Do This to Your Router Table || One Day Shop Build

this video was sponsored by ecoflow pretty ugly huh this is my router table in all its glory it's a woodpeckers brand router table i've had it for a couple years now i put it together and i just have let it sit and shoved stuff any which way there's not even shelves in here this is a horrible storage system so today is the day i'm finally going to do something about this i'm going to pull all this out clean this up and i'm going to try and do some sort of storage compartments in here i love this kind of project because i have absolutely no plans i'm just gonna start going and see what happens and bring you guys along for the ride so let's jump in here oh and um you might want to subscribe down there just go ahead and do it now get it out of the way trust me you won't be disappointed well maybe you will i don't know you you could absolutely hate this channel and i don't blame you sometimes i can be annoying and i talk too much but that's neither here or there all right let's get to the project but you know i only talk too much because i have to explain a lot of stuff so all right just go subscribe [Music] now i'm not proud to admit it i did let this little corner of my shop get away from me normally i'm a pretty organized person but regardless of how it happened it happened so first thing i had to do was just get this whole thing cleaned out and at least see what i'm working with i did find these sweet piano dolly things under there but come on jason stay focused we're trying to upgrade a router table here not play on piano dollies after getting the router table all cleaned off and exposed i just cleaned off the excess dust with a broom and sprayed the whole thing down with my air compressor i don't know why i'm telling you guys this it's not like you need to know how i cleaned it off i'm sure you're very capable of cleaning off a router table once it was clean the first thing i needed to do was take some measurements for these two lower levels now thankfully they already have this nice lip on them which will be perfect to cut some plywood and just insert a few shelves i decided getting the shelves in there would be the first step and then i can just kind of build out from there once i have a solid substrate so i grabbed a sheet of three quarter inch birch ply and i started ripping it down to the correct size over on the table saw i figure i can do this entire build out of one sheet of three quarter inch birch ply at least that's my plan we'll see how it works out now because i'm lazy and i didn't want to get out the track saw i just cut down the pieces to length over on the miter saw cutting halfway through on one side and then flipping it around to complete my cut this isn't the most accurate way to make cuts but it's just a thrown together router table upgrade so get off my back now i was a little concerned about getting these shelves in place i was really hoping i wasn't gonna have to take the whole table cart thing apart to get them in the first one slid in no problem i had lots of room to work with the lower shelf on the other hand was a bit of a pain it was so close to fitting i mean really close close enough that i just decided to get a hammer and whack the crap out of it until it popped in there yes i'm dinging up the plywood a little bit but i don't think you're gonna see that back corner once it's all built out and hey i didn't have to take the whole table apart so it's a win this is when i realized a huge mistake see i brought the shelf all the way out which means that once i put sides in there you're gonna see that exposed plywood and even though this is just a you know little shop upgrade i wanted to make it look nice at least so i decided to fix that mistake and yes this meant wiggling that lower shelf back out after i already hammered it in so i took both sheets back out and i decided to remove three quarters of an inch on either end or an inch and a half in total now i don't trust that any plywood is exactly three quarters of an inch so instead of measuring an inch and a half to cut off i just measured right off of my sheet of plywood and i'll make my cut appropriate for that length whatever it may be so i measured the top shelf measured the bottom shelf and i cut that dimension off of the end of both of my shelf pieces you see i should have done this to begin with because now that bottom shelf slides right into place no problem it was fun to hit it with a hammer though sometimes you just gotta find ways to relieve your aggressions so with both of my shelves now in place it was time to make some sides to box it all in so i cut the size to the right length now i'm going to show you here this is what it would have looked like if i hadn't fixed my little mistake exposed plywood on the bottom but since i cut those shelves shorter now i can stick the sides in and cover that up and i have a nice clean piece of plywood to make my router table cabinet thingy and what's it so after putting both my side pieces in on the top i cut some more pieces and i slipped those in on the bottom now my shelf piece is nice and tight between those two side pieces so it kind of gets wedged in place i'm hoping that's enough to just secure it on here and i won't actually have to hook it in at all but the sides not so much i'm gonna have to figure out a way to hold those nice and secure probably wondering how i'm gonna do that well so am i i don't know how i'm gonna do it all i do know is that i really really like this router table all right that's enough of that all right here's attempt number one at attaching my sides to the table itself i got some of these self-tapping little metal screws i thought that i could just forgo pre-drilling use these self-tapping screws and drill directly through that steel table and it would be super easy so i gave it a try as you can