[Shane] - My old bench slash
outfeed assembly table was in major need of an upgrade, so today I wanna build
an all-in-one solution that'll both stand the test of time and look good doing so on Timber Biscuit. So if you've seen my channel before, you may know that my old bench has become my outfeed/assembly table since I built my split top
roubo a few months ago. So today the goal is to
build a better assembly table that will fit better in
my current workshop setup and give me plenty of
space for the future. So currently, I store a lot of tools underneath my outfeed assembly table. And what I want to do
is build a smarter way to keep those tools all wrangled. So my old bench was an MDF top with an all-in-one kind of setup. And not surprisingly, over
time, the MDF has sagged, and it's become a bit more cumbersome to get the tools in and out of it. Now, another thing that's
really impacted my decision is the fact that I don't
really use my miter saw all that frequently. So the plan here is to
store that miter saw up and under the assembly table
to get it out of the way. As far as tools go, it doesn't really weigh a
whole lot, so getting it out from underneath the assembly
table shouldn't be all that difficult when I need it. The other plan here is to
conceal my small compressor underneath the assembly table. This way when the compressor kicks on, it'll be a little bit more muffled, and it won't shake the entire house. Well, at least that's the hope. So I think that covers
most of the goals for now, but throughout the video, I'll dive more into why I'm
making the decisions I'm making and what I did and didn't like
about my old assembly table. So first things first, what I needed to do here is
just break down my sheet goods. So the goal here is to cut
all my sheet goods down to their final length, while keeping the width slightly over. And this is because the joinery
I'm gonna use for this table is gonna be dadoes and rabbets, as long as I don't break
the camera in the process. Whoa. Now, being that I'm using
3/4-inch Baltic birch, it's slightly under 3/4 of an inch, so I don't want to go for my
final dimensions right now. What I'm gonna do is cut
those dadoes and rabbets and use those to reference
for my final width. And don't worry if that
doesn't make sense right now, it will in a minute. So once I had all my sheet goods cut down with the track saw, I could go ahead and cut
down my smaller parts over at the table saw. And once I had all my pieces
cut to rough dimension, I go ahead and set up my dado stack. And I just like to do
that on a flat surface, using my fingertip to set the height. And for my European viewers, if you're not allowed
to have a dado stack, you could always cut
these dadoes and rabbets, or rebates, with a router bit. You have metric, we have
massive disks of death. Win-win. All right, so with my
doom disks installed, the first thing I needed to
do was cut a couple tests. Here, what I'm looking for is a nice flush, quarter-inch depth, and I want to have a tiny
amount of wiggle room within the dado itself. And this is because plywood
is not always perfectly flat, but it's mostly flat. And we wanna make sure that
there's plenty of wiggle room in there once we have glue for
the joint to seat properly. And that'll be especially important with the assembly of this piece, being that these are such large panels. So make sure you take the
time to get a nice fit that's somewhere in between
snug and a little loose. Now, again, because of the panel sizes, I asked my wife to come in and help me out with a
couple of the pieces just to make sure that they stayed
flush against the fence. And then from there, what I could do is just
mark out on my boards where those rabbets and dadoes should live so that I don't go back
and mess them up later on, and then get back to cutting my dadoes. So the lower portion of this cabinet is gonna sit three inches off the ground, while the upper portion is
gonna give me four inches for a small shelf. Now, this is cool for a couple of reasons. A, it will allow me to
clamp pieces directly to the top of the assembly table. And B, it'll give me
somewhere to store clamps when I'm in the midst of a glue-up frenzy, as we know all great woodworkers have. (coughs) Anyway, the next step was to lay out the center
divider for my drawers. And to do that, what I'm gonna do is find
the center of my board, and then use an offcut to reference to make sure I've got everything
aligned in the middle. I like using a scrap piece
more than just trying to attempt to guess where
that center should be because I think lining it up this way gives me more accurate results. From there, I can just
take that measurement over to my table saw and
adjust my fence accordingly. Now, one other thing I like to do when cutting dadoes like this is to use a featherboard when I can. The featherboard helps keep
the piece against the fence, much like my wife did earlier. Thank you, honey. Or using a vertical featherboard, I can keep downward pressure on the joint to make sure everything stays
