How I built my back storage bench

This article was written to explain the steps involved in my first cabinetry project. Experienced woodworkers are going to be bored because I go into a fair amount of detail. The goal is to help others new to woodworking to understand the things that go into a project like this and to share some techniques I learned so that their first experience might turn out better.

About six months ago, I saw an episode of The New Yankee Workshop in which Norm Abrams made a tool storage cabinet with a supply hutch that sat on top of it. I liked the size of the drawers and the overall design and since it was my first cabinet project, I bought the plans and video to learn how he approached a project like this. The video was helpful but the plans had to be modified to suit my needs since I didn’t have the space to make the unit as wide as his plans called for. I also decided that instead of making the supply hutch, I would either use the space above the unit for either a hanging supply hutch or a hanging hand tool cabinet. I’m still undecided about what I’m going to do. That’s because I only own a few hand tools. But, I know myself pretty well, and if I build a hand tool cabinet, I will end up filling it up with hand tools, layout and marking tools, etc and planes in a short time. I guess its all part of me wrestling to discover what kind of woodworking I really want to focus on. I started out interested in projects that were really associated with being a finish carpenter-things like built in’s, entertainment centers, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, etc and those projects use a lot of sheet goods and focus around the table saw. Now, I’m starting to take more and more of an interest in hardwood heirloom projects made with a mixture of hand and power tools.

For this project, the first step for me was to modify the dimensions of the cabinet carcase to fit my space. I decided I still wanted 9 drawers and wanted to keep the height and depth the same as Norm’s so the one dimension that was going to change across the project was going to be the width of the carcase, drawers and top. I didn’t get too specific about my plans-I just figured out what the rough drawer widths would end up as and when I felt satisfied, I proceeded. If you look at the picture below, you’ll see that there is a ladder and some clamps hanging on a storage cabinet. In my garage, this cabinet used to go all the way across the back wall of the garage, but to make room for this new unit, I removed a section of it using a hammer, sawzall, prybar, etc.

The first step was to pick up materials for the carcase. It called for some 2 x 4’s, a sheet of ¾” birch veneer ply, a sheet of tempered hardboard, and a piece of CDX plywood.

I could have gone to my local big box warehouse store for these materials, but I chose to pick them up from a lumber yard instead. I did that because it’s a royal pain to pull the sheets onto a cart, go through a checkstand, load the materials onto my car roof (I have an Explorer) and then move them once home into the shop. At the lumber yard, I am able to pull my car up to the lumber and someone at least helps me put the sheets on my car. It might cost a buck more a sheet, but its worth it to me. My lower back has been really bothering me lately. Plus, I work alone.

The first step in processing the wood is to cut it down to rough sizes, but before using any power tools, I take the time to clear off my table saw, my outfeed table and my bench so that there is nothing to get in my way.

The carcase is made up of partitions that support the drawers made out of birch plywood. The partitions were cut to size by ripping on the table saw and cross cutting using my clamp n tool edge guide, my shop made set up blocks and my new trim saw.

The partitions are joined together with cross pieces of birch ply using glue and screws that are set into dados on the outside pieces. Before the pieces can be joined, notches have to be cut out of them and the dados cut. Here I’m using my caliper to lock in the thickness of the plywood and then build up my dado blade set to the same thickness. I use a Freud dial a dado set and I love it. With the adjustable hub, I am able to set the thickness accurately and then just install the blades and make the cut without any further adjustments or shimming.

Then to make the notches in these panels, I used my small trim saw and a jigsaw to finish the cuts. Laying out the lines is done with a combination square, and the cuts are made with the help of a triangle as an edge guide for both the trim saw and the jigsaw.

I’m skimming over the nitty gritty details on each cross piece, but the key is to fasten the cross pieces to the outer panels with glue and screws and then divide the inside space evenly with the two partitions so that the drawer banks are evenly spaced. I am famous for making measuring tape mistakes, so I subdivided the width of the carcase using my projectcalc calculator that works with inches and fractions.

With the frame roughly built, I predrilled and screwed the framework to my back wall using a level and used some scrap shingles I had laying around to shim the front so that the whole frame was level front to back and side to side.