see i am making it through the table without pre-drilling it's getting in there but the problem is it took a long flip in time and i really had to push hard and i didn't like how big of a hole it put into the plywood itself so after doing it with one screw i switched to pre-drilling through the metal and then just attaching it with some little three-quarter inch black screws that blended nicely with the cabinet itself so i attached all my side panels now the bottom side panels fortunately there's already these pre-drilled holes in the frame so i just went right through those and everything was nice and secure we're getting somewhere starting to look like a cleaned up router table as you can see my shelves are wedged in nice and tight between those two outside pieces so i'm not even going to bother hooking them down to the table itself now to cut all my internal divider pieces and start making some compartments that we can shove some shelves into so i measured the top and bottom dimensions and i cut some more pieces of plywood to slide in and use as my divider pieces my overall thought for layout is going to be two drawers on either side of the router on the top and then two bigger drawers on the bottom so as you can see with my dividers in place those are the holes i made in the cabinet now to figure out how to attach these dividers inside the cabinet i figured the easiest thing to do would be to just drill some pocket holes in the bottom of each divider piece and screw it right to my wood shelf i can do that on the top and bottom for the bottom divider because i can screw into the lower shelf and the upper shelf on the top so i found the perfect center of my lower little compartment marked it with a tape measure and i screwed that divider in with those pocket holes now the upper dividers were a little trickier because yes i can use the pocket holes to go right into that lower shelf but i had to figure out a way to attach it on the top underside of the table itself luckily for me there were these nice little metal tabs that hung down as a support system for the top so i figured i could drill directly through those and just attach it with those pocket holes on the bottom and everything would be nice and secure so i did just that i drilled some holes through that support brace piece right into the piece of plywood and i sank in a couple screws until now my top and bottom dividers were securely fastened to my plywood shelf now i'm putting a bunch of drawers in here and the last thing i want is for those drawers to be filled with all the dust that the router table is going to cause so i decided to figure out a way to close the compartments on the back side to keep the dust out and keep the contents of the drawers nice and clean and organized but first i needed a few nailer strips that i could nail a plywood backer onto now i can use those dividers but there's nothing to nail to on the top or bottom of those pieces so i just cut some scrap pieces of plywood drilled some pocket holes plopped them in place and boom i had myself some nailer strips speaking of nailers i grabbed a well actually this is a pneumatic stapler because i thought it'd hold that quarter inch plywood better i cut some pieces a quarter inch ply plopped them on the back and i was ready to start working on drawer slides you might be wondering why did i leave that middle compartment open well that's because i want to be able to access that to clean all the dust out from the back and the front and who knows maybe i'll add some special dust extraction thing on the back at some point this video was sponsored by flow eco flow is a leading energy company that has developed portable renewable power stations to keep you going whether outdoors at work or at home i just got their newest unit the delta mini it's super powerful with the ability to power 90 of essential devices up to 1800 watts like a dishwasher microwave vacuum even a toaster i mean really who doesn't want to make toast in the great outdoors their extreme technology makes it possible to fast recharge at a maximum 900 watts through ac outlets to get zero to eighty percent charge in just an hour and full charge in just 1.6 hours and one of the things i love about this unit is that if you leave something charging and you want to check on the life of the unit itself well there's an app for that you just pull up the app on your phone and it tells you exactly what the output is and how much power you have left in your eco flow unit with my job i spend a lot of time on my computer editing videos and designing new products so it's really nice that i don't have to do that at home anymore i can just find a picnic table in the middle of the woods and get stuff done the newest member of the delta family the delta mini is a great addition to your tool kit when you need a smaller power source head to my link in the description to check it out anyways with that all complete i started figuring out my drawer slides themselves now i had to bring out the side wall so that the drawer slide would sit flush with that front metal support brace thing so i just cut another piece of scrap three quarter inch ply and i screwed it in place now i made this the exact height that i want my second level of drawer slides so that it'll be super easy to line my drawer slide up just with the top of that scrap piece and what you do to one side well you should probably do the same thing to the other side so cutting another piece of scrap three-quarter inch ply the exact same dimension i screwed it in place over on the other side and then i grabbed about six hundred dollars worth of plum under mount drawer slides and i started plopping them into their correct location two drawers on the bottom and four drawers up top these are super easy to install you can screw them straight to the bottom or straight to your side divider i