Miter saw station

[Chet]

Submitted on the old forum by Jamie

Had a great Saturday in the shop. Have a giant hole in my shop space that needs to be filled in with tool and hardware storage.

 
Decided to finally start on a miter saw station. After watching countless videos and snooping on the net I think I have what will best work for me. Got all the plywood worked up yesterday. They are going to be a frameless cabinet which I’m not used to building so I’m sure I’ll hit a few bumps along the way. 

All the ply in my cart ready to go.

 

On the backside of my cart I have a place to crosscut sheets. Got the plans from stumpy nubs. Made a crosscut jig that works surprisingly well. Get very nice square cuts. 
I like to use 1/8” deep dados and rabbits for aligning during assembly. Tons of edge banding to do. Got the edge band off Amazon and had plenty of glue on it but was pretty narrow so not much room for error.

  

Glad I had a downdraft table for all the sanding. Should maybe make an effort to clean it out more. Ended up getting 2 coats of lacquer applied before the end of the night.

 

Drawer slides showed up! Got one of the two cabinets put together and the second about half way. The slides I ordered off of Amazon, I’m not sold on them completely. Have ordered slides from them before and thought they were decent. Me being the cheap ass that I am decided to get the ones with screws. 6 screws is what they send along per set. 6 of the cheapest softest screws I have ever used. Slides seem to be ok. If they were going in my kitchen I’d send them back. Should have the second cabinet assembled tomorrow night and then need to start on toe kicks. 


I like to put the drawer slides on the cabinet sides before I put them together. This project has reminded me why I don’t like to build frameless cabinets. Just a lot of messing around making sure everything comes out square. 
it is exciting building this and I can really see the need for it and the miter saw fence. Hard to get the consistency in parts measuring and marking. 

Thank you all for the kind words. Got back at it tonight. Bigger cabinet was giving me fits last night and thought about it all day at work. Decided to beef it up and add cleats to the back in the groves I had already had in place. Worked really well. I then took a different approach for the last divider piece by attaching  cleats before putting it together. Wow! That made it go really smooth. Maybe it’s not the euro style cabinets that were the problem but my approach on assembly.

Moved onto the toe kicks from there. I made the same style as I did on my out feed table since it was quick easy and affective. I use 2x4 material, run them on edge over the jointer then rip the round edge off. Flip it around and rip off the edge on the jointed side. I then run the faces through the planner just to clean them up. I just put them on 16” centers and use some 3” screws to hold it all together. I like to build the toe kick separately from the cabinet just for ease of leveling. I don’t remember where I seen the idea of using t-nuts and carriage bolts as the levelers but it is cheap an easy!

had to mock it up before heading in for the night. Didn’t level it yet. Just wanted to see what it would look like. 

am pretty happy with it! Will have to do some dust collection work as I need to get a hose to the right saw on its own gate. Going to use that around the bench and for my downdraft table. Haven’t decided if I’m going to run it behind the cabinet or go across the top. The cabinet is 24 in deep but I’m pretty sure the top will be at least 30-32. Reasons for that are for the dust collection hose and to have deeper upper cabinets. 
 

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Work has slowed down on the station, well maybe not the work but the amount of visible progress sure has. Spent most of the day Saturday and part of the day Sunday building and figuring out the fence system along with putting the top together. Edgebanded all edges with 3/4 maple. Like the look of it. I ran into problem after problem building the fence. I actually sat down and drew up what I had in mind, that never seems to work out for me. Not that I have an issue with math it’s taking the time to make sure it’s correct. For shop projects I feel I’m better off flying by the seat of my pants. To top it off on the main fence, left side of the saw, every Brad nail decided to follow the grain and blow chunks out of the top. Frustrating to say the least. I ended up leaving it as I was out of material and figured it will get beat up eventually. 
I put the kreg miter saw system on tonight. Ordered the kit along with a 4’ piece of the track that I put to the left of the saw. Glad I did! Some of the joints grab just a touch when moving the slides. Nothing to annoying but enough that I’m glad I did it the way I did. The system is pretty easy to set up. They provide good instructions. I left my saw about 1/16 in front of the fence, my belief is that your piece really only needs to be square on your saw fences. I know that can stir up some controversial conversations, but I will occasionally cut rough lumber on the saw. With that little room I think it makes the saw safer.