The next step is to half lap a foundation for the bench top out of 2 x 4 lumber. The perfect tool for cutting this joint is a radial arm saw, but I don’t have one and don’t have plans to get one. I layed out and cut my half lap joints using a combination of tools including my sliding compound miter saw and a chisel and mallet (for the long pieces) and the table saw with dado set and my miter gauge (for smaller pieces). The table saw did the best job, but wouldn’t be safe to use for the long pieces.

The half lapped boards were then glued and screwed together into a unit for the bench top frame.

The 2 x 4 section was then placed on top of the carcase frame and screwed into the cross boards to secure it.

Then, the cdx plywood was cut to size on the table saw and cross cut using the trim saw and edge guide and screwed into the 2 x 4 framework. Since one edge of this cdx plywood will face outward and trim will be attached to it, I began by ripping 1/8” off the edge of the plywood to clean up the leading edge and then cut it to the proper size.

I cut and layed the tempered hardboard surface on the top, but it wouldn’t lay flat so I decided to glue down the front edge so that it wouldn’t lift. I am just starting to acquire clamps so I had to lay objects on the edge to keep it down.

For about 3 months, this is as far as I got on this storage unit because I didn’t have any spare money to spend on wood and I needed full extension slides and they’re usually not cheap.

Buying slides was the next thing I had to do so I searched around and asked people on the Woodnet Forum to suggest sources. Eventually, I checked out CS Hardware online and they had the best pricing on 100 pound 28” and 26” full extension slides. As I recall, the slides for this unit cost me approximately $80 for 9 pair including shipping. When they arrived, I was happy with the quality and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy from CS Hardware again.

Once I received the slides from CS, I was ready to begin making the drawers for this unit. I decided to use my Rockler half blind dovetail jig. The jig is pretty simple to use once you have it set up for the material you want to use though I highly recommend that you have someone at Rockler who actually knows how to use and set one up to give you some guidance on how to set it up. The guy in the Pasadena, CA store was real helpful and ever since speaking with him, I’ve had better luck working with the jig. Here is how the dovetails looked from the side of the drawers:

And here’s how the drawers look where the back is joined to the sides:

Since I had so much downtime with this project between the basic carcase and the drawers, I was eager to get working and didn’t start taking pictures again until after I had made up the drawer box pieces. Oh well…sorry about that. The thing you’ll notice with the drawer joinery is that there is a half blind dovetail joint in the front but a tongue and groove in the back. The one thing I’ll offer as a tip about making the drawers is to wait until you have your slides in hand before starting. The most common thickness to allow for slides is ½” but you can’t be sure it will always be that. Also, eventhough I checked the width between the partitions of the carcase to make sure they were the same consistent distance apart, when I went to make the drawers, I found they were slightly different. Had I made the drawers all the same width, the drawers in the center bank would not have fit because the width of that bank ended up slightly more narrow. Go figure…

I chose to make the drawers for each bank at the same time. I did that minimize table saw set ups and to end up consistent sized drawers in each bank of drawers. I built the drawers, but didn’t assemble and glue them together until I had all the dovetails and tongue and groove work done.

Before I could insert the drawer bottoms and glue the drawers up, I had to cut a groove near the bottom of each of the drawer pieces. I used a dado blade on the table saw that was set for the ½” plywood I used for the bottoms. I used ½” ply because I plan to store a lot of tools in these deep drawers so thinner material would be a risk.

I am more comfortable at my level of experience (or inexperience depending on how you look at it) of transferring measurements than reading tape measures and rules. My experience has been that when I read tape measures, I end up with sloppy fitting pieces and make mistakes. Here you see me aligning a piece of plywood to determine the size to cut to make a bottom for this drawer.

With glue in the joints and after checking for square, I used 18 gauge brads to tack the drawers together. I allowed them to set for a day and dry.

Also, I checked each drawer by carefully measuring them diagonally before allowing the glue to dry. The picture below shows me using a folding rule to measure an inside drawer diagonal. To check the drawer for square, I compare this measurement to the opposite diagonal and make adjustments by tapping or squeezing the drawer until both diagonals are equal length.

