The Wood Whisperer is sponsored by Powermatic and Titebond So today I'm gonna show you how to build this awesome assembly outfeed table. You know, it was back in 2007 that I made my first assembly table on this show. I remember it like it was just yesterday... Hey everybody! Welcome back to the WoodWhisperer video podcast. I'm the only one here making videos on YouTube and people in the comments are really really nice. I know that's never gonna change. Well today we're going to build something cool but first let's talk for 20 minutes. Whoa man, think I dozed off for a minute there. Well anyway, let me show you some of the features here. whoooAHAAH! Like any good outfeed table I've got plenty of outfeed support but this doubles as an assembly table so I've got a full 48"x60" top. The top itself is a sandwich of black melamine, baltic birch, and it's trimmed out with oak for durability. For storage I've got six drawers and then two doors covering two large compartments. Up here is something that I'm really excited about. It's an open compartment for sled storage. So I've got an Incra 5000 in here but there's plenty of room for any kind of shop made sled that you might use at the tablesaw and on the bottom surface here I actually have a formica laminate. It makes it nice and easy to pull things out, put 'em back in without scratching everything up. On the sides, I've got more storage space so you can just screw anything to this. I've got my miter gauge here and a power strip which is really handy because I do actually work at this table quite often with small power tools. And because this is also an assembly table I'm gonna want to occasionally move it away from the tablesaw so I have these workbench casters in place which you just push down and then it goes on its wheels. And also because I wanna keep this nice and level with the tablesaw I've got adjustable feet. Now I kept the cabinet at about 30 inches deep, I mean, any more than that it's just way too big And that also gives me a nice overhang. That overhang works out really well for meeting up with the table saw and giving me some room for some extra storage for just long things, sacrificial fences, stuff like that and my dust collection. Now of course we've got a full plan for this that you could purchase if you're interested at thewoodwhisperer.com but you could probably figure it out too just by watching it go together so let me show you how I made it. I like to cut my parts slightly oversized using a track saw and some insulation boards on the floor. If you don't have a track saw remember, people cut plywood with circular saws long before the track saw was invented. So go grab a straight 2 x 4, clamp it down, and get it done. If you have a track saw, it's totally worth it to pick up one of those little gadgets that keep the track nice and square. That means that at least one corner of each of these pieces will be a perfect 90 degrees. Now I can use the tablesaw to cut the parts to final width. I'm really just focusing on the case right now. We'll work on the doors, and the drawers the top in the back panel later. When cutting the inner tall and short dividers, the plans list them as a 1/2" narrower than the sides but in reality they should be narrower by the thickness of the back panel, which is probably a little less than a half inch. At this point, we're not cutting any of these parts to length. We'll do that after adding the edge banding. And keep the small shelves oversized right now. We'll cut them to fit later. Speaking of edge banding, we can now cut up some solid 3/4" stock to use as trim for the front facing edges of the plywood parts. I'm using alder since it's pretty cheap and looks nice and I'm cutting these into true 3/4"x3/4" squares because the plywood is slightly less than 3/4 of an inch, just gives me some room to play when attaching the strips to the plywood. The edging is attached using nothing but glue. If you don't have as many fancy clamps as I do, you can use blue tape and stretch it across the edging, and maybe even reinforce it with some brad nails. The larger parts already have one square corner so I'll be careful to keep the banding flush on that edge. The other side should have the overhang. Once the glue is dry, I'll flush trim the edging to the plywood faces. To help balance the router I can clamp two pieces together. Anything the router doesn't get, I can sand flush. So at this point the two small shelves, the short divider, and the large shelf will sit tight until we can finalize their lengths. The tall divider, the two sides, the toe kick, and the stretchers can all be cut to final length as listed in the plans. The joy of this method is that we trim the part to final length while also trimming the edge banding perfectly flush. Even though some of the stretchers don't have edge banding, we'll cut those to length now too since it just makes sense to batch 'em all out at the same time. So now it's time for the dado joinery. Using the dado stack on my tablesaw, I make a test cut to see if we're close. First I'll set the cut depth to 1/4". Now for the dado's width. That's looking pretty good. Remember if your test piece is really snug, you may never get the larger pieces to seat properly because of the inconsistencies and possible bowing in plywood, so having a little bit