I built the perfect miter saw solution.

you don't need a miter saw this is what the majority of people told me on Instagram when I asked for their favorite miter station features but I'm here to tell you that they are wrong because I have designed the perfect small shop solution for what might be the perfect small shop tool but first things first and to break down this beauty behind me while I sit here cursing past Jon and his non-existent organizational skills or his goal to strip out 85 of the screws he used to fasten version one with making this disassembly way more complicated than it needed to be I want to let you know there is an incredible set of plans available with step-by-step instructions and a detailed cut list it even tells you how many sheets of overpriced plywood you need but I do want to address that topic in more detail later I built this three years ago when I finally got a house with a garage it's a simple frame in panel construction and that can help keep costs down and it feels really approachable unfortunately it doesn't quite maximize the space that it occupies which I've learned is of the utmost importance in a small shop so while the end result of this build may look reasonably similar I was able to double the storage capacity at a more durable top and make way for a surprise that we've been working on in secret that I'll show you for the first time today foreign like I went with for version one I will be ditching that in favor of something fixed in place now if you're early on in your journey I would highly recommend considering putting these boxes on casters I originally had this much larger station on the right side of my shop and when I upgraded the table saw it took that Prime placement so it went to the left side of the shop but a big jointer bumped it out of the way to where you've always seen it on my channel along the back wall the point being as your tools evolve sole your layout but I'm maxed out on space and I have no plans to change it I hope nope your eyes aren't deceiving you right now you're going to see me using the miter saw to cut parts for the build and I did this a couple days earlier because miter saws absolutely kick ass for situations like this and it's reason number one those naysayers are wrong another tool in your shop that can accurately and safely cross-cut 40 pieces in mere minutes and before you start typing the table saw a good chunk of those parts are wider than my Saw's capacity and yours too generally I'm a stubborn person and for years I was very happy with the K4 jig from Craig but last summer I upgraded to the 720 Pro and so far stubborn John was wrong that's a really nice Creature Comforts like an auto adjust lock but man oh man I do love the dust collection overall 10 out of 10 definitely would buy again I do my best to be very transparent about what I don't know or I get inspiration from in my videos I'm just like everybody else when I need the answer to something I just go to YouTube so I'm using a blend of tips that I got from Michael Alm and Jason Ben for getting this toe kick built all the links to their videos below they are much better teachers than me I do have this weird part of the foundation to contend with but if you do purchase the plans your toe kick is a normal size unlike mine what I like about their methods is the Simplicity of leveling the bases with these shims independent of the cabinets so thank you both for the ideas all in all it was a reasonably easy process and after a couple tapcons to secure these in place we're good to go I'd like for you to go through and exercise with me now close your eyes and start to think to yourself you know what that was that was actually really stupid pretend like you closed them I need you watching the video now instead if you're new to this hobby let me let you in on a little secret you're going to require a lot of nonsense over the years but a lot of the nonsense is actually helpful to have around when you do occasionally need it now sadly AI hasn't come up with a revolutionary storage system yet and until that happens drawers are the best place to keep things you aren't constantly reaching for every shop needs a bank of cabinets to house said drawers which leads us to reason number two they are all wrong erase miter saw station from your vernacular instead think of it as a bank of cabinets that a practical and helpful tool sits on I don't want to turn this into a full-on cabinet instructional video but my best advice is to go slowly and find Creative Solutions to holding bigger pieces in place while you're attaching everything together the nature of pocket screws is they want to twist and misalign pieces so be sure to hold everything securely you might think this is redundant to use brad nails and screws but I like to think of the brad nails as a second set of hands that no one's ever going to see I've gone on the record as saying I think spending a lot of time and money on shop projects should not be prioritized over building Furniture so be sure you don't get sucked into thinking everything needs to be perfect before you build a cutting board if you're just getting started with this hobby the beauty of a design like this though is that it does present an excellent learning opportunity to practice making square boxes which is an invaluable skill as a woodworker I even made an