[ Saw whirs, theme music plays ] Here's the situation.

You have just a few hours to spend in the shop.

What are you gonna make?

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," Logan and I have two solutions for you.

Logan's gonna show you how to build a tool tote so that you can organize a few tools whenever you need to go help out a friend or a family member.

For my project, we're building this wall-mounted over-the-bench tool rack.

It's a customizable piece that allows you to organize the tools that you reach for most when you're at your workbench.

Both of these are great options for when you have just a short amount of time and you're looking to upgrade some of your shop necessities.

Plans for both of these projects?

They're at our website -- WoodsmithShop.com.

And I say 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.

♪♪ 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.

[ Theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, being able to carry your tools around the shop or in the house is a great benefit.

Being able to store them in something like this tool tote makes you feel great as you're using your tools, especially since you built it in your shop.

So looking at this tool tote, it has some cool lines on it and some curves.

Kind of gives it that Asian style.

And the joints here on the corner are box joints, and I really like this look, so I figured we'd make this out of white oak.

It's gonna give it a really classic look.

And I might even wrap this handle with some hemp cord, and I think that's gonna look really cool.

So the first thing we need to do is start breaking down our material.

And as I mentioned, I'm gonna use white oak.

And this is white oak that came off my sawmill.

So right now it's weathered, and it has some cracks in it.

And this is the perfect project for something like this, where I need small parts and I can re-saw a lot of them.

So the very first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna remove this live edge here.

Then I'm gonna break this down into rough sizes here at the bandsaw.

Once I'm done with that, we'll head over to the jointer.

I'm gonna take that freshly cleaned edge and make sure that it is nice and square, and then I'm gonna joint a face.

That's gonna give me two reference edges.

Then we can head back over here to the bandsaw and re-saw this material.

I need 3/8-inch-thick material.

So I think I can get at least two, maybe three sides out of one individual board once I clean this up.

Now, after re-sawing these and running them through the planer, you can see I'm left with two boards that are basically mirror images of each other.

And I'm going to kind of keep this look, I think, in the finished tote I'll keep this sapwood along the bottom side.

So what I'm going to do now here at the table saw is start breaking this down into the actual parts for the sides and the ends of that tote.

So first things first.

That's gonna be to rip these to width.

Then I'll use the miter gauge to cut them to length.

I'm gonna cut both the sides and the ends out of these boards.

And that's gonna give us continuous grain pretty much all the way around.

While we're here at the table saw, we also have to take care of a little bit of joinery.

I'm not talking about those finger joints.

I'm actually talking about some dados down the center of the side panels.

Those are gonna be to hold the uprights that we'll add later.

I'm gonna cut those dados using a dado blade.

I'm gonna set the dado blade up so it is 1/2 inch wide.

And then I'm gonna use a miter gauge to guide my parts.

I'm using the miter gauge here because I can set the stop block.

That's gonna allow me to precisely position that dado across both parts.

Once we're done with that, we'll head to the workbench and cut the finger joints.

So we've tackled some of the joinery on the inside of these side panels.

Those dados are cut.

Now we can go ahead and go to the finger joints that are gonna hold the ends and the sides together.

Now, there's a couple different ways you could tackle these.

You could do them at the table saw or the router table, and that'd work perfectly well.

But what I'm gonna use is a machine you may not have seen before, and that's a joinery machine.

Let me show you some of the features on this guy.

So, this joinery machine is basically a pantograph.

So there is a series of templates up here.

And you can change these out to cut mortise and tenon, dovetails, or, in this case, finger joints.

And a bearing on this arm follows those templates.

And that bearing and that motion guides the router that's held in the carriage.

And you can kind of see where this is all going.

The workpieces are held in place on this table.

And then, by following those templates, it moves the router bit in the appropriate manner for whatever you're cutting.

So this makes it super easy to cut joinery, hence the name a joinery machine.

So what I'm gonna do is set this up to cut the sides first.

And everything here works off the center line.

So I have to set up the fence to precisely center this workpiece on the center line of my table.

To do that, I use the rule here.

That measures it at 5 1/4.

And then I slide this half-scale... to the matching 5 1/4.

And now this little swing stop will help me position all my parts in the exact same spot... ...and then swing out of the way when it's not needed.

And now it's a simple matter of turning the router on, feeding it in, and then just following the template with this bearing.

And the cool thing here is with this dust shroud, it collects a lot of the chips.

