Under-the-

Table C_aW

Cabinet

The first secret to creating a pleasant, productive wood-shop is to get rid of your power tool stands. I mean that sincerely. Unless you pay a zillion dollars for top-of-the-line tools, the stands that come with most woodworking machines are engineering afterthoughts. The dead space beneath them wastes one of the most precious commodities in your workshop: space to work.

So the second secret is to replace each stand with something that does more than hold the tool up in the air. With a little ingenuity, you can create a stand that provides convenient storage for accessories, additional work surface, dust collection, and maybe even holds a second tool. It doesn't have to be a piece of fine cabinetry — a plywood box with some shelves and drawers is infinitely more useful than those skinny metal legs that come with most power tools.

The cabinet that cradles my table saw shows some of the possibilities. Although its odd shape makes it look complex, it's built up from three simple boxes. The largest box (the base) has a few shelves where I store the larger accessories. It also serves as a dust collector. The table saw rests over a cut-out in the top of the box. Wood chips fall down through this cut-out, slide down an inclined board, and are whisked away through a shop vacuum hook-up.

The box on the left side holds frequently used accessories: push sticks, saw inserts and a miter gauge. A notch in the sides of this box keeps my saw fence ready when I'm not using it. The box on the right has a few drawers where I keep stuff I don't use as often: saw blades, a dado cutter, a moulding head and some alignment tools.

I replaced the saw extension on each side of the table saw with the cabinet tops. These tops are

Oodles of storage,

built-in dust collection, doubles as a huge router table — what more could you want?

To make the odd-shaped cabinet, I attached three plywood boxes to each other. Each box has shelves and drawers for storage.The base box includes a dust collector.

By Nick Engler

Nick is a contributing editor to Popular Woodworking, the author of 52 books on woodworking, and an inventor of woodworking tools, jigs and fixtures. His most recent project, a flying full-size replica of the Wright Brother's 1902 glider, is making its rounds to schools and museums across the country.

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