best shop cabinets

[stephen wood]

I'm looking to make some shop cabinets that do double duty as two sides of a miter station. I have 48" on each side of the miter saw. I've made a few face frame kitchen cabinets but this time I'm thinking of doing frameless. Can a single frameless cabinet (for each side of the miter station) be 48" wide or should I make two 24s? I'm thinking of two sets of 3 drawers in each 48" cabinet. Sound reasonable?

[Larry Frank]

Of course you can make a cabinet any width but IMHO really wide ones are difficult. I think 24" wide cabinets is a good size. All of my shop cabinets are 24" wide and they worked well for me. They are also Euro style (no face frame). My lower cabinets are 24" deep and a combination of drawer cabinets and cabinets with drawers.

[stephen wood]

Of course you can make a cabinet any width but IMHO really wide ones are difficult. I think 24" wide cabinets is a good size. All of my shop cabinets are 24" wide and they worked well for me. They are also Euro style (no face frame). My lower cabinets are 24" deep and a combination of drawer cabinets and cabinets with drawers.

Makes sense. thanks Larry!

[John Blazy]

Hey Stephen,

Are you planning to bridge between the two cabinets with a shelf for the mitersaw, where the shelf is at a height that the miter saw table is flush with the tops of the cabinets? Great idea. If so - run a plywood extension fence atop the cabinets and mount a flat tape rule to it, zeroed out to the blade face, then you don't have to measure and mark boards for 90 degree cuts.


As for cabinet construction, fastest is best, so you can get onto your serious projects. Frameless is my choice (assuming 3/4 shop grade birch plywood), using PL premium polyurethane construction adhesive for all plywood edge to face (case) joints - with occasional locator screws. When I was a cabinetmaker, I discovered that butt joints with PL were stronger than dado, biscuits, dowels and screws - did tests of all joints in an arbor press over a scale to measure threshold breaking weight, and the PL butt joints were superior. Even better is to add a gluing cleat (3/4 x 3/4") at each junction to double the glue surface area. Way faster than other fastening methods.

The only issue left is edgebanding. For shop cabinets, I would just paint the exposed edges, or not at all.


cheapest drawer slide system is 1/16" clearance, and glue plexiglass to the bottoms of the drawer edges, and strips of plexi to the inside of the bottom of the drawer opening. Once waxed, the drawers will slide like they were on bearings + the added benefit of not losing 1" of drawer width. Acrylic on acrylic has very little friction.

[stephen wood]

Hey Stephen,

Are you planning to bridge between the two cabinets with a shelf for the mitersaw, where the shelf is at a height that the miter saw table is flush with the tops of the cabinets? Great idea. If so - run a plywood extension fence atop the cabinets and mount a flat tape rule to it, zeroed out to the blade face, then you don't have to measure and mark boards for 90 degree cuts.


As for cabinet construction, fastest is best, so you can get onto your serious projects. Frameless is my choice (assuming 3/4 shop grade birch plywood), using PL premium polyurethane construction adhesive for all plywood edge to face (case) joints - with occasional locator screws. When I was a cabinetmaker, I discovered that butt joints with PL were stronger than dado, biscuits, dowels and screws - did tests of all joints in an arbor press over a scale to measure threshold breaking weight, and the PL butt joints were superior. Even better is to add a gluing cleat (3/4 x 3/4") at each junction to double the glue surface area. Way faster than other fastening methods.

The only issue left is edgebanding. For shop cabinets, I would just paint the exposed edges, or not at all.


cheapest drawer slide system is 1/16" clearance, and glue plexiglass to the bottoms of the drawer edges, and strips of plexi to the inside of the bottom of the drawer opening. Once waxed, the drawers will slide like they were on bearings + the added benefit of not losing 1" of drawer width. Acrylic on acrylic has very little friction.

John - Thanks for the great tips. I love the idea of the butt joints with poly but I do have a couple of pre-finished 3/4 sheets that I was going to use. That would interfere with the glue adhesion--no?

[John Blazy]

I used to build cabinets with prefinished birch ply. I always scraped the finish off before gluing. Real simple.

[stephen wood]

I used to build cabinets with prefinished birch ply. I always scraped the finish off before gluing. Real simple.

I should have thought of that...duh!

Thanks!

[John Blazy]

post pics when you are done