And this is an extremely fast and accurate way to cut joinery.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Now, obviously having something like a joinery machine makes that process fast, easy, and accurate, which I really like.

So now that we have this together, we have a couple of things to do at the router table.

But first I need to cut out this opening here for a drawer.

And I'm gonna do that just with a jigsaw.

But I'm gonna make sure that I stay well inside my layout line.

That way, when we're at the router table, not only can we rout grooves for the bottom and the false bottom, but we can also go ahead and flush-trim that opening so it's nice and straight.

All right.

So I've formed the groove for the bottom down here.

And what I've done here is I've plunged the end of the workpiece over the running bit.

That's so I don't go through the end of that finger joint.

If you do, it's not that big a deal.

Those are easy to plug because they are end grain.

You can just cut a plug to fit and hammer it in.

But by lifting it up, I don't have to worry about doing any of that plugging.

What I've also done is routed another stopped groove here.

That's basically just running dado to dado.

So it's an easy start and stop on that one as well.

And that's for a false bottom that's gonna create this little storage area above our drawer.

Now, speaking of our drawer, the next thing we have to tackle here at the router table is this opening.

And we're gonna clean this up, like I mentioned before.

So what I'm gonna do is take out this 1/4-inch straight bit, and I'm gonna put a pattern bit in there.

And that pattern bit is gonna have a bearing on top that's going to follow a straight edge.

The straight edge, I'm gonna just use probably a piece of MDF or whatever scrap I have laying around.

And I'm gonna tape that to the top side.

The key here is just making sure that it has a straight edge that I can line up on my layout mark.

And then I'll use that straight edge to guide the bearing to make that cut.

Now, one of the final things to take care of before we start assembling this tool tote is to create these uprights that are gonna connect the bottom to the handle.

Now, I've already started that process here.

What I have are two blanks that I've double-sided-taped together.

I've already routed a dado in them.

That's gonna match up with the groove we routed in the sides for that false bottom.

And I've also created the mortise for the handle.

And I've made that mortise in two different steps.

First, I started out at the drill press with a Forstner bit, and I defined both ends.

And then, at the router table, I installed a 1/2-inch bit.

That matches the size of this mortise.

Then I went ahead and started the router, dropped the workpiece over top, starting in that first hole, and I routed through to that second hole.

And I made three passes here just so I wasn't taking a ton of material out at once.

That's left me here, with this nice mortise, the dado in the sides, and now we have to do two steps.

First, we have to create a little bit of a shoulder on the edge here.

That's gonna sit in the dados that we routed in the sides.

That's pretty easy to do at the bandsaw.

I'll first make a cut just defining the top of that notch.

And then I'll reset the fence to cut that shoulder.

It doesn't need to be super clean, because it is captured in a dado.

And then the other thing to take care of is creating the swoop on this.

This is just to profile this top.

I'll go and cut this here at the bandsaw.

Then I'll clean it up with rasps and sandpaper at the workbench.

I'm also going to go ahead and take care of that shape on that front and back as well by double-sided-taping those together and cutting that profile here.

There we go.

So I think that's gonna go together nicely.

I'm at the point where I can pretty much glue up, but you might notice that I have the handle installed.

Now, the handle is something you can take real creative liberty with and make it whatever shape you want.

I followed the design that was in the plans.

And to make this one, all I did was lay it out on a piece of stock, then I cut it to shape with the bandsaw.

I smoothed it out with some sandpaper and rasp before I went over to the router table to round over all the edges.

Now, the round-over makes it easy to hold and comfortable, but it also makes the handle match that shape of that mortise in these uprights we cut at the router table.

So it's kind of twofold.

But at this point, I think I can go ahead and get this guy glued up.

I am gonna use hide glue because it has a long open time, and it's gonna help these finger joints slip together nicely.

I'm also not gonna forget to slip the bottoms into place as I get everything assembled.

Okay.

Believe it or not, under all these clamps is that tool tote, and that glue is gonna cure for a while.

I'll come in with some hot water and clean up any squeeze-out.

And that's one of the things I really like about hide glue is it's a super-easy cleanup.

But now this is an opportune moment to tackle the last bit of this project.

And that's just this little drawer.

This drawer is built the same way as the case of this tool tote -- just finger joints to hold everything together -- and then it has a little notch cut in the front for a pull.

Now, of course, this tool tote is a great way to store tools, but you might want to organize them.

So a good option to hold some certain tools, like screwdrivers or pliers, is a little block, like this guy.