 

 Another thing I’m kicking around is a dust collection hood around the saw. Trying to come up with a design on it. Problem that I’m facing is the dust collection.  Since mine comes in from the top with not much room to spare on the back I’m thinking a box with a hose coming through the top to attach to the dust port on the saw, along with an open 4” port as low as I can get it to the table top. Also need to get a line coming out of the right side of the saw with a hose for hooking to my down draft table and for cleaning up around the bench. 

This might better explain my thinking

 

Started on the dust hood tonight, it’s more of a dust containment than a hood. Lots of trial and error to get this thing to hopefully work. Have to reconfigure some dust collection to hook it up. Haven’t got it trimmed out but thought I would share the progress. Neat little feature is the donut I cut to fit the saw and the hose.

 

Oh I should mention I did tape around the seams on the elbow and still have some caulking or weather stripping to add. Was hoping to get the drawers built this weekend but have some Christmas gifts and need to clean shop. Amazing how fast it becomes a total nightmare when doing a project like this. 

So having some trouble hooking this up to the main system. I would really like it hard piped as much as I can. Problem is 6 months ago when I put the main pipe and drops in that they don’t quite line up with what I have a need for now. 

?. As I was typing this I figured it out! You guys are so much help!

 

started by hard piping and it just didn’t lineup. Didn’t like the look of the pipe being angled like it was, so tried plan b which was use flex hose. 

So got the hose wedged in and tried it. Lost quite a bit of suction. Thought about cutting the 6 inch pipe shorter and using a longer piece of flex hose   Then had an idea smack me in the face! Why not just move the whole cabinet to the right a few inches and have it all line up? Boy did I feel pretty foolish for spending an hour trying to figure it out with such an easy solution.

 

So here is how it’s ending up. It works surprisingly well. Still get some dust sitting inside the hood but it is a lot better than what I have ever had for dust collection on a miter saw. 
The pipe coming straight off the t is going to go under the bench in the opening between the wall and the top, coming out on the right side to have a hose hook up. Still have to seal the seams and screw everything together yet. 
Got the shop somewhat cleaned up and started in on a lego table build. 

Got the kids LEGO table finished up over the weekend and started on the drawers for the mitersaw station tonight. Did a before and after shot of cutting the parts to see how well the dc is working. Can’t say I’m disappointed in it and also can’t say that I’m blown away by it. Guess the main thing is that it keeps the really fine dust from floating around the shop. One nice feature is that the hose can slide off the saw and suck up whatever mess is left. 

Been a busy week around home and made some progress on the station. Wednesday night I snuck out to the shop after I got the kids to bed and got the drawer parts dovetailed. For some reason it took quite a bit of messing around with the setup of the jig to get a loose enough fit that the pins wouldn’t split. I think with plywood vs hardwood it doesn’t cut nearly as clean and can be fuzzy and make the fit tighter. 

 

i also got the groove cut in the parts to accept the bottoms. Must mention again that the adjustable bench is really a pleasure to have. Was able to move it up so cutting the dovetails I wasn’t slouched over. Makes it easier on the back for sure. 

Cut the drawer bottoms out of 1/2 ply. Mostly cleaned up a bunch of scrap cuts I had from the walls in my shop. Did end up cutting one new sheet up. Drawers went together really nicely and I dug through the fridge to find a new glue bottle. For some reason I’ve never gotten one that I like. Have a tightbond one with the wide tip that you have to squeeze the snot out of it it get glue out. Have been mentioning this issue to my wife and handed me this bottle.

 

Really made getting the glue into the tails a lot easier. A glue bottle is now on the shopping list. I did sand the bottoms and inside parts of the drawers quickly with the random orbit. Used my new ridgid sander and I must say the dust collection on it is surprisingly very good! 

went together pretty fast. As soon as the last one was assembled I went right to cleaning them up. Used my disk-belt sander to do the bulk of the work. This tool I picked up at and auction this summer and don’t use it very often but it is handy to have. Went right from the sander back to the random orbit to knock off the edges.