flush across the entire cut. And again, when cutting dadoes
that are wide like this, it definitely helps to have
another person there just to help keep things against the fence. 'Cause while I can try
to do this by myself, just like a boat full of buddies, things are easier with a friendship. And if you dig dad jokes
and woodworking like I do, be sure to give this video a like. This way the video can
spread to more people. Thanks for your support. All right, so with the
sacrificial fence attached to my existing fence, I could go ahead and cut the
rabbets into my side panels. Now, one thing I didn't
mention earlier is that because these vertical partitions
align at the bottom shelf and the top shelf in the same
sections, I'm gonna go ahead and cut those dadoes
slightly more shallow. So instead of being a quarter inch, they're gonna be 3/16 of an inch. This way there's still enough material between the dado to give
me the support that I want, but the vertical partition
won't lose the structure. So ultimately, what that
means is the lower shelf and upper shelf is gonna
be slightly varied. So cutting those to the exact width is gonna be even more important. So again, it's a good
thing we left those along. Now, because I'm
obviously moving the fence between these cuts, what I did was just cut my
four and three-inch grooves in a small offcut. And earlier you saw me use
that to realign the fence. So with all of our dadoes cut, I could cut out another
two pieces of scrap, the dado in it, to size my shelf panels. Now, again, here I was careful that I referenced the
right depth of the dadoes since we have two
different depths going on. And while I'm talking
about all these details, let me know down in the comments if you guys want plans for this project. And if there's enough interest, I'll post them in the
description of this video, as well as update you guys
with a community post. So with the width all marked out, I can then take the piece
back over to my table saw and cut it to its final width. Now, in two of the shelves, the width is gonna be exactly the same since they have the same depth of dadoes. However, on the right
shelf, that's not the case, so I have to take that
measurement two times. Now, the cool thing
about doing it this way is you don't have to work off
of any single measurement. All I'm doing here is lining that mark to the edge of my saw
blade and making the cut. This takes a lot of guesswork
and mistakes out of this cut and creates a perfectly spaced shelf without any real
measuring, which is a win. So the last horizontal piece
to cut is the lower shelf that goes below the drawers. And again, I'll just mark
that out and cut it to width based off my dado placement. From there, I need to take
two notches out of my rabbet. And this is because the
shelf runs the full width of the cabinet. And if I didn't do this,
I'd have to cut stop dadoes. And cutting these notches is
just a heck of a lot easier. Plus, they'll be concealed
by the edge banding, so you'll never really know they're there. So to cut those, I just notched them out
first over at the band saw, taking some small bites to
create some relief cuts. From there, I'll take the
piece over to my old bench and knock out those
reliefs using some chisels. Now, normally, here I'd put
some sort of sacrificial board underneath my workpiece, but since this bench is
about to be destroyed, I don't think we really
have to worry about it. In any case, I'm just
using some light taps from a mallet to remove that material. And once I felt like I had a nice fit, I could grab another scrap
piece and test everything out. Yeah, that'll work. So next, it was time
to assemble this case. And what I'm first gonna
do is lay out some lines so that I know where
the center of my rabbets and dadoes are. This is so I can use
some brad nails and glue to hold everything together. The other thing I'll do
is attach some squares to my first panel to
ensure I have a good start. And for the glue on this one, I'm gonna use something
with a long open time and working time so that
I have plenty of time to put everything together. And in case I didn't emphasize it enough, time was pretty important here. And that's because with a
case glue-up this large, there's a lot of clamps and
different parts to check. So I wanna give myself plenty of padding to get all those pieces in. So once I had my first piece
attached with some clamps and I was confident that
everything was square, I went ahead and drove in some brad nails. And then from there, I just worked my way through
the panels from top to bottom. Now, because these dadoes,
again, are really long, we made sure that there was
plenty of space for them to fit. Now, that's not to say that everything just
comes together perfectly. Sometimes you've gotta muscle things in with some clamps or a mallet, but eventually things did get there. And again, this is where
choosing your adhesive is pretty important, 'cause you don't wanna get
halfway through the assembly only to find out that things