This is just a thick piece of hardwood with a couple of rabbets on the ends for these uprights, and that holds this block up higher in the tool tote so those handles are easily accessible.

But I got a little while to think about how I want to store the tools in this tool tote.

I'll wait for that glue to dry before I sand it and apply a finish.

♪♪ Both the materials and the particular features that you add to your tool rack are a little bit of a grab bag.

So for the one that I'm making, I'm gonna use Baltic birch plywood.

And what I want to do is to have nice, clean edges.

But that's tough to do with a router and a flush trim bit, so I'm doing it in two steps.

The first step is to take the guide that I'm gonna use for flush trimming, set it in place, and then mark with a pencil where that corner clipping is gonna be.

If I'm happy with where that is, then I'll follow that up, kind of belt-and-suspenders style, and use a utility knife to score that line.

That's an important step when you're working with plywood.

And you can see what I'm talking about here, because what I did is went around and cut away most of the waste with a jigsaw, and some of the face veneer started to peel away and chip.

But you can see that those chips ended right at that score line, which is perfect, 'cause now when I come back with a router and a flush trim bit, I'll come through, clean up the remaining waste, and that edge is gonna be nice and crisp and good-looking.

The next thing we're gonna need to do is mark some mounting holes for the two shelves that are gonna go on here.

So the first thing that I did was use a couple of squares to run parallel lines with the top edge, where those screw holes are gonna be, then another square to mark the locations -- one centered and then two on either side.

Finally, I want to drill the hole for the charging cord, and I'm gonna use a circle template here that I can just line up with my crosshairs... ...and trace around it.

I'm gonna drill that with a Forstner bit later on, but frankly, using a circle template is a little fun.

Next, what I'll do is take a cordless drill with a countersink bit, drill in through the front face of the back, and then, on the back side, clean up that hole and drill the countersink for the screws.

Our first tool storage feature is this slotted tool rack that gets attached to our back piece.

It's made up of four pieces in three layers.

So we have a front piece, two 1/2-inch spacers, and then a back piece.

That 1/2-inch gap is kind of one of those Goldilocks sizes that's perfect for long-handled tools, like chisels and files and rasps, but it'll also still hold on to smaller squares or awls or other tools that you want to put in there.

It's actually a pretty versatile storage feature and can be a little bit more useful than having a board with a row of holes in it.

To make it and to speed things along a little, I'm going to put down a little glue... ...on the ends for those spacers on the back piece.

And then once I have it aligned, I'm gonna use a pin nailer to add a few pins, then repeat the process for the front.

Now I can attach the tool holder to the back with screws.

But first, even though this isn't fine furniture, I'm gonna clean up the surfaces just to make sure they're flush before I screw it in place.

We're ready to start adding shelves to our tool organizer now.

And the upper shelf, where we're gonna start, is captured on the ends by two end panels here.

So the shelf is held in dados -- stopped dados, actually.

And to cut those, we're gonna do that right here at the router table.

And it requires a little bit of a setup that I want to explain.

I'll start with the left side of the ends here.

I've marked a location on the piece where the dado is gonna stop.

I've also marked the far side of the router bit on the fence as well.

What I'll do to make this stop dado is turn the router on and lower the end over the bit with those two marks aligned.

Then I'll just push the piece forward until the bit exits on the back side.

We'll have to do kind of the opposite for the right-hand-side piece.

And in this case, what I'm gonna do is start the routing as you normally would, pushing the workpiece into the bit.

When the layout line on the workpiece lines up with the right side of the seam in the router-table fence, then I know to stop.

And then I can just lift the piece off the bit.

Since we're already here at the router table, I swapped out the 1/4-inch bit for a 3/4-inch bit in order to rout a rabbet along the back edge of our end pieces.

That's gonna have that wrap around the back panel that we've been working on.

This is a relatively deep cut and a large bit, so I'm gonna make this rabbet in two passes.

On the second pass, I'll raise the bit to its final depth and complete the cut.

A few other details to take care of on the end pieces here while I was at the router table.

The first of those is to form a tongue or a really long tenon on the bottom edge.

I did that with that same straight bit that I used for the rabbet.

Just lowered it slightly and then made passes on both faces to create it.

Then we need to kind of dog-ear that front edge.

I did that here at the bench with a handsaw, cutting down vertically and then across.

And then if there's any little schmutz at the bottom, you want to clean that up with a chisel.