Made a couple quick jigs for spacing the drawer slide on the boxes and got them all put in with no troubles at all. Very happy with the progress that I got tonight. What do you guys think for fronts? Was leaning towards more spalted maple but not sure if I have enough. Another thought was to use plywood. Would like to possibly cut handles in to the fronts to avoid getting snagged on drawer pulls

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just brag a little too. Wife brought me a beer out as I was finishing up. ????

 

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Did make some progress on the station today, limited shop time for me the last week or so with holidays, bowl games, fishing trips and weddings. 

Got the dust collection pipe all buttoned up today and a piece of trim put on the hood. Got the cross pipe ran and still need to decide on a blast gate, maybe a floor sweep incorporated into it. For the time being it has about 20’ of 4” hose on it for shop clean up. Decided to go back and tape all the seems on the existing pipe. Got about halfway across the shop. Also sealed some of the blastgates up with some duct sealant.  

Finally got some shop time Sunday afternoon, started on milling up the drawer fronts. Was rough cutting them with the skill saw. Started with the m18 but it just didn’t have the power to deal with the maple. Had to break out the old craftsman to do the job. Saw is heavy as a tank but has endless power. The lumber I have i got at a deal of a price of $0.80 a bf. Its not kiln dried but has been air dried for a few years. Same stuff that I used on the table saw out feed table. Have ran into some issues with some wood movement on the raised panel drawer front. With the shop heated by a forced air heater that basically blows right at the outfeed table I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by it. 

Ran into some issues while running the fronts through the planner. The dust collection in the planner kept plugging up. Opened the planner up at least 5 times during the operation. The material is at 1 1/16-1/8 so am removing a bunch of material. Filled the equivalent of a 55gal drum.  Lucky I have a farmer close by that I can dump the barrel off at anytime. He appreciates it and every time he’s runs into me at the local tavern the beer is on him! 

Increasing my search on a different jointer. Was thinking the jointer planner combo but lately have been thinking a 8” jointer and a separate 15” planner. Idk. Can never make up my mind. 

This week is my last week of having to travel for work conferences, so hopefully I can get some more time in the shop after that. 
 

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Sprayer part showed up today, along with new planner blades and a flush trim saw. Weird. The planner blades actually fit my planner so guess they were a blessing. 

Got the drawer fronts spayed with a few coats. Really like how the grain in them came to life. It’s a mixture of spalted, half cracked and rotten along with some quarter sawn maple (something I have never seen before).  I didn’t spend a lot of time on making sure that they were perfect as being shop furniture and wet wood I’m a little concerned about them moving all over the place. Have them sized to be full overlay with an 1/8 gap give or take.  Thought I’d share some of the variety that showed up.


 

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Good tip on a few extra screws. Typically I’ll put 2 screws in a front then the handle bolt as well. I think with these even though they are getting attache$ to plywood drawers they will be getting at least 4 screws just to try to tame the twisting. I need to get a picture of the raised panel that shrunk out of control. 

lol I’m thinking the more I work with this wood stack that it shoulda went to a heating source. Don’t know how good of shade tree that it was. My uncle cut up a bunch of maple throughout the years and had about 10k bf of it air dried for who knows how long in his shed. Gave it to me in trade for some planing. Can’t complain to much. 


As you can see there was a little “shrinkage”
 

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Got the drawer fronts on! Didn’t have much issue other than the top row being difficult to clam in place. With the bottom 3 rows I would just clamp and shoot a few brads from inside to hold the front in place to get some screws in. Ended up putting 4 screws in most of the fronts. Some of the twisted ones got six to try and straighten them some. The top row I held them in place and hit them with the 23gauge pinner. Nice thing with this maple being almost completely covered in defects is it’s easy to hide the pins. 

I will add the doors after I complete the upper cabinets, so I can make them all at the same time. The door openings are right at about 24” was originally thinking 1 door for each but the way this maple likes to move I’m leaning more towards 4 doors total. 


 

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Knocked out a prototype pull today. Could batch them out and save a little time had about 20 min in it, so for that amount of time and it not being finished I think for 1$ each I might just buy them. Still undecided. 

