shop cabinet help

[brad kellner]

i built a pantry type cabinet to house my drill chargers, pocket screws air nailers and a small compressor i use in the shop, the cabinet is done but now i am moving onto the doors and one drawer to finish it up, i bought a router table (rockler) and installed it on my tablesaw, leveled the plate up and set fourth making a template set up jig for the style and rails of my future doors. i made the jigs out of uhmw material so they wouldnt get mixed in with scrap wood and pitched. when making the jig and doing test cuts they met up perfectly but then when i went to do them in some oak they didnt line up well in the corners. i tried doing some micro adjusting with the router but got frustrated and put that project on hold for a while. thought about buying a router lift but i want to make it work and finish this project first with what i have, and am determined not to get beat. any helpful tips, also for were my charging station in the cabinet is i wanted to do glass doors since i put a under cabinet puck light. i was going to use lexxan but thought about tempered glass.

any help is appreaciated
brad

[brad kellner]

well i tried posting a pic of the cabinet but it just says pop up blocked when i hit the paperclip icon and wont let me. well i tried

[Al Willits]

Probably wrong here, but maybe the pictures to large or to big a file...not sure which it is, but I have to make the ones I post smaller, there's a few good free programs out there that will do that (if that's the prob).

If that's it, someone here will have one or when I get home I'll let you know which one I use.

Al

[frank shic]

brad, did you joint and thickness plane the stock prior to running them through the router?

[Robert Goodwin]

well i tried posting a pic of the cabinet but it just says pop up blocked when i hit the paperclip icon and wont let me. well i tried

Do you have your pop-up blocker turned on? If so you can disable it for sawmill creek. ( the process of doing so depends on the browser you use )

[Jim Becker]

well i tried posting a pic of the cabinet but it just says pop up blocked when i hit the paperclip icon and wont let me. well i tried

You must turn off the pop-up blocking for SMC in order to use the picture posting feature. There are no dangerous or annoying pop-ups at this site, so you can put it on the "white list".

Jim
SMC Moderator

[brad kellner]

frank,
yes the wood was planed down by me on my planer

[frank shic]

brad, if you're preparing the stock appropriately (jointing a face, thickness planing the other side, jointing an edge and then ripping to width...) the next area is to look at your router table set-up. do you have hold-down featherboards for both the rail and stile cutters? are you using a coping sled? i used to have the same problems with the corners being slightly proud but most of them have gone away since i installed decent featherboards directly over the rail/stile cutter although i had to chop out a few fingers (on the featherboards!!!) to allow clearance for the bit.

[brad kellner]

frank
nope i didnt have a feather board installed to keep pressure holding directly down at the bit. to be honest i didnt even think about adding a feather board. thanks

also with those coping sleds u have to raise the bit hieght up to acount for the thickness of the sled right? i have been thinking of making one but kinda been jerkin around about making one, not that i could use it with my current setup the rockler router table setup that hangs off the end of my tablesaw doesnt have a miter track. lol well im currently looking to upgrade my tablesaw and router setup so i might try one of those woodpecker tables.

thanks for the help frank
brad

[Rick Potter]

If you plan to put chargers in a cabinet, I suggest you make provision for air circulation. Some chargers get a bit warm, and the new lithium ion units have a cooling fan built in on a lot of them.

Rick Potter

[Sue Wise]

I have had similar problems with my Rockler table. The trick as Frank suggested is pressure. I usually have to send a board through twice over the bit and then add a bit more pressure at the end of the board. I don't remember having these problems on my homemade table.

-Sue

[Greg Cole]

Hi Brad,
Another tip is to check the flatness of the router table & insert. If the table is phenolic coated MDF, they're not always as flat as you'd think or want them to be. I have a brand name one that sags to the point where I won't use if for cope 'n' stick stuff or routing dados etc until I either flatten it out or replace it. My next one will be shop built or cast iron (ala Bench Dog).
As Frank said, feather boards are key, use them to keep the stock against the fence and against the table too. Best thing is to make some out of straighter grained hardwood scraps, dirt cheap and 100% "customizable".
Also you said you planed your stock, but what about jointing before planing to ensure a flat surface for the planer to reference? If your stock isn't truly flat you won't have the best of luck with cope 'n' stick routing or many other functions that need a truly flat surface to register on tools-tables etc.

Cheers.

Greg

[frank shic]

brad, sometimes buying the coping sled premade is a much easier option than making one from scratch. i just recently built one and the hardware alone costed me over $20: two destaco clamps, a handle, a front knob. i was eyeing the rockler coping sled but i knew that i had already bought the clamps for some purpose long forgotten... it's true that you will have to raise the coping bit higher to account for the thickness of the sled so you may have to insert the router bit slightly more shallow than if you weren't using a sled. i also found out the hard way that you may need to also cut a wider opening in the router fence and you will definitely need to trim off at least 4-5 fingers on the featherboards. here's another tip: don't try trimming off the fingers by advancing the fence/featherboard into the bit - WHACK and the featherboard goes flying!

[brad kellner]

greg
i had a rockler table that wasnt flat and they sent me a brand new one since they are warrunteed to never warp. i wrote a rview on their site about the problem i had with this table. im looking to upgrade to a bigger tablesaw and on the new one im not putting a router table on it, i have been dicking around on my drafting table for a month or so about making a custom table that is 3 sided and set up for 3 routers all set up just for doing cabinet doors. and if it works out im going to make another for doing entry doors. but that will have to wait until i build a new workshop (hopefully next year) mine is getting a little cramped. im hoping to go from a 28x28x8 garage to a 40x60x14 workshop with heat.

rick,
to be honest right now im looking to add a radiant heat panel in the top to keep those expensive batteries warm and not go below the manufatorers recamended 40 degrees farinhieght. bosch has sent me around 8 replacement batteries becuase i leave them out in the unheated garage. the cabinet is 30in w 2ft deep and 8 ft tall and the drill charging area is about 32in tall so it has quite a bit of room for the 2 single chargers and the twin charger. so far im real happy with the way it has came out so far, hopefully ill get some more good ideas to make another custom cabinet to put stuff in to be as fuctional as this one has been. i have been thinking about a clamp cabinet with a heated warm drawer to keep glue from freezing and going to crap.

frank,
thanks for the info, to be honest i will probly end up making my own just cause i llike making alot of the shop stuff myself, and i already have the lexan for the sled and about 4 cam clamps i got from a job i was on. but t be honest i might buy one just to have something to miminc. hey thanks for the help