of wiggle room is totally OK. Time to lay out the dadoes. I'll start with the left side and a tall divider since their dadoes are essentially mirror images. When laying out the dadoes, mark the start line of the dado and then add an 'x' or something to indicate which side of the line you need to cut. Cutting on the wrong side of the line is a really sucky mistake to make at this point. Now we just set up the fence for each cut and go. Here's a little tip for you. Even the best fences can deflect if you put enough pressure on them and that tends to happen when cutting large pieces like this so I'm using a couple of magnets behind the fence for additional stability. Yep that there's a piece of plywood. Now for the next set of dadoes. If you have push paddles, this is a real good time to use them. They help keep nice even pressure on the panel so that your dado is a consistent depth. Back at the workbench, I can now lay out the next set of dadoes between the tall divider and the right side, which are once again a mirror image. Because the fence position puts me over the melamine extension wing I can't use those magnets, so instead I'll just clamp down a block to accomplish the same thing. Test the fit of the rabbet and adjust the fence if needed. We could then cut the rabbets on the ends of all the toe kick and stretcher pieces. Now, move the fence to cut the dadoes for the tall divider. The next set of dadoes is for the short divider, and that'll take a little extra planning. Because we want our two drawer compartments to be exactly the same, the location of the short divider dado needs to be dead center. So I'll find the center point and strike a line on the lower stretcher piece. With a center line on a piece of scrap plywood, I can line up the center lines and then trace the outside edges of the plywood. That shows me the exact location of the dado. Back at the tablesaw, I can line up the work piece for the cut, set the fence, and cut the dadoes in the bottom stretcher and toe kick. It's totally worth the extra effort to center the divider, because if you don't your two drawer sets will be different sizes, and that's no fun. Next we need to locate the dado in the large shelf that accepts the top of the short divider. I find the easiest way to do this is to cut a rabbit in a piece of scrap, as a stand in for the sides and dividers. This'll allow me to simulate how the shelf will sit in the final piece. The bottom stretcher then shows us exactly where the dado should be. If this is confusing, you can also just do a dry assembly of a full case and take measurements between the dadoes and then cut accordingly. But this method gives me the same information with a lot less effort. Now to cut the shelf to its final length, I put the shelf back on top of the lower stretcher, with the dado scrap in place, using a second dado scrap, I can easily see where the shelf needs to be cut. So how long is that piece? I don't know. Does it fit perfectly? Sure does. So I'll use the same methodology to cut my small shelves to width. Again if this is confusing just do that dry assembly and grab your measurements where you can. And now using the same dado scrap pieces and the right side panel I can get the final length of the short divider by seating the top into the scrap and marking the length at the bottom. That looks nice and flush so I think we got it. Next, we need to cut all of the notches on the side panels and dividers. It's a good idea to draw them out on each panel so that there's no chance of making a mistake. The easiest way that I know to cut these is at the bandsaw. We'll use a magnet as a stop and then I could use a piece of scrap to get everything set up before actually cutting the final work pieces. A lot of these notches are identical so we can batch them out pretty quickly but watch some of them like the top rear notch of the tall divider. That one's a little bit shorter than the others. If you want to confirm the fit, grab one of your stretchers and you should see that it sits nice and flush. Next, we'll use the dado and the sacrificial fence to cut the rabbet in the side panels for the back panel. The rabbet is 3/8" deep by the thickness of the plywood, which should be just under a half inch. And the back upper stretcher receives the same rabbet. And now we can start the glue up. I'm using polyurethane glue for the additional working time. I put glue in the dadoes. And with a damp rag, we could apply some moisture to the shelves. This glue is actually moisture activated and the plywood really doesn't have a whole lotta moisture in it. I'll do one section at a time to make life easier. With all the joints seated, I'll pop in some brad nails and buy some I apparently mean a lot. The piece is then set upright, clamps are added and nails are added to the other side. Even with the brad nails in place, it's a good idea to check for square, and then fix any issues that you see while the glue is still wet. Next, we'll glue the large shelf to the short divider upside down. We just need to make sure that the divider is fully seated in the dado and that it's nice and square. Once that joints dries, we could flip the whole thing over and then connect that to the first section and by we I mean me and my buddy Zach Galifianakis. Finally the right side panel is brought in