Now that the drawers were built, I was ready to install the slides and mount the drawers in the carcase. To be honest, this was my first attempt at installing drawer slides and until the moment of actually doing it, I was nervous that I’d somehow screw up and the project be garbage. I was afraid that somehow I had measured wrong and wouldn’t get the drawers to fit and was really relieved that they did fit. I attribute that to waiting until I got the drawer slides to build the drawers, plus making each drawer to fit its space rather than working from plans and hoping that they would all fit.

To install the slides, I decided that it would be best to start from the top drawer and proceed down to the bottom of each bank of drawers. The position of the slides for the top drawer was done by holding the top drawer in place in the carcase and making a pencil mark on the carcase where I thought the slide should approximately go. Based on that mark, I made two identical spacer boards that would enable me to install all the top drawer slides at the exact same height. In the picture below, you see three pair of set up blocks. The longest ones are for the top drawer slide position and the other two are for the middle and bottom drawer slide positions.

To use them, I positioned one board toward the front of the carcase partition and clamped it in place with a spring clamp. Then, I placed the other one at the other end of the same partition and clamped it also in place. I then rested a slider on top of the pair of sticks , aligned it with the front edge of the carcase, and screwed it into the side. Once secure, I removed the clamps and moved on to the next partition and so on until all slides were installed in the carcase. Here’s what it looked like:

By the way, I used two cordless screwdrivers for this process. One had a drill bit for drilling a pilot hole, and the other had a screwdriver tip. I found it went faster to use two drivers instead of using a combo driver and drill bit set up.

The slides I got from CS come apart which is handy if you want to pull a drawer completely out for whatever reason. To install the drawers to the slides, I removed the inside part of each of the slides and attached them to the drawer sides. Before attaching them, I again held the drawer in position and marked the position with a pencil.

The main thing I was concerned about when attaching the slides to the drawer sides in the 1^st bank of drawers was to make sure that the distance between the bottom edge of each drawer and the slide was consistent. By doing that, I was confident that the drawers would be level. To do that, I set a combination square to the distance I wanted and mounted all the drawer slides to the drawers. It was a simple and effective way to do it.

Here I’m setting the combination square for the distance to use for all the rest of the drawers:

By using the spacer sticks and the combination square to install the drawer slides, I ended up with consistently spaced drawers.

Now, I just need to add a drawer fronts to my cabinet (and eventually add some hardwood trim to the top).

My plan was to use a sheet of maple plywood and sequence the drawer fronts so that when cut into individual parts and attached to each of the drawers, the front of the cabinet would still maintain the grain pattern of the original plywood sheet. I hate to admit it, but I screwed up my first attempt to make drawer fronts by being tired and instead of waiting until the next day I cut the first row too short and destroyed my sheet of plywood.

Two weeks later, after completing a fireplace mantel for a friend and getting a new sheet of rotary cut maple plywood out of the deal, I made my second and successful attempt to make drawer fronts.

The first step I took this time was to cross cut three sections from my maple ply sheet. This time, I nearly made a mistake by cutting my three sections oversized thinking I would cut them down to final size later. Had I know what I know now, I would have cut a section for the middle bank of drawers to final size first and then cut the other two sections to actual size as well. To determine the size of each full panel, I used a straight edge:

Rather than trying to cross cut a full sheet of plywood on my table saw, I pulled out my trusty clamp n tool guide, shop made set up blocks (see my article on making a pair of these), and my small 4 ½” trim saw. I placed a few strips of scrap plywood underneath the plywood to prevent the chance of cutting into my bench top, I cut the sections. The yellow straightedge measuring tool is a drywall straight edge I picked up for laying out cuts on plywood. Note: before making any cuts, I used a pencil and roughly labeled each drawer front section. This saved me from inverting pieces, making mistakes by cutting the wrong pieces, etc and I highly recommend doing this to keep the sequenced boards intact.

Once the clamp set up blocks are aligned with the desired cutting line, the clamp is secured and the blocks removed. The cut is always perfect.

So, here is one of the panels for one of the banks of drawers before being cut down into individual drawer fronts. To prevent the chance of cutting the wrong direction or mixing up parts, I marked the boards in colored pencil.

Here I’m cutting the piece to the final width for all the drawers in vertical bank.