entire video on it point being like most things in life it's all about striking a healthy balance and not getting wrapped up in hyperbolic points made on the internet yes I I get the irony in all of this I'm just going to Mark out the stud locations before I get these in place hi bingo this is a pretty cool little stud finder it uses magnets to find screws oh there's one and I'll just put a part right there and in between playing Fetch with project manager I can do the same for the other side before securing everything in place after going through the process I'm fairly certain that in this instance building separate toe kicks is officially an easier and more reliable procedure than the other methods out there together one of the major problems with my first bank of cabinets that a helpful tool sits on was the drawers everything on this side was 40 inches wide but by losing the frame and panel thickness I now have room up top to add smaller spaces on both sides which theoretically should help me stay more organized a situation like this is a great order of operations moment because there are a lot of tight spaces that make screwing in something like drawer slides a challenge so a little pre-planning goes a long way once you understand the direction a pocket hole wants to pull your boards the happier you will be when using them as a general rule of thumb the score will always move the piece towards the non-pocket hold side so for this outer board it's a challenge because there isn't a great way to clamp or stabilize the divider best thing I could come up with was thrusting a scrap piece of wood against it however for the opposing pieces you can Orient them so the screw will pull the board back towards the spacer block theoretically you shouldn't even need clamps but I like to be safe and then it's a simple rinse and repeat procedure while doing everything I can to find camera angles where my gangly arms aren't in the way but no such luck I'm upgrading my drawer slides to metal soft close now they're not necessary but I did find the cheaper ones I originally used do have the tendency to Sag I like to utilize a scrap piece of wood to lift them off the top a uniform amount also a massive shout out to this right angle attachment for the drill I would have been screwed no pun intended on this right side but it does an awesome job getting the self-centering bit into tight spaces this bag of cabinets that a convenient tool sits on will be getting two types of drawers and the upper set will be a down and dirty Construction simple half and sides will be pocket screwed together and since these drawers are shallow the bottom quarter inch panel will be tacked onto the underside with a little bit of glue and Brad Nails these aren't Landing you and fine woodworking but they get the job done and are quite functional and install is super easy simply lift the Box off the top with some shims secure the slides into place and then remove the drawer to give yourself access to the final screw location foreign before I work on these bottom drawers I do need to plop the face frame into place because that reveal will ultimately dictate the size of my boxes originally the plan was to Brad nail these frame pieces on but you know since it's Walnut now and not Poplar I want the Fasteners hidden thankfully you can make pocket holes on the go with the mobile 520 Pro it is quite convenient and for the people upset with the use of Walnut on the shop Furniture as a great Madeline says to the Tiger in the zoo poo poo as for the top frame that's getting a temporary hold with double-sided tape and you'll see why later in the build the more experience I get woodworking the more I realize that other than hand tool work there isn't a lot of skill refinement you can do to get better results instead those better results come from learning where things can go wrong or derail you in a couple days and then doing everything you possibly can to prevent that from happening to guarantee my back will be hurting tomorrow I'll continue contorting my body and install the spacers and drawer slides now the trick here is to use a scrap piece of plywood so everything will be level on the opposing sides and just work your way down the cabinet until you're in agonizing discomfort and you realize you should have done all this before assembling the Box idiot rather than continue to make an absolute mess over here because I don't have the dust collection hooked up and this Factory Chute is well broken now seems like a terribly appropriate time to try out this new dust shoot that I got from Travis at shop Nation we'll see how this goes all right I'm gonna give that a solid a minus which in the world the miter saws that's pretty good that was a lot of cuts and I mean there's some chips back there but that's just going to happen but there's no widespread stuff I don't know if I'm going to need the hood anymore I'm pretty happy with this this is a new segment called Lincoln Street honesty for the bottom drawers the plans call for construction just like this a Groove is cut on three of the four sides and the back piece is trimmed shorter so that the bottom panel just slides into place now I started doing that and then accidentally cut my sides instead of the bags and rather than waste time and money with another sheet of plywood I cut everything to match the new height and