Started on the upper cabinets today as well. The left one is 30x64 and the right which is a little more challenging is 32x48. Have to admit this is one of the first times I ever have dry fit a cabinet, with it having a charging station and a few other built in storage plans I figured it would be a good idea. I like to finish all the parts before I assemble them, which I do think is a little easier than finishing a complete cabinet.

 

the start of it shown here, ended up putting another shelf in it below the center one that is there now. Will take some time to get this one to come together. Also making it a little undersized so if I do upgrade saws and have to move everything to make room I shouldn’t have to rebuild the cabinets. 

Started getting door parts cut up last night. Without the jointer it was a little challenging, put a straight edge on the lumber with the homemade track saw.  Didn’t work to bad. The osb has enough grip on it that a clamp isn’t needed. 
The maple that I have is pretty twisted up so i was glad that the jointer showed up. 

Have all the stiles and rails milled up and are ready to go to the shaper. Still need to get the panels worked up. Might have wide enough boards that glue ups might not be necessary.

 

Got all the door panels milled up tonight. Man did it take some time to get them all planed down. Didn’t want to overwork the dewalt planer so took around 1/32 a pass. Some of the panels are 11” and change so took my time with it. Only plugged the dust collection on the planner one time, did some looking at it and discovered an issue. A while back I had a knot tear free and get into the fan which melted some of the housing.  Order some replacement parts for it today. Skip planned the wider panels to get them as flat as I could, luckily they were 1 1/8 thick to start. Got them to all come out flat. an the door stile and rails after that. Really enjoy the tenening jig that came with the shaper. Helps keep the fingers in place. With the stiles I swing the power feeder in and it makes quick work on running the parts. Almost goes to fast. Nothing more satisfying to me than seeing wood chips fly off a cutter head and go up the dust chute.  

All in all it’s been a great couple of days in or evenings in the shop. All went well tonight except this little guy... 

 

will have to make a new one. Nothing like 2 shaper setups for one part. ?

Had the dust barrel empty before I started milling door parts and have it plump full already. Crazy how fast 55 gal fills up. 

Thank you guys from my better half for listening to me, she appreciates not having to hear me talk shop. 
 

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Got the panels machines and doors glued up after work today. The little black ball’s in the grove are space balls that compress to keep the panel tight in the frame. Am still trying to figure out my stile and rail cutters to dial in the perfect size panel. These are a little to free for my liking. Good thing it’s shop furniture. 

the shop is getting pretty dusty with all the progress, should clean my filter bags out. Have gone about 150 gallons of dust since I last took them off and blew them out. Am thinking about buying a 20x60 bag to replace one of the smaller ones. 

Am planning on spending tomorrow sanding and cleaning the doors up, hopefully get finish applied to them as well. 

Upper cabinets finished applied, assembled and put into place. Just waiting on hinges to be delivered. Couldn’t resist putting a few tools in them. That shop organization project is gonna take quite a bit of time! Have a few more ideas for the miter saw station once I get the doors on I’ll see how it will work out. 
Was pretty nice weather here today high of 35 so I opened up the doors and took the leaf blower to the shop. Had a cloud of dust rolling out.

 

Hinges showed up! Man was I excited to get the doors on, only to get all the hinges mounted to the doors before I figured out that I got the wrong ones. 

These doors have really troubled me and I’m not at all thrilled on how they have turned out. They ended up smaller than I had figured them out to be. Believe that mistake was made in a combination of smaller mistakes. My rails ended up being 1/32 short, believe it was from the rub collar on the tongue cutter. Second was, I like to pass all 4 edges over the shaper with a straight cutter to clean up any saw marks or uneven joints on the top and bottoms. I typically take a 1/16 off which seems to give a clean cut. Thinking that cut was a solid 3/32 as the rails are a little undersized. Also when I shaped the rails I do the same as removing a 1/16 and believe that was strong as well. Which would also explain why my door panels were a sloppy fit. I’d like to blame some of it on the shaper fence as I noticed some flex in it. I’ve never been fond of the grizzly fence. I don’t think I can quite get the accuracy out of it that I was used to coming from the cabinet shop. He has a set of weaver shapers which are the ultimate system for making doors. I also am not happy with the panel cutter. To keep the whole profile you have to make your rail cut super deep which weakens the grove that holds the panel in. I’m leaning towards a new door panel cutter and style and rail cutters. Just overall disappointed in them and myself for assuming all was well. 

