added a hole at each end for a knob, which will go into a threaded insert in the top of our garage cart.

What I'm going to do now is to put a pencil tray all along the front edge of this base.

So, I've got a 3/4-inch core box in my router table.

I've got some marks on my fence to let me know when to start and when to stop, and we'll go ahead and get that cut.

The shelf that's attached to our tool panel is supported by two brackets, and those brackets have a hole drilled through them in which a light stick is going to be set.

Now, it's a big hole.

It's 2.5 inches.

So, I found a big bit in our shop.

You might not have a bit this size.

And if you don't, that's fine.

You can use a wing cutter or a hole saw.

I'm going ahead and leaving my blank extra long to drill my holes on either end, and then I'm going to clip these to the final length and get them all cut to final size.

♪♪ ♪♪ Our top is made of three layers of MDF, but rather than gluing up three layers and having to manhandle that top and trying to clip our corners, it's easier if we do it one layer at a time.

The first layer I cut, I cut to the exact size, and I carefully rounded my corners, but the second layer, I just glued a piece on and then used this little wonder a pattern cutting bit in the router, and it cut it to the exact same size, using that first layer as a template.

I've got layer number three on, and I'm ready to get that cut to size now.

To hold our accessories in place on our garage cart, I've got these big threaded inserts to put in the top.

These things have a 3/8 threaded hole through them.

They're also indented on the top to accept an Allen wrench, which is pretty handy.

So, what do we do?

Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to drill a clearance hole.

And since we're using an MDF top, I need the hole to be pretty large.

I want the threads to grab, but if we make the hole small, it just makes things super difficult and it tends to pucker up the MDF as we put it in.

So, after we get our clearance hole drilled, what I want to do now is use a large bevel and put a nice chamfer on the inside of that hole.

By doing that, it's going to make it easier for the threads to grab into that hole, and it keeps the hole from puckering up.

It keeps things neat.

It makes it easier to put the insert in.

To put the insert in, one of the challenges is how do we get it in there straight and true.

Because it's pretty easy to get these things off center and cocked.

So, I'm using a simple jig which you may have seen in magazines before.

Block of wood with a notch, and I have a 3-inch bolt with a nut on it.

So, I'm going to thread my threaded insert on the bolt, making sure that I have the end with that Allen wrench up.

I'll set that over the hole.

My jig is going to keep that threaded insert straight and true, and I'll just use a ratchet and get it started.

Now, if I had a longer bolt in my jig, I could have put the threaded insert a little deeper, but I don't, so I'm just going to use my Allen wrench, and I'll put it in a little bit below the depth of our top.

And that's all there is to it.

So, that's all our threaded inserts in.

Hey, now we can put our tool holder and our vise in place.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The best kinds of projects are those that have options and accessories so you can customize it and personalize it to your heart's content, and this shop cart is no exception.

The ones that Chris were working on here are already complete, but I wanted to point out a few of the details on it.

Let's start with this back tool panel here.

Of course, there's the recessed shelf with the lip to keep things from falling off.

It's a great place to store some items that are close at hand, but up and out of the way of your work surface.

A cup of coffee, some of the accessories you use all the time.

This flat back surface, we've attached a few magnetic tool bars on there, again, for those tools that you want to have close but don't need to be cluttering up your benchtop.

The pencil tray obviously holds the pencils.

And then underneath that shelf we've installed a stick light.

This is one of those portable things that, if you need it to look underneath the car or whatever, you can grab it and use it for that.

But there's a little notch over on the opposite end for the cord to thread into so the cord stays out of your way and then it sets in place, so now you have the perfect bench light to illuminate your work surface.

Finally, there's the stand for the machinist vise, so you can attach that with just a handful of knobs.

The best part is, is if you want to, all of this can come off so you can clear the decks if you need a large flat work surface.

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

There you can check out all kinds of other plans and ideas for great projects, techniques to help you become a better woodworker, and then spend some time in your own shop.

Then we'll gather back here for the next episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ 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.

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 -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... ...Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.