made the drawers exactly like I showed for the uppers I didn't even film anything after that because I was so disgusted with myself but if you want to see me demonstrate how to build that style I'll link a video below that covers it I can always give you a Razzle Dazzle fixes but I hope you appreciate a nice drink of Lincoln Street Honest Tea back to the video every build has that one thing you really don't want to do and for this project it's these small angled drawers and since I don't have a great plan here comments Wing It mode Let's try temporarily attaching the side pieces with a couple pocket screws and then making more people really angry by gluing Walnut Edge banding to the top sheet of plywood with this heavy assault back in place I can start marking out the lines for this angled section that to be honest I'm really regretting committing to I'm sure there are dozens of ways to make all this happen but I think this is the path of least resistance that involves very little actual math now it is important to offset that line by the thickness of the edge banding and I bet this is all going to be feeling a little bit over the top for a simple shop project and you're not wrong but at least you will have a pleasing backdrop to look at for most of my videos to distract you from this face that's made for radio as someone so kindly pointed out in my last video I mean they're not wrong but but a jerk I've come up with what I think is the easiest possible way to make these questionably functional baby drawers earlier I added the remaining front edge banding and then trimmed it to size no measuring needed which is my specialty and finally tackled this silly angled trim piece on both sides with all that done I can take the inside measurement of this drawer and then cut a quarter inch piece of plywood to that dimension I don't often have Creative Solutions but stay with me here because this one was rather clever after cutting the sides and back pieces to size I can tack together another not fine woodworking drawer and measure that front angle in place with this assembled now if only I had a great tool to make this cut though oh wait a miter saw silly me keeping that position locked in place I can cut the tiny front piece you might have also noticed those thin strips of wood on the inside of my now surprisingly functional baby drawers I installed those earlier and that's to make sure this has an identical reveal to the large drawers that are on the slides next to it you'll see what I'm talking about later executive decision time before I make some important cuts on the miter saw I've been putting off changing this blade for three years so still a quick upgrade aside from being a more premium blade this new one from Ridge carbide is a full kerf which should result in less deflection even though it hasn't been a major issue for me but we will test it on the hardest wood in North America at the end of the video I hate that I have to say this but it's not sponsored I just personally like supporting made in the U.S companies and I've had great success with their rip blade on my table saw so I wanted to see what happens on this convenient tool right now I'm working on the continuous grain fronts the small three-quarter inch divider cut needs to be made seven times and the most accurate and safest tool is no doubt a table saw with a stop lock rather than reset the stop block seven times The Wider Cuts can be made on the miter saw so there is significant value in having a second machine at your disposal a more common occurrence in a small shop is that your table saw is out of commission because it's covered up by a big project you are assembling and there are other options like a circular saw but with small parts the wrong tool for the wrong job leads to accidents all this to say I've noticed the most vocal opinions about ditching a miter saw come from people with larger spaces and dedicated assembly areas leading us to reason number three they are all wrong because the smaller the shop the more important this convenient tool becomes okay this is getting completely insane but the good news is everything's looking really good the only problem here is that there's a reveal on the sides and nothing on the top and the bottom so we have two eighths of an inch to account for the trick is that you need to remove 1 8 from the bottom and then 1 8 from the top on the table saw otherwise if you remove it all from one side all this continuous green that we worked really hard for is going to go right out the window what I really like about this design is the ability to install all of these small pieces and fronts for the upper section with the top off which is best case scenario when you're screwing faces to drawers and since the reveal is 1 8 of an inch all the way around more of these shims get the job done fast and easy well the baby drawer is a bit of a pain but it was definitely worth the extra time because those reveals are remote a quick and helpful tip when you're removing and then trying to re-reference exact locations in any build Carpenter's triangles are your absolute best friend for realigning pieces but now you can finally see why I couldn't attach the top face frame earlier one of the other major upgrades I've been wanting to make is the work surface now version one had an MDF top and while it's held up reasonably