are already tacking up. And I use this glue for the
majority of my cabinets, so I'll leave a link
down in the description for anybody who's interested. All right, so with my first
three panels attached, everything was going pretty smoothly. Now, this fourth panel
was a little bit trickier. Since two of my panels were already set, I lock in these dadoes and squeeze everything pretty tight. Now, my plan here was to
do these boxes in sections. This way I could minimize the amount of clamps that I needed, and it would give me ample time to go from section to section. So once I got through with the first box, I checked everything for square, and yeah, it looks like
we're doing something right, and then let everything dry While I went and pitched my son's
coach pitch baseball game. For the young, baseball accustomed, that's roughly 2.5 hours. And then when I returned from my outing, I went ahead and attached
the next section. This time I did have
an extra set of hands, which made things go a little bit quicker. Which was also nice because
giving those five-year-olds the high heat was a little tiring, not to mention my malleting
arm was a bit sore. So with that section all attached, I could drive in some
brad nails into the dadoes and slide in my shelf and
vertical partition for my drawers. From there, the only
piece that was left was to attach the outer
panel of the drawer case. And that was pretty straightforward since everything up to this
point has been pretty square. And honestly, at this
point, even if it wasn't, you just have to embrace your mistakes, just like I told my wife
before she gave me a hug. And it's done. So I left the cabinet
alone for the evening and let the glue dry. And the next day, I could
take some measurements to cut out some stretchers. And the plan here is to put two stretchers across the front of the drawer faces and two stretchers along
each gap for my shelves. This should gimme plenty of structure, as well as give me something to screw into to attach the top. So over at the table saw, I first cut my stretchers
to their final width. Then I set up my miter gauge and cut them down to their final length. Here, what I'm going
for is the exact width of the space between my shelves. So I took that measurement
directly off the case. This is another one of those times where you want to take
your measurements off of your workpiece rather
than looking at the plans, because obviously, between
the build and the plan, there could be a little bit of variation. All right, so the next step was
to cut in some pocket holes. So I first just lay out the
placement using a square, and then take the stretchers
over to my pocket hole jig to plunge in the holes. Here, you wanna make note
of where they're driving in those pocket holes so that
you can offset them slightly for the stretcher glue-up. Because if we place
all of our pocket holes in the same spot on all of our stretchers, they're gonna run into each
other when we do the glue-up. But the good thing about pocket holes is they're relatively quick to plunge, and they work out great. So with all of our pocket holes done, I could go ahead and start
attaching the stretchers. So I first apply a little
bit of glue to either end, and then attach the drawer
front stretchers flush with the front of the case. Now, obviously, it's also important that these sit flush
with the top of the case so that when we drive screws in later on, they'll pull everything flat. And I probably should have mentioned this earlier during the assembly, but that's another reason that I'm putting this
case together on my bench. I know that my bench is perfectly flat, so I'm going to use that
as my reference piece. If you don't have a flat surface to work off of like a bench, you could work off of the
top of your table saw, which I actually do
later on in this build. So with the stretchers all connected, I went ahead and attached the feet. And I'm doing this now
because in the next step, I'm going to do the edge banding, and getting to these feet is
gonna be a lot more difficult. I'm also placing my feet
on the inside of my case so that they're less of a tripping hazard. The only downside is I
have to drill some holes in the top of my shelves so that I can adjust these feet later on. But I think that's a
pretty solid compromise. And since I design my outfeed table to sit about 3/4 of an inch lower than the top of my table saw, these adjustable feet will
allow me to flush up the tops. All right, so next it was time
to address that edge banding. And for my edge banding, I'm gonna be using some
four quarter walnut. Now, obviously, for shop furniture, you can use whatever you'd like, but I've used a lot of cherry
and walnut in my shop pieces, so I'm gonna continue with
that trend with this piece. And so the first thing I needed to do was just mill down my lumber. And to do that, I'll just run my pieces through the planer to get them down to 3/4 of an inch, and then put a clean edge on
my boards over at the joiner. From there, I can start by
measuring out the height for my toe kick. And I'll just do that
