Well I’ll admit it, I’m shocked. The single blade box joint jig I built actually works! It doesn’t look like much at the moment, there was a fair amount of refining and design changing throughout the process, but now it’s at a stage where creating a nice fitting box joint is as simple as making a few cuts on the tablesaw.
I’ve redone the sketchup plans to reflect the new design (which can be built from mainly scrap wood) and will shoot a build video of it as soon as I can. While it’s not a replacement for a dado stack, it means I won’t have to spend any money on one for a while and will be great for any woodworkers out there like me who either don’t have a dado set, or whose saw can’t take one.
The final week of my holidays was a busy one; I had an 8m bin arrive on the Monday morning and got stuck into filling it. There was so much junk and rubbish just lying around the backyard, it really was a disgrace. A lot of it was from the garage renovation but there were also old toys and junk lying around. Now, most of it is gone. The kids are able to play outside again, the dog has room to run around, and I am able to access all of my tools!
The past year they’ve been gathering dust while boxed and stacked on top of each other. After filling the bin I decided it was time to start collecting all the tools together. Now, I had an old problem, I still had nowhere to store them all. Time to make something? How about some cheap cupboards with drawers for the tools?
I came up with the design for these very simple cupboards a while back. They are storage with a specific purpose; to be as cheap and easy to build as possible. They are sized specifically so that I can buy timber and sheets off the shelf and have very little waste. I built them with Kreg joints however they can also be made with simple screwed & glued butt joints.
Now while they aren’t ugly looking, they aren’t meant to be in a designer kitchen either. They are cheap, easy and quick to build. It costs around $25 to make one cupboard with doors, adding a drawer is just a few bucks more. I’ll eventually have half the garage lined with these so I want them to be very economical.
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For the bench top, I wanted to use 2 scrap sheets of melamine covered particle board I’ve held onto for about 4 years now. These were leftover from a kitchen renovation once upon a time I think. First I ripped about 10cm off of one side to remove water damaged edges, then cut them to width – which sliced off any damage on the other side. I laid these down on top of the 3 cupboards to make a benchtop. They are held in place with screws every 100mm and the exposed edge is trimmed with 12mm ply to neaten things up. Unfortunately the sheets were a fraction too short for the length of the wall so I plan to build some sort of storage cubby on the right hand side to cover the small gap. Possibly a battery charge station.
That benchtop will be used for sitting at (not on!) and maybe working on any electronics projects I have, it doesn’t need to be built tough like a proper workbench as I won’t ever give it a hard time.
Still a couple more night shifts at work then I’ll have a few days off to spend in the shop. I’d like to finish the cupboard doors and paint the whole assembly too.