well it's definitely starting to show its wear so I'm going with a laminate top for version two the nice thing is it's much more durable and as a bonus it looks cool remember when I said I try to be as honest as possible about what I don't know well you're looking at the extent of my laminate experience unfolding in front of you the guy who drinks a lot of bourbon had a great video so I just did what he said this is one of those tasks that seems daunting trust me I was worried about screwing it up but it was shockingly easy and the reward is a dramatically more functional top which I have found is worth it on my main workbench and if you're wondering how I have that but never did an install before a friend had extra laminated sheets and I just bought one of his another big change I'm making is the location of the inlet t-track on version one it was just in front of the fence but on 2.0 it will be set back behind and why is that you may be asking I'll show you in just a bit be patient just remember always do multiple passes on a cut like this but most important double check your t-track fit before removing the edge guide it is highly unlikely you can ever duplicate that exact placement again [Applause] full disclosure the only reason I'm putting any type of finish on this piece is to make the walnut look cooler I'm not bothering with the plywood portions because I just haven't found it necessary in my experience it's shop Furniture it's going to get abused even this one I made big advocate for reasonably priced jigs that make intimidating tasks more approachable for beginners hence why I've had these two from the crack for about as long as I've been woodworking first up is the hardware jig it's such a fast and reliable way to pre-drill for screws I even learned that it works just as well when it's missing one of the drill guides just plop the one back and forth without even screwing it down yes I'm installing these drawers top down but I would rather the upper three stay the same size and any tinkering on the reveal can be done on the single bottom piece I want to Circle back to how many sheets of plywood you need for this build if you're a beginner you're going to hear a lot about a free software called cut list Optimizer after entering the data for every cut you need on a build it lays them out on your stock size to minimize the material you purchase in theory it's pretty good but the reality for a project like this is It's Not Practical it doesn't account for how sheet goods are truly processed and you would spend so much extra time and likely make many more mistakes trying to follow their recommendations so while these plans show you the bare minimum plywood you need to purchase I wasn't going to fool myself and did use leftover scraps in half and three quarter inch to get everything done I think it's important for people to understand the limitations of suggestions you often hear in the Echo chamber of social media that give you very little context but second jig is the concealed hinge guide again I bought this over seven years ago and I think it's less than 35 bucks but it's worth every penny without moving the setup you can draw out the recess spots for the hinges and then pre-drill screw locations to secure them later it's nuts how fast this is I've done entire kitchen sets with this thing it's one of my favorites for a reason with my convenient tool back in place and squared up to the top I can use these composite shims to level everything and then lock it down and trim off the excess my final upgrade and probably the most to overdue is a new zero clearance if you could even call this green tape a zero appearance at all I got this from a fellow woodworker who makes these in a host of different wood species for saws of all shapes and sizes I'll link his store below and also a 10 off code and bonus points for supporting a small business which is very important to me let's talk about this t-track placement and the surprise under this box I've been working with my good friend Izzy Swann to come up with the perfect stop block for miter and table saws in official disclaimer this is our first prototype it's just a proof of concept but let me show you some of the best features this will have a viewfinder to read a tape measure which has been one of my major gripes it is Rock Solid and will not move on you there is going to be a micro adjust in both directions pretty nice huh and best of all it flips up out of the way now if you want to stay tuned for updates on when this is available I have a link below to sign up we hope to start pre-selling this fall but I am really pumped about this and I hope you are too time to take this Pimp My miter saw for a test bin with some six quarter pecan quite hard my final objection to the naysayers is this the internet is an overwhelming Adventure but ultimately the only person that knows if you need a miter saw is you I'm of the belief this is a fantastic use of space and this particular build provides just enough challenge to help you along your journey remember for anyone that tells you a miter saw isn't accurate enough we're building birdhouses and tacky tables not rocket chips we'll see ya

Channel: Lincoln St. Woodworks

Views: 559,554

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Id: 1ec_sQjV4Rw

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023