with my double square, and then set my fence to that dimension. Here, I'm just gonna rip down two boards that are slightly oversized
so that I can trim back to my final length in a second. And the reason I keep
them slightly oversized is because I wanna do mitered
corners for the bottom frame. So to make sure that I have a
nice flush edge to start with, I go ahead and use my miter
saw to trim off my end. From there, I'll take
my initial measurement off the carcass. Then I'll go over to my table saw and set the blade to 45 degrees. From there, I can trim my first angle for my miter using a sled. Now, I prefer using a sled more than I do a miter saw
for this type of cut just because I feel like I get
better results that way. Then from there, I can cut one more miter into my longer second board. So once I have my first
mitered piece to length, I can go ahead and glue it in place. And just like with the carcass, I'll use some brad nails
to hold it in place. Only this time I'll use 23
gauge instead of 18 gauge to conceal those holes. From there, I take my other
oversized mitered piece and use a clamp to attach it to the front. From there, I can just take
my pencil and scribe a line so that I can trim it
down the length perfectly. Again, why measure when you don't have to? Next, I can follow that same procedure and apply a bit of glue
before pinning it in place with some brad nails. Because the feet are going
underneath the toe kick, we don't really have to worry about it being perfectly
flat across the bottom, but we do want it nice and
flush with those shelves. And then from there, I can take the measurement
for my edge banding, and then bring that measurement
back over to the table saw. Here, I'm gonna increase that
by about a 16th of an inch. This way I have a little
bit of wiggle room to flush them up later on. And even though these boards
will be relatively flat and straight, the strips may move a little when you rip them down, so you wanna take that into consideration and give yourself something to work with. So with that in mind, I think a good end size
for this edge banding is 3/4 of an inch by 3/4 of an inch. Anything less just feels too tight, and anything more just
means more to flush down. In any case, here, I like
to use featherboards again, just to make sure that everything stays as close as the fence as
possible and nothing kicks back. So with all my strips cut down, I next take them over to the
miter saw and trim off one end. To find my height in all the pieces, I'm just gonna use my pencil and scribe a line flush at the top. Now, theoretically, all of these pieces are
gonna be exactly the same. But theory isn't always reality, so I find it best to just go ahead and mark out all my pieces this way, rather than assuming
that they're all gonna be the same length. So from here, I just work
my way around the carcass, trimming off each piece as I go. And I do all of my vertical pieces first, and then I move on to my horizontal ones. I suppose you could do your
horizontal and vertical mixed, but I'm kind of a stickler for procedures. But I don't have OCD. I know because I've
checked like 300 times. All right, so with all
the edge banding attached, I can move on to trimming out the pieces for my drawer boxes. And to do that, again, I'm gonna
turn back to the track saw. Here, what I like to do is
just cut out all of my strips that I need for all my sides. I find this to be a lot faster than trimming out all my
box pieces individually. From there, I'll set up a dado stack to cut in the groove for my box bottoms. And since these drawer
boxes are gonna store some pretty heavy tools, I'm gonna go ahead and
use half-inch material for my box bottoms, as well as the sides. From there, I can cut
that half-inch groove into each of my strips. Again, cutting in the groove
this way is a lot faster than doing all these boards individually since I can knock them
all out in one pass. As the shirt says, "I
knew this Wood Work." And just like we did
with the earlier dadoes, featherboard giving downward force above the blade helps out a lot to make sure that
everything is nice and even across the groove. So with all my grooves cut in, I can then take my crosscut sled and set it up to trim out
the rest of my drawer parts. Now, what I first like to
do is trim out a test piece, and then use that as a
template for my drawer slides. So once I have that piece trimmed out, I just set up a stop lock
on the left side of my blade to cut out the remaining
pieces for that section. Once I have all 12 boards for the sides, I can move on to the fronts and backs. Now, when trimming out these parts, it's important to trim off one end before you start trimming everything out. Otherwise, you risk the
end not being square to the rest of your drawer parts, and that's gonna be a problem when you go to assemble these guys. One other thing to watch for
is any play in your sled, as any slipup could run your workpiece into the blade, causing
a bit of deviation. So whenever you're using
