Building a Heavy-Duty, Mobile Miter Saw Station

[Music] you know chris for our new space it's been nice to be able to apply some of the lessons we've learned from our magazine workshop and i think one of the big ones is mobility you know if a tool can be put on casters it should be but that said if we put a tool on casters it needs to be solid and stable and that's one of the things i really like about our new miter saw station look at the very wide stance that this miter saw station has yeah kicking those casters to the outside of the case really adds to its ability to support long boards especially when we have these big wings out now it's not all the time that you're going to want to be cutting long pieces of lumber but it's one of the tasks that we ask of a miter saw and so we wanted to make sure that with this station you can do it with confidence well i think a miter saw is one of those essential tools for a lot of shops but it's not something you're using all the time every day or in your shop either no you know we talk about being able to break apart long boards but most of the time your miter saw station is going to be tucked up against the wall and you're just going to be doing short boards so that's where we have these wings that can fold down then now what you're left with is a pretty compact cart that you can kind of tuck it away or rearrange your shop depending on the task right absolutely now one of the things that i like about this miter saw station as well is the fact that the saw is at a very convenient working height i can easily see my lines that are all my work pieces and you know i don't feel fatigued from bending over and operating the saw so it's a good height another thing that's great about this miter saw is you know how miter saws are they spray dust everywhere well most of the new saws have a vacuum port for a hose so this station has plenty of room for a vacuum cleaner and that'll help with the cleanup now when it comes to building a project like this we really want to be considerate about how much time and effort you're going to take in making it right sure now this miter saw station goes together easily but solidly with simple tongue and groove joinery so it's very much a case if you cut the parts out size some easy joinery and you are gluing up and assembling in no time so i think our first step is to start making the cart then i'll get busy the construction of the miter saw stand begins with the construction of the plywood box that supports the wings and the saw itself now that plywood box has two sides a back a bottom a shelf and two doors so the first thing we need to do to build that box is to cut our plywood down to the final finished size for each of the parts now in the past i'd probably wrestle four by eight sheets of three quarter inch baltic birch plywood back to my table saw well if you've ever done that you know that breaking down heavy sheets of plywood on a table saw is no easy task so this time i thought i'm gonna do something smart i'm gonna try a track saw system well this system consists of a solid table it's got some different fixtures to help me position the plywood a track with a zero clearance insert and the circular saw well it's not a cheap saw with a rusty framing blade on it this saw is specifically made to produce finish quality cuts every time and they'll do it in plywood and solid wood as well so i've got everything set up to go ahead and begin cutting my two sides so that's what i'm going to do now [Music] the parts for the miter saw cabinet base are all bound together using a simple tongue and groove joint now the tongue and groove joint is a great choice for shop projects because it's easy and because it's a true wood to wood connection so it's strong now to cut the joint i'm going to begin by cutting dados on the lower inside edge of each of my sides the back inside edge and then also on the very back of the cabinet itself there's a dado on the lower inside edge to do this i've got a one-quarter inch dado set up here and it's a quarter inch high and my fence is set so that the inside of the cut is about a half inch away so with our saw set up let's go ahead and cut the dados [Applause] [Music] well previously we cut grooves on the inside faces of our two sides and the lower inside edge of the back well now it's time to cut the tongues which will fit in this so what i've done is i've raised up my dado stack i've buried it in a sacrificial fence that's going to allow me to cut the tongues on the two sides of the back and around three sides of the bottom [Music] before we assemble all the plywood parts for the case there's one thing i need to do and that is i need to drill three two and a half inch holes in the bottom of the back now those holes provide an exit for air from our vacuum cleaner which will help control some of the mess of the chop saw and it'll also give a place for us to slip the electrical cord out for the vacuum cleaner so i have a hole saw set up in my drill press but you know hole saws can really burn and bog down when going through dense materials like baltic birch plywood so here's a little tip for you the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to take my drill press and i'm just going to score the outline of the hole that's going to be cut by the hole saw i'll then swap out bits with say a half inch forstner and i'm going to drill a hole on the inside of that outline that hole goes all the way through the plywood and that hole will provide an exit for sawdust while we're drilling all the way through with the hole saw so out goes the forstner bit in goes the hole saw again and we should get three clean holes that don't leave our hole saw burned in black well we're ready to glue up our case now one thing you want to notice is that i went ahead and rounded over the front corner of each side to soften that edge up a little bit glue ups should be fun they should be easy and they're easy because we plan things out you want to have a dress rehearsal and know what part to start with and what to finish with you need everything laid out clamps glue some wet rags and you also want to make sure that none of your joints are too tight because when the glue hits that wood it's going to swell out there's nothing worse than trying to force joints together that just don't want to go so you want a nice easy fit so i'm going to start by gluing the back into my side and i want to put glue on both sides of my joint to make sure i've got good coverage [Music] so i've put a couple clamps on the case to keep things snug and tight while the glue dries and now i just need to do a little cleanup with a wet rag all miter saw stands suffer a little bit from