got these ones at rockler.com i will put a link in the video description that's about all i have to say about that oh well i guess one more thing i should mention is that whenever i do these under mount drawer slides i always install the drawer slides first before i build my drawer boxes the reason being is that way i can pull out the drawer slides take the dimensions of the drawer box right off the slides themselves and i know every single drawer is going to fit perfect that way if i didn't do it that way i'd have to do a bunch of math beforehand to get it all figured out and then it's kind of a guessing game and i'm not that smart so as you can see here all i do is pull out the drawer slides i take my measurement for my width of the drawer right off the slides and i already know the length is going to be whatever size drawer slide i'm using for this project i'm using 18 inch drawer slides so they're going to be 18 inches deep by whatever dimension i just took off of the slides themselves now to build these drawer boxes i'm just going quick and easy using some yep birch plywood no i wasn't able to build these out of that three quarter inch birch because for the under mount drawer slides the thickest you can use is 5 8. luckily i had some scrap 5 8 laying around my shop and it was the perfect size to mill down into drawer box parts so after cutting all my pieces to length i added a quarter inch dado to hold my bottom panel and then on half of my pieces i cut out a little notch for the drawer slide to fit underneath if you want a more detailed step-by-step walkthrough of how i build these drawer boxes there is a whole tutorial in my cabinet making series i will link that video up at the top of your screen right now so you could either pause and go watch it or just remember and then when this video is over then you can go watch it no need to bail right now in the middle of this video things are just starting to get good i'm about to build some drawer boxes now i had to build six drawer boxes in total and i'm not lying when i say that it took me less than 30 minutes to build all six of these because this is the quickest way that you can make drawer boxes they're five piece boxes you get your bottom panel your front your back piece and your two side pieces i just glue them together and tack them in place with some 16 gauge brad nails it might seem too easy to be true but i have been building drawers this way for years and they are incredibly strong i actually use the same method to build all the drawer boxes for my kitchen and they are standing up great so don't overthink it you could do dovetails or box joints or something fancy but let me tell you a little secret nobody really cares what the flippin drawer box looks like just get it done and move on so i built two three four five and then i built my sixth one darn it i thought i was gonna have a little cool fade to my sixth one i kind of got messed up with all my drawer boxes put together i just needed to install these little orange clippy things that come with the blum undermount drawer slides this allows the slide to actually lock into the drawer itself you just hold each one in place with two screws and those are ready to go now the slides clip into those orange clips on the front and then there's a little metal tab on the back so you have to drill out a hole for that tab i find out where this tab needs to go just by sticking the drawer in place and bumping it a couple times against those tabs the tabs leave a nice little indentation and you just drill right where those indentations are they do make fancy jigs that you can stick on the back and line it up and drill but that just seems like a waste of time when you can just kind of bang the drawer in place and know exactly where you need to drill every single time so after doing one drawer i did another drawer and another drawer i think you can see where this is going pretty soon i had all six drawers installed and it was time to start working on our drawer faces now i know this is just a simple cabinet for my shop but i can't leave well enough alone i figured if i'm going to do these drawer faces out of plywood i might as well make them all grain matched right so instead of just cutting a bunch of random pieces and throwing them over drawers i cut one big panel and my plan was to cut all of my drawer faces out of this one panel keeping in mind that i wanted them all oriented so that the grain would perfectly match when i was done is anybody but me ever gonna notice this no but at least i'll know the grain matches and that makes me happy so just just let me have this one now i still have that big middle compartment with no drawers i'm gonna figure out some sort of door or latch system something so that i can access that if i ever need to get to the router but it's not actually going to be a functional drawer or anything so after getting all my pieces cut i lined them up and then i had to figure out a way to hook them to my actual drawer box and i didn't want to spend a lot of time on this i just wanted to get it done so i just grabbed some ca glue and some accelerator spray i didn't even use spacers or anything like that to make sure my reveals are perfect my plan was just to completely eyeball this and hope for the best now before you freak out no i'm not just using ca glue the ca glue is just to hold the drawer face in place to get them all lined up and then i'm going to be installing drawer poles on these that's going to be two screws through the drawer pole and those will be plenty to hold the face nice and secure the ca glue is just a temporary solution to get all the drawer faces where i want them so i started squeezing glue and spraying accelerator spray and before long all the drawer faces were um all the drawer faces were in place and ready for hardware now you might think hardware is just an