a sled or a miter gauge, just make sure to take your
time with a nice smooth cut. And if you need to, push the
workpiece all the way through, then cut the saw off before you remove it. This way you don't risk
ruining your workpiece by running it into the blade. Or at the very least, gently pull it away, and then you can dust yourself off and go about your business. So after about 35 minutes, I had all my drawer parts cut out, and we could move on to the assembly. Bring on the glue. So I've covered how I assemble
drawer boxes a few times, but here's a quick refresher. Since these are plywood, I'm gonna go ahead and apply
some glue into the groove, and then a bead of glue along the edges of my two side panels. From there, I'll just assemble
the box as I would normally by sliding my bottom into the front panel, and then attaching my two sides. From there, I'll slide on the back panel, and then use some 23-gauge brad nails to pin everything in place. Doing this creates perfectly
square drawer boxes every single time, and it's super easy. So if you've got drawer
boxes in your future, don't overthink it,
just put them together, and 99% of the time,
they'll be 100% square, and that's good enough for me. From there, I can just rinse
and repeat five more times until I have all my boxes assembled. And then finally came the hour that I was not looking forward to. It was time to say goodbye to the bench. It was a good bench. So while I tear down the
memories of this one, let me take a moment to say that if you're enjoying this
video, hit subscribe. I'm making new videos about
woodworking tips, tricks, and projects all the time, so subscribe so you
don't miss the next one. And as you can tell by this bench, there's been a lot of them and
there's a lot more to come. All right, so with the teardown complete, it was time to shut the
metaphorical door on this one, as well as, I guess, the physical one, and let those boxes dry. Then the next day I could
come back in the shop and start attaching the drawer slides. Now, attaching the drawer
slides is pretty simple. All you really need to do
is use a scrap piece of wood to act as a reference for the
front of the drawer slides. Then open the slides on a flat surface, like the bench or your table saw, and butt the front of the drawer slide up against that reference piece. Since everything should remain flat, all you have to do from there
is screw in a couple screws and remove the slide mount. Now, the cool thing
about these drawer slides is they're soft close,
but they're full extension and pretty cheap at only $9 a pair. So if you'd like to check them out, I'll leave a link down to the description. I've used these slides on a couple of different
projects in the shop. And for shop furniture,
I think they're perfect, but obviously they're not as nice as Blum undermount slides,
so don't get too excited. However, like the first
three "Star Wars" episodes, they get the job done. So to attach the slides to the case, I just cut out a few scrap
pieces to act as spacers and set the front of the drawer slide to the edge of my edge banding. For the bottom shelf, I
just use a couple of shims to lift it off the bottom slightly so that I don't get any rubbing, and then pop the shims out
with a flathead screwdriver. And then from there, I can test the fit of all my drawer boxes, making any adjustments if necessary. Now, like all drawer slides, they are snug on the first
push, but after that, the soft-close action seems
to work all right for me. It's just like how I
only like soft leather. My opinion will never be swayed. All right, so next, it was time
to cut out my drawer fronts. And for this, I'm going for
a continuous grain pattern since I have panels that
are large enough to fit it. So the first thing I need to do is cut down my oversized
panel over at the table saw. From there, I'll rotate the piece to trim off the factory edge. And with my width set, I can rip my second
board to its final width. The only downside at this point was that I didn't have my
outfeed table anymore. So in hindsight, I probably should have
waited to cut that down. But hey, two roller
stands get the job done. Next, I could set up a stop on my sled to trim the drawer fronts
to their final height. Cutting down these panels is again where a large sled like this shines. And just as a side note, there is a build video for this one for anyone who wants to check it out. All right, so with all my panels cut down, I could go ahead and start
laying out the position for my pulls. And the reason I'm doing
this now is because I'm going to attach these drawer fronts
using the hardware holes to secure them to my drawer boxes. And that'll make more
sense here in a second. So first, what I need to do is measure, obviously, from left to right, and then center my markings
from top to bottom. From there, I use an
awl to set up a target for my brad point bit, then take the drawer fronts
over to my drawer press and plunge the holes. Here, I'm not super worried
about the minimal amount of tearout I'm gonna get