instability when the wings are fully out it's a lot of distance so to counter that we've done something a little different with this miter saw stand we've added caster plates which means that the casters have a much wider footing than on most other stands so that gives us a little more stability so my next step in building this structure is to go ahead and put a little glue underneath these caster plates and screw them down securely and after that i'll screw on the casters [Applause] well next up is the installation of the shelf that supports the miter saw now what i want is for the top of this table to be three quarters of an inch or the thickness of this plywood above the rim of our case the shelf itself is supported by cleats that run along the interior so the problem is where do i locate the cleats so that my miter saw is three quarters of an inch above the rim well to do that i'm going to take a little square and i'm going to go ahead and drop the blade down from the top of the table and lock it in place now you can look at the numbers or not that's optional but with this location fixed in place i can now transfer that distance to the interior of my case parts and that leaves me a reference line for mounting the cleats and so our cleats go directly underneath that line well with the saw shelf in place i think we're ready to move on to the wings you know miter saw station has two really important jobs in the shop the first is to raise the saw up to a comfortable ergonomic working height and chris has accomplished that here by building this case with the shell for the saw to sit on the other thing that miter saw station does is it lends support to work pieces while you cut them and our support on this miter saw workstation is going to be a pair of wings that fold up those wings not only are going to lend support but they'll have some fences attached as well for things like stop blocks so we'll start over the table saw by cutting everything to size so our support wings have a couple of parts let's run through those quick the first is going to be that long surface that's actually going to be the wing on our miter saw station and underneath that wing we're going to add a little bit of blocking now blacking is nothing more than a couple of cleats there'll be a long one along the lower front edge that's going to add a little bit of extra rigidity and act like a stop for the support wing that will add another cleat is going to go along the hinge side and that's really just to beef up that hinge edge and give a little bit more meat for that hinge screws to mount to now of course we're going to cut the fences as well but we'll wait to add those to later once we get everything attached to the saw case and we can align everything and while we're here at the table saw we might as well go ahead and cut that fold out support arm that will hold our wings up once we're fully raised [Music] so [Music] so [Music] okay so we have all the parts cut for our support wings and our sport arm let's go and recount what those are quick let's start with the support arms now those are just plywood panels and i cut those to size at the table saw but they have one thing that's a little bit different than the other parts on here that's that long angled cut it just gives them a better profile when they're attached to the case and i made that cut using a circular saw with a track guide and i placed that sheet onto a piece of foam and made the cut but if you don't have circular saw that's okay that cuts pretty easy to make with a jigsaw and that's actually what i did here with these wings i nipped the corner off simply made a line and followed it closely with the jigsaw and then i used a file to smooth it out and take care of any variants in my cuts so for the wings here i have actual wing panels i have the fences and we'll set those off to the side we have a pair of long cleats those are going to be the stops for those support arms we also have the shorter cleats here and those are for our hinge but at this point we're ready to go and assemble these so let's start with one and we're going to need one of the long support wing stops and one of the short cleats and one of these support arms this is the orientation that these cleats are going to be in everything's basically flushed to the edge glued down and screwed in place okay now we take care of that long support arm stop same thing here we're in position it so it is flush to the front and the two ends and glue the screw in place there we go now that wing's done i'll go ahead and get those cleats assembled on the other one and then we'll head over the miter saw case and get them installed when you're building a project like this constructing all the parts is really one thing putting them together in the right way is almost a whole other project exactly because chris took care of positioning our saw by installing that shelf but we now have to position the wing so that's level with the spider saw table right because otherwise you're not going to get the right support that you need on your work piece so what we did was we took a just a piece of two by stock jointed one edge nice and straight clamped it to the saw table and then we could clamp the one of the wings in place exactly and that helps hold it up in position while you are installing the screws on the piano hinge let's talk about that piano hinge for just a minute i found with piano hinges a lot of the times you have to figure out exactly where you're gonna position that hinge right one thing i like to do is i like to open up that hinge to 90 degrees and use that to kind of position that inside corner on top of the stock i'm screwing it to right what that leaves is that the barrel of the hinge then is exposed so that your when the wing is up it's not pinching or binding exactly because if you if you make that flush on the top edge if you lift it up a little bit too far you're really pushing against that hinge and eventually you're probably going to pop some screws out sure so once you have your 2x4 clamped to your miter saw it's going to position the wing pretty much where you need it right but this wing can still twist before you install the screws so i like to set a sliding square to that height right next to that 2x4 sure and then check on the front edge and check on the back edge and make adjustments as i need when i start to install those screws yeah the result then is that this wing is perfectly parallel with the sawtooth exactly yeah so now the second part of this that we have going on here is we have the wing and then we have the support that folds underneath it exactly and the position of the support is important as well because we want that support