The drawer fronts will be spaced 1/8” apart vertically. To make the spacing easier, I made some 1/8” spacers out of a plywood scrap using my miter gauge. I cross cut to establish a clean straight line, marked 1/8” with my combination square and then cross cut the slice off again with my miter gauge and snapped the slice of wood in half.

Here is the way I labeled the drawer fronts. 1T in this picture stands for bank 1 top drawer. Marking the drawers like I did saved me twice from cutting the wrong pieces and screwing up my drawer front sequencing.

Before cross cutting the panel board for bank 1 down to size, I determined the height of the top drawer front. Using a combination square and pencil, I marked a line on the carcase to indicate the size.

The next step was to set my square to the actual height so that I could cut all the top drawers to the same height. A key to getting accurate results is to cut all like pieces at the same time. By setting up your equipment once and cutting all pieces that share the same size, you end up with more consistent looking finished projects.

Here, all three drawer fronts for the top of each bank have been cut and are ready to be installed.

I’m showing in this picture how the adjacent drawer fronts will flow in grain pattern from piece to piece. It so happened that I had to trim both pieces slightly and in spite of that, they still ended up looking acceptable to the eye.

I started installing drawer fronts at the middle of the carcase.

After cutting the top drawer fronts, I made up a story stick as a guide for the middle drawer front length, and a second story stick as a guide for the bottom drawer front.

To make one, I took a scrap of plywood, cross cut it to have a clean edge, held it against the top drawer bottom edge, marked the piece to length and cut.

The story stick was then used to set up my table saw. I place the stick against the kerf edge of the saw blade and then slid my saw fence to touch the board and locked in the fence. With the saw set up, I cross cut the top of all three panels to create drawer fronts for the middle bank of drawers making sure that all three pieces were labeled clearly with my pencil. Then, using the 1/8” spacers, I slid each drawer front into position, centered it on the carcase over the drawer opening and shot a few brads to temporarily hold the face in position.

By the way, today it so happens my new Forrest 40 tooth blade showed up in the big brown truck. After admiring it for a few minutes, I installed the blade in my Unisaw and fired it up. Wow, is all I can say. My saw actually sounds smoother and the cut left with this blade is crisp.

This picture is what my stock carbide Delta blade did to the maple veneer plywood. See how the edge has some tear out along the edge? That’s how everything I have been cutting with my saw has looked since getting my unisaw.

But, after installing the new Forrest blade, this is the way the other end of this same material looks.

After temporarily attaching the face pieces to the drawers with 18 gauge brads, I pulled open each drawer, drilled pilot holes from the inside of the drawers and drove screws to attach the face boards to each of the drawers.

To ensure that the drawer pulls I installed were positioned consistently across each bank of drawers, I took the time to make a little drilling placement jig out of a scrap of plywood. I chose a board that was about half the height of my largest drawer and as wide as my largest drawer. I then marked the center of the board, marked and drilled holes for the drawer pull holes using my drill press and then clamped the jig to each of the drawers and drilled out the holes for the drawer pulls.

You’ll notice that the drawer pull in the top row of drawers is centered but the drawer pull in the middle and bottom drawers is positioned toward the top of the drawers. That is intentional. I could have centered each drawer pull, but I wanted to make it easy to get into my drawers. Since the jig I made registered the holes at the same distance down from the drawer front edge, all I had to do was clamp the jig, drill the holes, and install the drawer pull.

When I installed the bottom right drawer face and pull, I noticed that my carcase wasn’t totally square at the bottom right edge. I admit that eventhough this is shop furniture, it is still disappointing to me. This is my first carcase project and I’m getting better so I’m not going to get too depressed.

Here it is with all the drawer fronts on and drawer pulls installed. I still need to finish off the top edge of the unit with hardwood, but I’m not sure what I want to use. I have to finish this bench, my regular bench, and the other furniture I make for my shop and I want to tie it all together in the same trim. I’m leaning toward hard maple, but maybe I should use purpleheart. But, what about Padouk???

One thing I am sure of, I hated having my tools in a pile on the ground with dust falling on them and I have wanted to make this unit for a while. Next, I’m going to make either a supply hutch that will hang on the wall above it, or make a wall mounted hand tools storage cabinet.

Fyi The materials cost of this project as it stands without trim was approximately $300 to build