and nailed in place. Next, we can add the stretchers and the toe kick. What's cool about a build like this is if you plan properly there's no dry assembly needed and your project goes from a stack of parts to a nearly finished cabinet in just a matter of minutes. Finally I measure for the back panel and then cut to size. Watch your finger, Jon. Before gluing and nailing the back panel in place, I cut two pieces of scrap to help keep the back of the short divider in alignment, just in case it decides to bow a little bit. So now with the case together we can start on the drawers. Measure the openings first. They should be the same. Whatever the width is, subtract an inch if you're using standard side-mount slides like I am and that's the total width of your drawer boxes. If your openings match the plans, you can simply cut everything to the sizes that are listed in the cut list. If your openings are different, you might have to do a little bit of math. And chances are if you need to change anything, it'll be your drawer fronts and backs, as that will make the drawers narrower or wider as needed. When you're done, your pile of drawers sides and fronts should look something like this. Time for some rabbets. This is similar to what we did for the case, using the dado stack and a sacrificial fence. The rabbets go on all of the drawers sides. A quick test looks pretty good, so let's proceed. Now a real nice way to test your settings, is to actually bring some drawer sides, a front and your hardware to the case. If it fits, it fits. Now if it's too tight, you can either trim your fronts and backs, or simply cut your rabbets a little bit deeper. If it's loose, do the opposite. The drawer bottoms will sit in a groove that's located 1/4" up from the bottom so I test the spacing and size the groove before cutting my parts. By the way I tend to over build my drawers and you might consider going with 1/4" material for the drawer bottoms to save some weight. Just think about what you're going to be putting in these drawers, and if it's pretty light, 1/4" is probably the better way to go. With the drawer dry assembled, we can measure for the drawer bottoms and cut them accordingly. All the drawer bottoms should be the same. And the dry assembly looks good. It's a pretty sturdy drawer. Now we can glue all the drawers together. Of course you want to make sure that the drawers are square and adjust them if not. If they're not that's going to create a huge headache when installing the slides. The smaller drawer boxes are assembled the same way. Once dry, the boxes can be sanded lightly to flush everything up and get rid of any splintery sharp edges. Now let's attach the drawer slides and I've got a really simple method. With the drawer box and slide on a flat surface and the front of the slide flush with the front of the drawer, begin pre-drilling and drive screws along the length of the inner portion of the slide. Work back until you have to remove the outer section of the slide, then finish off the screws. Repeat this on the other side of the drawer. Next I use some half-inch scrap to create three spacers that'll help us install the slides in the case. We'll start with the spacers stacked up to locate the top slide. I'll also use a piece of scrap that will set the slide back 3/4" to account for our decorative drawer fronts. Now I just drill and drive the screws to attach the slides to the case. For the next slide, I remove the top spacer and continue this process, working my way down. Now I'll repeat this process three more times for each set of slides. Finally we can test the fit of our drawers. Side mount slides always have resistance the first time you push the drawer in, but it shouldn't be quite this tight, so let's see what's wrong. My suspicion is that one of the sides is bowed and it's probably Jon's fault. To fix it we'll sand. I'm really just looking to remove the high spot. Once we reattach the slide, the drawer should work as intended and there they are. By the way if you do any work to your drawers like we did, it's a good idea to label them so that you can keep track of their locations. BEEP BOP BOOP BOOP To work on the decorative drawer fronts, we'll put the cabinet on its back, and let gravity help us out. Because I really like getting yelled at, I'm using walnut for the drawer fronts. Your dimensions may vary from the plans, but essentially you want these to fit into the openings with about 1/8" of space on all sides of each drawer front. To make this dummy proof, I cut some shims to 1/8" and we'll use those to get our spacing just right. Now attaching the fronts is super easy if you already have your pull hardware picked out. First drill the holes in the proper locations. Next drop the drawer fronts back in place with the shims installed, so that the fronts can't move at all. That's why we had this thing on its back before. Who set this upright again? Using some short screws, attach the fronts to the drawer boxes. Even though you see me using tapered head screws here, you really should use panheads for this. You just don't want to widen the hardware holes at all, because you might see them after the hardware is installed. With the drawer fronts locked in place, pull the drawers out one at a time and then counter sink and drive a couple of screws from the inside