in the fully open position there will be a block that we're going to add and that block meets up against that front long stop that i installed on the bottom side of the wing and we want to position the wing so when it's open that arm is right underneath this stop so when that stop is installed it meets up there at a nice 90 degree angle nothing's binding nothing's tight right it just likes to rest right there so that means that the wing then is being supported right where your work piece is where you need the most support and it's also not going to have that support kick out from you unexpectedly exactly okay we left off by attaching these blocks to the supports that are going to keep our wings level yeah now the next thing is to add the fences but first we have to locate our saw right that sounds pretty simple yeah you just bolt it down exactly but you do have to make sure that you have full range of motion with your saw sure because once you set let's say a 45 degree angle sometimes the back of the saw is actually further back than is at the 90 degree mark right so you want to make sure you have full range of motion and make sure if your saw is a slider you have the the space behind the saw as well right so that the carriage isn't going to bump into the back of the cart or anything like that exactly and you want to make sure that it is parallel once you get it in its final position yeah you want to make sure it's parallel to it so you don't have one fence that's further back than the other right so when you do decide to put the fences on the plans call for just making the fences out of a piece of three-quarter inch plywood that we've been using all along and there's really kind of two schools of thought here on how you want to attach those now the first one is probably the most obvious where you'd want the plywood extension fence to be flush with the fence on the machine so we'll use our same straight edge clamp it in place bring the plywood fence up to it and then you can just screw it down exactly now the other school of thought says that you take your miter saw fence then you add a shim in between your reference point screw it down and then your fence is actually set back further from your miter saw fence and the school of thought here is that this is really the only thing that matters right the fence that's right next to the blade and this does have the added benefit of if you're cutting something that's bowed it gives you a little bit extra room to have a reference right here and not worry about fences that might get in the way further down line yeah especially if you're dealing with long floppy stuff like moldings and trim work for houses yeah or i work with a lot of rough lumber a lot of times that has some bows in it as well right so what i like to do speaking about fences is i like to add some stuff that gives me options for accessories and in this instance that's a piece of top track and what this is is it's a piece of extruded aluminum that has a t-slot on top that gives me options for adding accessories i can add a tape to this just adhesive back tape so i can add a flip stop and i can set some measurements slide this guy in here so i can add stops and i can set a pretty good reference point so if i want to make repeatable cuts i can lock this in place referencing off tape if i choose to add one and then if i need to make a longer cut i can simply flip it out of the way and make a longer cut right it is pretty handy but it does add a little bit more complexity to the whole project not that big of a deal necessarily no i do like the the fact that it will pull the plywood fence which sometimes can be a little flimsy and not necessarily straight it pulls into straight which i do appreciate yeah you can go the low-tech route though and just leave the plywood fence the way it is then you can just clamp a stop block in place with a regular clamp or if you have like these little guys which i frankly love the hand screw clamps you can use those as kind of ready-made stops for the miter saw just lock it in place and make as many repeatable cuts as you want so it kind of all depends on how you use the saw because i think there's a lot of people that look at a miter saw as a precision tool for final cuts or or there's a lot of people that use it just break down rough lumber yeah you get your boards from the lumber yard hack them into rough pieces yep and you do your final cuts somewhere else so let's get these taken care of and then there's just a couple of details left to wrap up this project sure now if you're anything like me you're pretty tempted to think of this large open space below the miter saw as another place for storage but it's actually designed to hold a shop vacuum and what this does is a couple of important things first it keeps the shop vacuum with the miter saw no matter where you roll it in the shop and it's an important safety tool too because you can thread the hose for the shop vacuum up through the back and into the saw and collect as much dust as possible which i know on a miter saw can be a challenge the other thing that's nice is with these doors you can close off and muffle the sound of the shop vacuum at least you still have to deal with the sound of the miter saw what you're left with though is a mobile workstation that turns a good tool into a great one woodsmithplans.com hundreds of professional high quality woodworking plans right at your fingertips every single plan is presented as an easy to download digital package that includes pages of step-by-step instructions full color photos illustrations and exploded views retail sources for hardware and supplies plus a cutting diagram and materials list many plans offer handy video overviews and guides plus we're proud to offer our plans in both standard and metric everything is here from gorgeous heirloom furniture projects to handy shop projects and upgrades clever cost-effective storage solutions as well as weekend projects and accessories that are great for gifts all fully searchable and categorized for easy browsing [Music] woodsmithplans.com everything you need for building fine woodworking projects

Channel: Woodsmith

Views: 19,569

Keywords: Woodworking, DIY, How To, furniture, making, building, Woodworking Tips, Tools, Kreg, Kreg Tool, Tablesaw, Table saw, Build, Woodworking Plans, Beginner Woodworking, Easy Woodworking, Cheap Woodworking, Woodworking Tricks, Free Woodworking Plans, woodsmith shop full episodes, woodsmithplans.com, woodsmith magazine, woodsmith plans, how to build a miter saw station, how to build a miter saw stand, miter saw cart, miter saw plans

Id: BsykycntN8c

Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021