Then I also, like the back, cut that same bevel, angled detail there to match the whole aesthetic that we're going for on the project.

Now, these tongues that I formed fit into stop dados that need to be cut in the bottom shelf, which is what this piece is here.

So what I did is dry-assembled the ends with my back and then fit the shelf into place and traced where those stop dados need to be.

I'm gonna form those stop dados with a small plunge router fitted with an edge guide and a straight bit.

On this right-hand side here, I can just start from the end and go in until I get to the stop mark on that piece.

On the opposite end, we'll have to do things backwards.

I'll start at the stopped location -- stay with me -- and then rout through to the back edge of the shelf.

The assembly of this project is tantalizingly close.

But we want to hold off on that a little bit, for there's a couple of steps we need to take care of, both on the lower shelf and that upper shelf.

Now, on one end we're gonna add some tool holders.

We're gonna drill a few holes here for things like screwdrivers and awls.

Over on the opposite end, we'll rout a slot in here.

That slot will be cut just the same way that we did this stopped dado, with the plunge router and a slightly larger bit.

But since I have a 1/4-inch bit installed in the router, I'm gonna use that to drill the holes on this end.

Yeah, that's right.

You can use a plunge router as a drill.

The best part here is that because I'm using the plunge function, it's gonna work just like a drill press.

I get a nice square, straight hole.

And with the upcut bit, I get nice clean edges on both the top and bottom faces.

Our final step on the big shelf here is to cut a long notch along the back edge so that it wraps around the large back plate of our project.

Now, there are several ways that you can do it.

I'm gonna do it with a track saw, and you'll see why here.

What I can do is I'll set the track saw in place, just to give you an overview of the process.

And this will guide the saw to cut a really smooth, straight line.

What I've done is marked a start mark on the track and another one at the far side, where I'm gonna end.

And then I've set the blade to cut much deeper than I normally do.

And the reason for that is I want as close to a perpendicular cut here as I can.

So when I'm back at my start mark, the beginning of the cut will be right in that first dado, which is where this notch needs to start.

As I move the saw forward towards the end, once I reach that stop mark, it'll end right at that other dado.

There's still gonna be a little bit of stuff to clean up at each end of this slot, but that's easy work to do with a hand saw and a chisel.

Stop cuts are kind of the name of the game on this project.

And there's one last one that we need to take care of here, and it's on that smaller, upper shelf.

What we're gonna do is form a slot that will allow longer tools to fit into that back tool holder and then drop down through that slot so they don't just bottom out on the shelf.

The way we're gonna do that is here at the router table.

I have the shelf and at the drill press drilled out the end holes for where this slot is gonna be.

I've used those end holes to set up a matching 1/2-inch bit in the router table here.

So what I'll do is fire up the router table, lower that piece right over the router bit, and run it along until I hear the bit get to this other hole.

Then I can lift it off.

I'll flip the piece over and make an identical pass on the bottom face.

That should get me pretty close to completing the slot.

If necessary, I'll raise the bit a tiny amount and then finish it up with one more pass.

Here's what we've been waiting for, is getting to the final assembly.

Now, I'm doing this in several stages.

You can see I have the two shelves preassembled with the ends.

I started with this upper shelf, applying some glue to the tenons on the ends and then fitting the two end pieces in place.

Then I clamped it up and let it sit for a few minutes, just to get things started.

From there, I applied glue into the stopped dados in this lower shelf.

Then I can set this H-shaped assembly right into there and clamp that down.

Again, I wanted to wait a few minutes for that glue to set up, which brings us to this point.

So I have the back of our wall shelf clamped down on the table here.

And what I'm going to do is to run some glue into the rabbets on each end and along the two shelves and then set that in place.

Once it's seated and lined up, I'll clamp it up and then run some screws in from the back.

[ Theme music plays ] The modifications that we made to this particular wall shelf, with the clipped corners and lighter materials, with the contrasting tool holder on the back, really freshen up the look of this and give you an idea of the kind of changes you could make to customize even a small shop project like this.

And, of course, Logan's version of the tool tote, going with white oak instead of walnut, really makes that stand out as well.

Two great shop projects on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," each one of them packed with a few great woodworking tips and techniques that you can apply to many other projects.

Want to build along with one or both of these projects?

The plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you'll see videos for more project ideas, inspiration, tools, and techniques that can help you become a better woodworker.

And then join us right back here for another great project build in the Woodsmith Shop.

[ Music continues ] 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, from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

♪♪ 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.