on the back of these holes, but if you were so inclined, you could add a piece of painter's tape to the back to avoid it altogether. And if you don't have a drill press in your shop, don't worry, you could easily just do
this with a hand drill. So with all my hardware holes plunged, I could drop the drawer
front onto the case. And then from there, I'm gonna use some 16th of an inch shims to give me equal spacing
around my drawer fronts. And all I'm gonna do is drive some screws into those hardware holes to align those drawer fronts on the boxes. See? A quick and easy way to
get drawer fronts attached. Now, in the past, I've attached
drawer fronts with CA glue, double-stick tape, and just screws, but this honestly is my new
favorite way to do these. But let me know what your favorite way to attach drawer fronts
is down on the comments. Is it CA glue, double-stick
tape, or just screws? I'd love to hear what you
guys are doing in your shop. And as always, I'll reply
to your comments first because you guys are paying attention. All right, so once I have
the drawer box removed from the carcass, what I do is drive in two
screws from the backside. From there, I can remove
my two alignment screws, and then plunge two holes
all the way through the box. Since we drill these with the drill press, they are aligned straight, so attaching the hardware is pretty easy. From there, we can just
attach the pull hardware bolts through the back of the
holes, and Bob's your uncle. Well, actually my uncle's name is Jerry, but you get the idea. From there, we can slide
all of our boxes in and check the fit. And yeah, that looks good. Next, I just took a little bit of time to fill in all the brads
with some wood filler and send everything back to 220. And since everything is
already up on the bench, I figured now is as good a time as any to put a little finish on it. I'm not gonna finish the
entirety of the table, but it is walnut, so I figured I'd put a
little bit of oil on. So with the base cabinet done, it was time to get to work on the top. So to start out, I'm gonna lay
out marks every six inches. This will create a crosshatch
pattern across the entire top. And my plan is to drive in a screw at every one of these marks. This way, my two plywood sheets that are gonna create my
top will sandwich together, and these screws will
hold everything tight while the glue dries. Now, I'm gonna leave these screws in here, and I'll show you how I deal
with that in a little bit, but I suppose you could
go back and remove them if you really felt the need to. I just don't think it's necessary for my intended purposes of the table. It's not like I'm planning on
cutting through at any time, at least not intentionally. That's a lot of holes. During this process of
laminating my two top pieces, I'm gonna work off of my table saw. And that's because it's definitely the flattest surface I have in the shop. My work bench is pretty flat, but the table saw is
pretty close to perfect. So the glue I'm gonna use
for this is Titebond III, and that's because I've had
great results laminating with it in the past,
and I have a lot left. And for this project, I just bought this cheap
roller kit at the big-box store so that I can easily spread
out the glue for this top. And I'll use it in a
couple different places. So once I have a good amount in my tray, I apply a liberal coat to one side. And then from there, I'll just take the other
piece and lay it flat on top. And if you can, it's a good idea to get
some help for this part. Again, thank you, wife. Once I had my two pieces
sandwiched together, I just tried to align
them as best I could. And then from there, I drove screws into all
my pre-drilled holes. I did have a couple
spots that had some gaps, so I just pre-drilled and
drove in a couple more screws in those areas. I was just sure to avoid the area where I knew my miter slots would go. If not, those miter slots would be about as useless as a history degree. I mean, there's no future in it. All right, so with the glue dry, I just use my track saw
to flush up the edges. And this also ensures a nice square top. Another option would be just to use a flush trim bit on your router, but I think this is
probably a better way to go. And then from there, I
can mark the underside, which is my screw top side, for the placement of the top on the case. And once I flipped everything over, I could drive in some screws and some L brackets to
hold the top in place. I decided to face my screw heads down because I didn't want them to interfere with the Formica Laminate we're
going to adhere to the top. I don't know that it really
makes a huge difference, but in my head it makes sense. So from there, I can mark out and cut down my oversized sheet of Formica and get ready to adhere it to the top. Cutting the Formica is super
easy with a circular saw. Just be careful not to bend it too much, or you risk snapping it in half, which you definitely don't want to do. And to attach the Formica, I'm just going to use some rubber cement. Now, contact cement does
