Add Drawers to Enclosed Machine Stand

[glenn bradley]

A certain sander came with one of those real estate wasting enclosed cabinets with no door, no drawers, zip. Not in my shop; I gots stuff to stash . I had some scraps of ply that had sat around so long it got little black veins running through it. It was up off the floor so maybe it is just some Baltic Black Death. Anyway, perfect material for a shop cabinet. Here's the hole that the factory solid panel is intended to cover:

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This thing is purely functional and was a distraction project (you ever have any of those?) so I just pocket-holed the drawers and webframes. I'm using a guide method that I have used on occasional tables and buffett's for folks. The runners guide the drawer from underneath and inside the box sides. They also act as a stop system when closing the drawer but, the overlay drawer fronts pretty much take care of that on this guy. This was an experiment as I normally use this method on drawers with hardwood bottoms. I added some UHMW tape on top of the runners so the ply should fare pretty well. For hardwood bottoms I just use a bit of paraffin.
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I'm sure I'm not the first guy to use figure 8 fasteners as drawer pull stops :

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Slap on a little shellac and she looks like this. The wheels are used wheel-barrow style on the rare chance when I need to move it a bit for access.

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[Todd Burch]

Good use of the space. I imagine those drawers will last a long time.

Let me guess - you'll be storing sanding supplies + other stuff?

[Jim Neeley]

Nicely done, Glenn..

[glenn bradley]

Good use of the space. I imagine those drawers will last a long time.

Let me guess - you'll be storing sanding supplies + other stuff?

Yep. There are provisions for the spindles and throat plates via holes/shapes punched into the rear top of the base but, for my installation this area is inconvenient. Top drawer will be frequent users like spindles, throat plates, wrenches and abrasive cleaning stick. Second drawer will be four sizes of sanding sleeves in various grits. Third drawer will be miter gauge and other small jigs and the lower drawer will (hopefully) hold any larger jigs.

[Joseph Tarantino]

glenn.....nicely done. like you, i dislike wasting space. in my 240 sq' shop, it is at a premium. i initially liked your drawer runner set up but it looks like the ~3/4" of space beneath each drawer bottom occupied by the height of the runner, over 4 drawers, means 3" of space was used. couldn't that have been used as room for another drawer, maybe for small item storage or perhaps allocated to making the existing drawer boxes larger?

i don't mean to sound critical, it just seems the draws would work fine without the runners and the drawer bottoms could be placed at the bottom of each drawer side rather than 3/4" up the drawer sides. or am i missing something?

[glenn bradley]

glenn.....nicely done. like you, i dislike wasting space. in my 240 sq' shop, it is at a premium. i initially liked your drawer runner set up but it looks like the ~3/4" of space beneath each drawer bottom occupied by the height of the runner, over 4 drawers, means 3" of space was used. couldn't that have been used as room for another drawer, maybe for small item storage or perhaps allocated to making the existing drawer boxes larger?

i don't mean to sound critical, it just seems the draws would work fine without the runners and the drawer bottoms could be placed at the bottom of each drawer side rather than 3/4" up the drawer sides. or am i missing something?

IF the

I hear you and embrace the philosophy of getting as much space as is feasible fomo any given shop fixture. Part of my purpose here was to test out this drawer guide system on plywood drawers so, I sacrificed a bit for the sake of testing a proven hardwood design on a shop-cabinet type fixture . I do have drawer units where there are no dividers at all in order to maximize space. The increase in vertical space consumption here is 1/16" per drawer versus drawers that just set on the webframes. I used the frames as the carcass has to replace the structural element of the front formed sheetmetal cabinet component.

If the sander would remain fixed as opposed to the stresses imposed by "wheelbarrowing" it around, the loss in strength would be of no concern. I do have drawer units where I tried to squeeze so much into the carcass that it became sub-optimal in practical use. Side-mounted slides would consume drawer width, the upper and lower solid pieces provide resistance to racking, its always a trade-off between some combination of elements .