Sorry for the rant just frustrated with the whole setup. 

ok....on to fixing the issue. I’m pretty sure I can fix it with different overlay hinges. The doors and drawer fronts won’t line up perfectly and I guess I will be ok with that since it is shop furniture. Will be a good reminder as I move forward with other projects.

 

the real problem doesn’t show up till I tried to add the door to the right of these. The hinges I ordered somehow are full overlay, never took into consideration the middle doors. Have the hinges on the doors cranked all the way in and still can’t get the gap to close. Going to order 1/4 overlay hinges to try to resolve it. These European style cabinets are definitely not my specialty. From now on building with face frames! 

On a better note, got asked and paid for it already to build another shaker candle stand table. Did get the leg blank and top glued up tonight. Have enough cherry on hand to complete it. 

Also got the parts for the planner, got them put in and hoping that it fixes the dust collection issue on it. Old parts had quite the meltdown.

 

The doors are on! Not the best looking gaps but hey they open and close, slowly. These amazon special hinges will not be used on my kitchen cabinets someday. Not much adjustment, or should I say tricky to adjust. I’m sure these doors will move around a bit yet so didn’t fine toon them. 

It is nice to see this project coming together. A few things that I want to do that are visible yet, fill in the gap to the right of the dust hood and complete the shelf. Thinking I’m going to put a false back between the upper cabinets to cover some of the piping. Might drill some shelf holes between the uppers to add some storage. Don’t really have anything to put in the space. Was thinking maybe making a small display of some of my grandfather’s tools. Have an old draw knife of his that I’d like to have visible. 

still haven’t ordered any pulls. Trying to decide what I want. Did snap a picture of the one that I made. 

Im leaning more towards boughten ones. 

Also still have quite a bit of work to do in the drawers. Just getting everything in its place. As well I’m considering taking the right two doors off of the base cabinet and making drawers for that opening. Would be shallower drawers to hold my wrenches, sockets and things like that. Was thinking splitting the depth of the drawers that are right of the opening in half to get it to look right. Contemplating this as it is pretty prime space in the flow. Other option would be to buy a rolling box.  Thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. 

Haha! If you married her sister you are a better man than I, I definitely got the best one out of the clan. In our old place we/she painted the cabinets. Actually I think she started the project and after about 3 months of having no doors on the cabinets I ended up painting them. It was a fixer upper house that I purchased before Courtney came around. Was a nice little place on a small river. Paid 23k for the property. But sold it for a nice profit 7 years later. Basically had a project going at all times while we were there. About 2 months before we moved out I finished our bedroom project. Room came out pretty darn nice.

 

I did find some pictures of it. Bought the railing parts and just finished them and installed it. Where the tv hangs was a chimney that I took out and carried all the brick out in 5 gallon pails. Made all the trim, bought the doors. The back wall I built a stub wall just to hide electrical. The old house was plaster and lath walls that were all cracked up. Skim coated them and retextured. Wish I could find a before picture. 

Decided to fix an eye sore to me on the miter saw station. Decided as long as I was spraying some lacquer the other day I’d do a few ply parts to button this up. 

Filled in the gap above and beside the saw to mostly hide the duct work. For some reason I didn’t like looking at the cluster I had going to the saw. Plus reaching over the hood to open the blast gate was a little stretch. Also if I was on the other end of the shop I couldn’t see if the blast gate was open or shut. Ran the planer a couple times with the gate open and dropped the suction enough to plug up the middle drop pipe. The planner is hooked to the third drop. 

Am not completely done with this little upgrade but thought I would share some of the progress. Also added a little bit storage to the inside of the drill storage area. Just enough room for most common bits that I tend to grab. 

Going to put a handle of some sort on the end of the stick coming from the blast gate. Also need to get some finish on the trim on the saw hood.