give off a lot of fumes, so make sure you have
the appropriate airflow and ventilation when you're using it. And a mask or respirator
doesn't hurt, either. So to apply it, I'm just
gonna use that same roller with a different nap that I used earlier. Again, this setup was pretty cheap, so it's all just gonna go
in the trash after this, but it's a lot easier and faster
than doing it with a brush. And being that it looks like it just had a battle with Spider-Man, you understand why this
was destined for the can. All right, so I let the rubber cement cure for about 30 minutes, and then it was time to
connect my two sheets. Now, to make sure they
don't connect prematurely, what I'm gonna do is lay down
some plastic between the sheet and the tabletop. And once I have everything aligned, I'll connect the end and
slowly pull the plastic away. From there, I just use a J roller to make sure that the laminate laid flat and there was no air
bubbles in the middle. And it's a good thing this
worked, 'cause if it didn't, this whole section would
be about as remarkable as a dry erase board. All right, so with the Formica
attached pretty securely, I could go ahead and flush trim the edge. Here, I just use a combination up/down bit to go around the perimeter, taking my time so I don't
take a gouge out of the edge. Now, in my experience, spiral
bits work great with laminate, but straight bits work just as well, which you'll see here in a little bit. So with the Formica top complete, I had a bit more material remaining, and I decided that I was
gonna align the lower shelves with what I had left. This ought to make it
easier to slide my tools in and out of the cabinet,
and more importantly, easier to slide the miter
saw in and out of it, since that's the bulkiest one I'll store. So all I did was, again,
apply some rubber cement, this time using a sponge brush,
and stuck my pieces down. Now, you'll recall
earlier we drilled holes for our adjustments on the feet, so I just had to mark
out and redrill those to make sure that I could
still adjust the table. So now that I've finished up the Formica, it was time to move on
to the edge banding. Again, here, I'm gonna use that 3/4 walnut that we milled earlier. So the first step here
was to rip down my pieces so that they were a 16th of an
inch over my table thickness. This way I have room to
flush trim everything once they're attached. Again, just like the toe kick. What I'm going for here
is some oversized planks. And that's because the easiest way that I've found to do mitered frames is to do them one piece at a time. So just like before, what I'm going to do is trim off one 45-degree
angle on all of my pieces. This will give me the starting point to figure out the actual
length of these boards. And then from there, what I'm gonna do is use some edge banding clamps to hold the edge banding
against the tabletop while I mark it out. And what I'm marking out here is just the edge of the tabletop. I know that that edge mark now is where my miter should start. So all I'm gonna do is
bring that piece back over to my table saw and align it
with the edge of the sled. In this situation, it's
best to sneak up on the cut so that you can test it out and come back and take off
more material if you need to. And what we're looking for here
is a nice tight miter joint. Now, since there's probably
gonna be a little spring in the board, try to get
it as flat as you can, and just know that those joints are gonna tighten up slightly
once you apply some glue and some pressure. And then from there, all you gotta do is
repeat that same process, working your way around the frame. And like I said, this process isn't just for framing out tables. You could do the same
thing for picture frames or any other edge banding needs. So once I had all my frame pieces cut out, I could go ahead and attach them with some glue and some brad nails. Again, here, I'm gonna use 23-gauge pins to hold everything in place. Now, if you don't have
these fancy band clamps, you could also just use blue tape, which I did here in some sections. So don't think they're
a must for edge banding. I think blue tape's like
the best gift you can get. It's either that or a broken
drum. You just can't beat it. So next, I turn back to my flush trim bit and flush trim the top of the edge banding to the top of the laminate. Again, here, I was just
careful to take things slow so I didn't take a chunk of
the top of my edge banding, or even worse, the Formica. And this is a side note. You can use any color
Formica that you want. I chose to go with black because it's a little
bit better for filming. And honestly, I just think
it looks good in the shot. So with everything flush, I could add a little bit of a roundover, and then adjust the table height so that I could mark out my miter slots. Now, these slots are gonna vary slightly, depending on how large of a
sled you use on your table saw. Since my sled is on the larger side, I did have to extend my
slots about 18 inches. This will give me me plenty of room to push the sled all the