into the drawer front. Now remove the temporary screws from the front and continue driving the hardware holes all the way through the dropbox. My hardware screws aren't quite long enough and I don't feel like buying longer ones, so I'm counterboring from the inside. And there's my fancy pull looking all fancy. Each drawer gets a little round over to ease the edges. And that's some purrrrrdy shop furniture. Next up, the doors. The doors are a simple frame and panel. The two compartments are different sizes, so make sure you check the plan measurements against what you have in reality and adjust the measurements accordingly. I'll cut a 1/4" panel groove on each piece and then use the single blade to chip away and create a tenon on the ends of each rail piece. You don't really need a deep mortise and tenon joint for a small door like this. Now I cut some 1/4" stock to size for the panels. I used solid stock here but you definitely can use plywood. The frame is glued together and the panel is allowed to float. Once the glue is dry, I'll sand the frame and get ready to install the hinges. I'm going to use soft close, European style cup hinges. Using a story stick, I'll mark the locations of the hinges on the cabinet and use my handy little doo-dad to drill the holes using a self-centering drill bit. The hinge brackets are than screwed to the case. Using the same story stick centered on the door style, I mark the locations of the hinges and use another little doo-dad to drill the cup hinge holes. If you install more than a couple of cup hinges in your life, you'll find these accessories are a really good investment. Keep in mind that you can also use standard butt hinges, mortise hinges, piano hinges whatever you want. To keep the hinges perfectly aligned, I drop in a straight edge as I pre-drill and drive the screws. The door should just pop right in the place. As you can see the door just keeps on going, so we'll need to install a couple of stops. A scrap piece of walnut should do just fine. Now we can drill for a couple of knobs and watch the doors close ...softly... One of my goals for this thing is to make it mobile. To do that, I'll attach some of these heavy duty workbench casters. Be sure to check their alignment, as the screws that I use just barely missed the drawer slide on the inside of the drawer compartment. Make sure that you double check the location of the screws before installing them and move them if you need to. I'll also add some leveling feet, which is critical for this thing functioning as an outfeed table. Now this was kind of a last minute idea, but I decided to add some laminate to the shelves. The wide shelf is going to have a pretty large cross cut sled going in and out and the smaller compartments will also have some heavy items that I occasionally have to drag it out of there so the laminate gives me a nice durable low friction surface that will actually make it easier to pull these things out and put them back. We'll attach it with some rubber cement. This really doesn't need to be absolutely perfect, as the laminate's kind of trapped in there and really won't be flying away anytime soon but once it's secure I use a flush trim bit to trim as much as I can and then use a sanding block or a block plane to get the rest of it. Jon's now adding a little bit of finish to the cabinet and when it comes to shop furniture, really any finish'll do. I usually just use whatever I have the most of. Now, for the top. It's going to be a double sandwich of 3/4" plywood and black melamine. Both pieces are cut slightly oversized. I'll stack the two sheets on the flattest furface in my shop, which is generally my tablesaw and pre-drill and counter sink for screws. There's no glue between the sheets, so use as many screws as you need to help prevent bowing. Now that the two sheets are stuck together, I trim each side slightly to flush everything up and bring the top to final dimension. To protect the edges and make it look nice, I'll add some 3/4" inch solid edge banding. Use whatever species you want. Each corner is mitered and the pieces are attached one at a time. Notice I'm only putting glue on the bottom piece of plywood and not the melamine. I want that melamine to be replaceable, which is something that I like to say that I'll do, but I never actually do at any point in the future. Now I don't know if it helps but I'm using scrap stock and a clamp to help keep the top sandwich nice and flat as I attach the trim. It won't be dead flat like a torsion box and I know that but I still want to be as flat as I can get it. The edging has a slight overhang, so I'll just use my router to trim it flush and then I add a nice little round over. To attach the top to the case, I'll use some screws through the front stretcher and on the saw side of the table, I'm gonna use some L brackets. With the table up against the saw in the desired position, I can locate the miter clearance slots. Now, a lot of people will skip this step and just make their outfeed table lower so that it doesn't interfere with the miter bars but that's...goofy. If you want the full benefit of an outfeed table, it should really be set just a hair below the tablesaw surface and it should have clearance dadoes for the miter bars. Change my mind. Never mind...just do what you want. The