afterthought thing and it's not really that important what you pick or don't pick but actually it is i've learned from experience that when picking hardware for a cabinet that you're going to be standing close to you want to make sure to pick something out that doesn't have any tabs or hooks that can get caught on your pants ain't nobody want nothing pulling on your pants so i just picked out these really simple black handle looking things there's nothing to get caught on my pants and oh looks like my son came out and decided to start playing with the camera while i was installing these he's such a weirdo but at least he gives me good hugs to make up for the shoddy camera work after he left i got my last drawer pull installed and now i had to figure out this whole center panel thing now it was a little too skinny and tight to fit any sort of cabinet hinges on there and i didn't really want to put another pole i thought that would just look a little too busy so i had to figure out another way to attach this without using hinges or any sort of latch system so this is what i came up with the first thing i did was cut some little pieces that i could install as kind of a lip then i took them over to the drill press and i drilled out some countersunk holes on each end of those little lip pieces and i figured i'd make it so the whole panel would just clip in with magnets i got the bigger magnets in the lip pieces some rare earth magnets that i'll insert into the panel itself and i drilled some holes to attach these little lip things inside the cabinet so before i did that i just squeezed yes some more ca glue accelerator spray to hold them in place and once they were stuck nice and secure i just anchored them in with a few grk wood screws until they were nice and sturdy then i countersunk some more holes in the back of my panel and i glued in those rare earth magnets and what is quickly becoming a sponsored video for ca glue i also glued in the corresponding magnets onto my pre-drilled lip pieces making sure all the magnets were oriented the correct way so that they would actually suck that panel in and not repel it that wouldn't make any sense and then i clipped the panel on to see how it looked i liked it but i thought it looked just a little plain and that's when i remembered hey i also own a screen printing studio you know i actually print all my own apparel so anytime you order a t-shirt on my website yeah yours truly is the one printing it by hand so i grabbed this screen for a new logo i've been working on and i figured i'd just print that logo right onto this piece of plywood and clasp this whole thing up a bit i went with this sagey green color because it was already mixed up on hand and i'm incredibly lazy and with a few swipes of the squeegee sweep swoop [Music] i now had a fresh new logo on that front panel and it was looking pretty fly then while i waited for that to dry i bought this little on off switch for a router table on amazon i'll include a link in the video description if you want one of these for yourself just going to make it way easier to turn the router on and off without having to reach up inside the table and actually turn it on on the router so i drilled a hole in the side of the cabinet i screwed the switch on and i just started threading all my cords through the cabinet box to make it look crispy and clean then to organize those cords inside the cabinet i just got some of these zip ties with this little screw mount thing on the top of them and i zip tied all my cords up and just attached them to the side and back of the cabinet making sure they would not be in the way of the drawers don't want anything impeding those drawers moving in and out am i right ah perfect nothing's getting in the way and with that my whole router table storage upgrade rebuild redo system thingama what's it was pretty much complete all i had to do was wheel it back into place reattach it to the dust extraction system double check and make sure my switch was working correctly which it was nice and convenient and then of course reattach that front panel with my fresh new screen printed logo and if i do say so myself this thing is looking much better than it did when we started i've got plenty of storage in here for all my bits and bobs and router table components and i've got easy access to the router through that magnetic front panel should i ever need it now i just gotta figure out what the heck i'm gonna put in all these drawers in case you don't remember what we started with here you go ugly gross router table and nice new clean well organized router table well not bad for a day's work right i mean this is way better than what i had before i got all sorts of crazy storage i added that nice switch on the side so i don't have to reach under there and turn my router on anymore hopefully you guys enjoyed that video i know this is a pretty simple one but it's something that i feel like anybody with a router table could easily upgrade theirs in a similar way make sure you like comment subscribe follow me on instagram patreon link is in the video description along with any of the stuff that you saw me use in this video and uh yeah hope you guys have a great day i'm gonna go finish this beer [Music] you

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 219,592

Keywords: how to, router table, how to make a router table, router lift, router table build, how to build a router table, homemade router table, simple router table, build router table, diy router table, router fence, router table fence, shop organization, router bit storage, router table basics, router station, router table diy, router bits, wood router, shop project, router table dust collection system, how to basic, woodworking, diy, shop hack, shop tricks, pimp my shop, router

Id: b7HFxDRsc4I

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021