MY GARAGE FURNITURE

WELCOME TO MY MAN CAVE

I get teased by my friends, neighbors and wife about the furniture I made in the garage, FOR the garage.  Tends to bite me in the butt whenever Denise wants me to make her something for the house.  I really don't know why.

THE ROUTER TABLE

 

This was my first overall project for the garage.  It was a replacement to the MDF router table I had years ago, and brought with me from Ontario.  That is birch plywood from RONA.  No, it isn't expensive, this is some Chinese made stuff where the outer layers are about .010" of an inch thick.  You get it right the first time, or, you end up with red (YES RED) glue showing through. NOTE: This stuff is 'buyer beware'.  I have purchased some of this plywood where Mao's buddies forgot to (or cheapened out on the amount of) glue between the layers, but its 20.00 dollars cheaper than 'real' birch plywood'.  

The dimensions for the table were not overly critical except for one, the height, EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) in the garage had to  be 36" tall, while on wheels.  This allowed me to push a sheet of plywood through my table saw while using everything in my shop as a rest table for it, on its way.  Room is limited and I didn't want to have to take my table saw outside to cut a piece of plywood without it snagging on all the other 'furniture'.  As I mentioned, everything is also on casters so I can move it around while working on the bigger projects. Personally, I think its pure genius on my part.  HAHA

The drawer slides sure make up for the plywood.  These are Blum self closing drawer slides.  Get them close and they close by themselves.  Expensive?  Nope,  I bought 25 sets of these from Habitat for Humanity's RESTORE. NOTE:  For the record, I don't own HFHR, but I sure believe in what they do, I am a member, and, they have some fantastic deals if you are making things or building a house.  So I promote them whenever I can.  Want to guess where I got the solid brass drawer knobs?  

 One given, in the design was the use of a dust collecting guide.  I made this from .....  yeah... plywood. 

The lift table for the router is from Woodpecker.  I bought this at at wood show, and had it in storage until I actually had a garage to use it in.  This project was built around that and my DeWalt Router.

To keep the bits from rolling around, I made inserts for each diameter of the shaft.  I have tried a lot of bits, my favorites are FREUD.  Period.

THE STORAGE CABINET

This is the sister cabinet for the Router Table.

  This is the two cabinets together.  NOTE:  The finished Router Guide with Cherry inserts.  MAN, DO I LOVE WOOD.

 THE TABLE SAW

This is, without a doubt, my favorite machine. "This is my table saw, there are many like it but this one is mine".   It started life as a Delta with the cast table.  I personally loved it as is. However, I felt it needed a face lift to match the router table (which is a close second in the favorites category).

This was a bit tricky to make as it was to have a built in sawdust drawer, and side cabinet.  (Unfortunately, none of the pictures show the doors on it.  I ran out of wood (built from scraps from the other cabinets) and didn't want to buy a full sheet to finish the doors.  So I patiently waited until I acquired some from a future project.

The top drawer is actually fake.  I need that so I could get into the lower part of the saw for fine adjustments.  Want to guess what the height of the top of the table is?

THE TABLE SAW OUT TABLE

Even with all the furniture being the same height, I required some sort of out table for the saw.

This was, to say the least, and experimental prototype.  I used 2x2 wood (NOTE:  My pet peeve: nothing is the size they advertise), some 1 1/2 inch wood dowel, and some PVC pipe.  I wanted this to be a simple roller table that was easy to push a sheet of plywood over, and it had to be portable, meaning, removable from the tablesaw.  If you look closely, you can see a piece of aluminum angle attached to the back of the saw.  This was attached using holes that were already in the table.  

This is a picture of the table, disassembled, and folded up for storage.  It can be hung on the wall, when not in use.  In the future, I plan on redoing this table to make it a bit smaller, and have it fold in several places to make it less bulky.  Other than that, it works great. 

THE TAPER JIG

Ever try to cut a piece of plywood on a tablesaw to 45 degrees?  Sucks.  So I made this fully adjustable Taper Jig that conveniently fits over the table saw guide bar.  You simply set up the angle to the blade, put in your piece of wood, and push the jig through, using the guide as a .....well....  a guide.

 

THE LATHE TABLE

Now what would a workshop be without a wood lathe?  Well, I guess it would be a 'Latheless Workshop'.  HAHA.  Not mine.  I got this lathe as a gift from my Inlaws (not the capital I).  They know how much I love working with my hands.

 
Since I didn't have a lot of attachments and accessories for the lathe, I opted to make the table into a screw and nail storage cabinet.  Again all my criteria were met, Chinese Birch Plywood (and No, the drawers were not Mao Tse Tung-in-groove) There, got that joke out of the way.  I used eight casters for the weight, 36" high, and brass knobs.  What is missing on this cabinet is the Blum drawer slides.  The RESTORE didn't have enough of them for this project.  Thats 21 drawers.

The first two levels of drawers have sections built into them to hold the various sizes of screws and nails.  In the end....  I think I need more drawers.

THE WOOD RACK

 What's a wood shop without a wood rack.  I didn't want it to take up the whole garage so I settled on this design.  The arms are removable, and are held in place with 1/2"  dowel pegs.  They can be removed to accommodate more or less wood as needed.  Each arm is about 12 inches long.  In the picture the top horizontal support board has holes every few inches, this allows me to move the vertical supports around as I see fit.  I hated the thought of having a permanent structure blocking my next machine purchase.

HOME PROJECT: AIR FILTER

MY HOMEMADE AIR CLEANER

I spend a lot of time working with wood in my small garage/workshop.  Even making a few cuts on the table saw will put a lot of dust in the air (No, I don't have a dust collector....yet).  I happened to be strolling through my absolute favorite store, Habitat for Humanity's RESTORE, and found a blower for sale, so I scooped it for $25.00.  This was the start of my air cleaner.  Now that the hard part was done, I bought a furnace filter to be used to catch all the dust in the air. 

 

I had no absolute dimensions for the size of the box, other than, it had to house the blower, and it had to fit a common sized furnace filter.  I had lots of scrap chipboard I 'acquired' at the local landfill site, when I was dumping branches, at the same time some carpenters were dumping almost full sheets of chipboard, so that was the foundation for the box.   NOTE:  The framing for the opening is inset.  This is to allow the filter to be flush with the outside of the box. Make sure you put some sort of framing in the center of the filter area, or the blower will suck the filter in.  

I then wired the blower to a pull cord to give me three different speeds.  The pull cord switch was purchased at Home Depot.

 

Next came the filter door.  I used a piano hinge that I had kicking around, and a simple latch to keep it closed.  Ok Ok, the hinge doesn't match the white, and steel motif of the filter, but I didn't have to buy one.  I then used a louvered vent cover to create the air return.

Eyebolts were then installed in the top of the cleaner box to mount it to the ceiling.  Make sure you put washers on them or the vibrations may eventually pull the nuts out of the box.  And no one wants their nuts pulled!!

The finished air cleaner mounted to the ceiling.  How does it work you ask?  The garage is 23ft by 13ft x 10ft high.  This will clear out the dust in the garage in about 2 minutes.  That is satisfactory for me, since I turn it on BEFORE cutting wood. Total cost, about 45 dollars.