way through the saw blade. So just take that into consideration with whatever size slots you choose to do. It'd be a huge bummer to
get everything together, only to find out that your
sled won't go all the way through your blade during a crosscut. So with the miter slot
location marked out, I went ahead and widened those lines by about a 16th of an inch, just to give those miter slots
a little bit of wiggle room. We're not looking for
them to be exact here, since the majority of
the work's gonna be done at the actual table saw. This is just to give
our sled some clearance. And then from there, I could use my router
to take a couple passes and cut in the grooves. Now, I started these
cuts with an upcut bit, and I was kind of worried that I was gonna peel up the laminate. And it didn't on the initial cut, but it did on my second pass. So in my second groove, I swapped out my spiral
bit for a straight bit, and it worked flawlessly. So just keep it simple. And while I finish up that second cut, let me just take a second to say that if you're enjoying these videos and you wanna support the channel, I'd like to invite you to join my Patreon. They'll get discount codes
on project plans, merch, and an invite to the Discord server, where we can talk about your projects and what I have going on in the shop. So if that sounds like something
that would interest you, be sure to check out the link down below. And again, to all you guys
who've already joined, thank you so much for your support. Your contributions go
directly to these videos, so I really appreciate it. All right, let's get back in the groove. So once I had both my grooves routed in, I went ahead and used my chisels to square off that rounded edge. Now, if you wanted to, you
could just knock off that peak and keep everything rounded, but I decided to square everything off since the rest of the table
has pretty hard edges. Just know that laminate
feels a little spongy under a chisel, so be careful not to overshoot your mark if you're chiseling it out. Next up, it was time for
the finishing touches. So here, I just used some wood filler in those pinholes again, and then hand sanded
around my entire perimeter, being sure to break all the hard edges. And then from there, I
just used my roundover bit to soften the look of the drawer fronts, and again, remove that hard edge. Next, I applied some of that same finish that I applied to the walnut
to the front of the drawers, and they were ready to go in place. But prior to popping them in, I did set the height of the outfeed table to just below the height of the table saw. Since the feet are concealed, we have to adjust the
height of the table prior to inserting the drawers. But with everything set, the drawers went in nice and easily. And look at that smooth motion. All right, so early on, I mentioned that my compressor would also live in this cabinet. So now that everything's together, what I'm gonna do is punch two holes in the backside of the cabinet that are going to allow for the air hose, as well as the power cord to pop through. Now, if you're building this project, these are obviously gonna
vary depending on your model. So take the measurements
directly off your compressor and make the adjustments. Though, in my design, I did leave a lot of wiggle room in there. And then from, there I could
slide in my compressor, my miter saw, and my spindle sander. Again, these shelves are great for getting these large
tools out of the way, since I don't use them super frequently. Next, I attach a power strip
on the bottom right side so I have easy access to
outlets for my hand tools. And then from there, I just segmented out a few of the drawers so that I could take
advantage of all the space and keep things a little
bit more organized. And then all that was left
was to close everything up and check out how it turned out. (upbeat music) You know, I gotta say I'm stoked
on how this one turned out. My main goals for this table were to, A, build a cabinet to store
some of my bulkier tools, and B, create an outfeed
and an assembly table that was an all-in-one solution to take up less space in my shop. Now, not only do I think this is a great outfeed and assembly table, but it's also a massive
storage upgrade for the shop. Now, is it gonna stay as
flat as a torsion box? Probably not, but it's plenty flat for the furniture I build, and it's super nice to finally
have a true outfeed table. And as far as shop furniture goes, it should be functional and, again, reflect the type of
furniture you wanna make. And I wholeheartedly believe that. So for me, I think this
hits the nail on the head. I think the Baltic birch and walnut accent fits
perfectly in the shop. And the storage gives me a ton of room and gets those bulkier
power tools out of the way. So if you enjoyed this build, check out this video over here next. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And like always, I knew this wood work, and I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)