clearance dadoes should be wider than the actual slots, so that you don't have to fuss too much when you're trying to get the table lined up with the saw. They're really not meant to guide the miter bar but instead they just give it a place to go. And finally I'll use a chisel to square it up make it look a little bit nicer. Now let's get this thing fully assembled so that we can level it. I'll use the leveling feet to really dial it in and again we just wanted to be about 1/16th below the level of the saw. On the side of the cabinet I'll install a plywood holder for my miter gauge. And you know what I really need over here? A nice power strip. That's really going to come in handy. And there it is! I am super happy with the way this came out. So now that the project is done, let's have a little chat and hopefully, I can answer some questions for you before you even have to ask them. So one of the things people always say when they see my shop furniture is "why do you put so much time, effort, and material into it? "Why would you use walnut? "Why does it look better than furniture that you might make for someone's home?" Well the reason is because I spend a lot of time in here. My shop is my playground. I actually interact with the furniture in here more than I do with the furniture inside my house, so I want it to look nice. It just makes me happy. It gets me excited to go to work every day. It's a personal preference. You can make your shop furniture out of anything. It could be out of scrap material, really inexpensive plywood, whatever you want. Don't feel like you have to do what I do here. This is just my personal preference. So what about torsion boxes? Now I made a torsion box assembly table in 2007. It was a long time ago but it served me well. You know and I like having a dead flat surface but as I have compressed my shop space, I need to use this for dual purpose and it started to become a little bit more tedious to worry about the whole concept of a torsion box, I just wanted something fairly simple so this double layup of sheet goods, is flat enough. You know over time, I've just realized that I don't really need a dead flat surface and anything that does require some level of dead flatness, I've got a tablesaw surface and a workbench that's pretty darn flat that I can get that done. This is good enough for me. So you might be wondering, where are the bells and whistles? Where are the T tracks? Where are all the dog holes? That's not what I use this surface for. You know, I finish projects up here. I sand projects up here. I've got enough of an overhang, that if I need to clamp something, I could certainly do that, but I don't really have a need for T tracks, I don't have a need for dog holes, but if you do and you think that's something you could use in your set up, by all means add it but don't add it just because you see someone else add it. A lot of times you'll see these videos of people installing all the bells and whistles, but what you'll want to watch for is subsequent videos and how often they actually use them. Now I know there's a bunch you were going to think I'm nuts for using side mount slides. Folks who use undermount slides tend to be very excited about them and want you to know they're excited about them and that's cool. Undermount slides are great but I think side mount slides are easier to install at least initially. Undermount, once you get the hang of it you can kind of figure it out, but it's pretty complicated when you first get into it. The other thing is with the length of the slides, undermount slides would've cost me at least twice as much, if not more to get these drawers done. It just didn't make any sense. At this length, it would've been hundreds of dollars just to get the slides for this project so undermount slides are fantastic but they're not the end-all be-all. I actually think side-mount slides are a pretty good bargain and work well for this application. Now the last thing is less of an answer to a question, more of a tip... if you plan on moving this assembly table around a lot, you might consider getting some kind of a steel bar, this is obviously not steel, just a piece of wood but getting a bar between these two pieces because then you can operate them together makes the whole thing a lot easier than just kind of jacking one corner up, then the next corner do that on both sides and I think you're gonna have a better time with that. For me personally I don't plan to actually move this very often it's only in cases where I have something that's even bigger than the assembly table and I need the room so I'm not too worried about it but that's kind of a cool thing that a bunch of people on Instagram told me I should do and I'm not gonna do it, but you can if you want to. All right so there you go. It's an outfeed assembly table. I hope you liked it. If you want to build your own, head to our website you could pick up plans for the project, and otherwise have a wonderful day, thanks for watching, take care! Shove it in there! My hardware screws aren't quite long enough, so I'm counterboring from the inside. I know they sell longer ones, but I'm too cheap to buy them, but I'll use walnut! That's...that's a joke. Right on my toe! Perfect! Duggee you cannot be chewing in here dude... Duggee don't be don't be a turd!
