HOW I DESIGNED AND BUILT MY ROLLING LUMBER CART

 

Note: these pictures are hosted on imageshack and may take a moment to load. Please be patient. The links are not broken.

 

 

  1. Design phase: Looked at various plywood and lumber carts. After carefully considering my needs and available storage space for hardwood in my shop, I decided to build one that incorporates storage for both plywood sheets, hardwood and both sheet and hardwood cut offs. I sketched up a design based on toolferone’s lumber cart but didn’t have access to the dimensions of his. Some of the dimensions were determined by asking Vanguard the proportions of his plywood cart which I almost built but decided not to because it didn’t offer hardwood storage. I’ll be honest-this is not a glamorous project, but if you’re working out of a two car garage home shop, it’s a very practical use of space and one that will enable me to reconfigure my shop as I add and or change equipment and my layout.

 

This is Toolferone’s cart:

 

 

And this is what I came up with to fit my needs:

 

 

Aside from the initial inspiration from others, I decided that I needed large casters and wanted to use a decent grade of plywood. I don’t like to use ordinary construction grade plywood and thought that sanded ply was a reasonable compromise considering the ridiculously high price of birch plywood right now. In the end, I wish I would have just paid the extra for the birch because sanded ply sucks to work with if you’re after quality results and need a sheet that is flat, square and usable.

 

  1. Building phase: To begin the construction phase, I went to my local home center and picked up some sanded ply plywood and some casters. With a picture of my sketch, I came up with a cut list for my materials to try to minimize waste of my plywood sheets. With the outfeed extension of my downdraft unit flipped up, I ripped the boards down to size and labeled each one in pencil to identify them. One thing I have learned about myself and woodworking is that I have got to label my cut down parts with chalk to prevent mistakes-enough said on that subject J Today I picked up two sticks of builders lumber chalk sticks at the hardware store and those will be used from now on.
  2. When you’re working with 8 ft long sections of ¾” thick plywood like this, you quickly realize that building something of this scale is cumbersome to say the least. I decided that it would be best to mount the casters on the bottom board right away. If I were to wait until the unit were built, it would be way too heavy to lift by myself and since I work alone in my shop that’s what I decided to do. The first step was to position a fixed caster in each corner at one end of the piece and mark the center of the holes with a pen. Then, I used a swivel caster to do the same thing at the other end of the board. To drill the holes for the casters, I used my drill press. The challenge for me was to support the large piece of plywood at the right height and since my roller supports are not tall enough for this task, I had to use a step ladder with a 4 x 4 on top. I drilled out each hole using a 3/8” drill bit followed by a forstner bit to recess a flat bottomed area for the head of the bolts. To bolt the casters, I used 3/8” bolts with a lock washer. I tightened the bolts with a 9/16” socket with a hand brace so I didn’t risk overtightening. I intentionally chose to use fixed casters at right side of my cart so that when pushing it around I could have a lot of control over where it wants to steer. I don’t recall seeing anyone else doing this, but with so much weight when loaded up, if I just used all swivel casters  I’d be fighting to get it to go where I wanted.
  3.  

 

Here I am drilling the holes using the ladder and drill press.

 

  1. With the casters mounted, I pre-drilled holes to attach the small board that will prevent plywood sheets from sliding off the cart. I used titebond glue and some 1 ½” drywall screws to attach it.

 

  1. I was a bit stumped at this point how to proceed in building the rest of the cart, but figured out that I needed to partially assemble the hardwood storage section in order to determine the cut off pocket boards since they are angled so that’s what I did. I installed the shelving for the hardwood storage into one of the two plywood boards using drywall screws but no glue. It was awkward to say the least because the sanded ply was not flat. I’ve decided that I hate sanded ply and probably won’t use it again. As my project began coming together, I saw things not squaring up and I quickly learned that sanded ply is a construction grade plywood and not something I will use for cabinetry projects like this again. I also say that because I was going to dado for the hardwood shelves in the sides of the plywood supports but the ply wouldn’t lay flat on my table saw and I couldn’t come up with a safe way to handle it so I ended up just screwing the boards together. After all the shelves were screwed into one sheet of ply, I temporarily attached the other sheet of plywood with a couple screws.  Note that each of the shelf pieces is ½” smaller than the one below it making the assembly wider at the bottom than at the top. That was done to give the unit strength and stability.

 

 

 

  1. Now that I had an edge to reference, I held each of the dividers for the cut off pockets against the side of the shelving section and transferred the angle.

 

  1. Using my shop made tapering jig, I cut the boards. That brings up a good point…People have told me to only build jigs when they need them, but I built this jig about a month ago thinking I would eventually need it. Knowing me, if it wasn’t hanging on the wall and easy to grab and use for this project, I probably would have just reached for a jigsaw to freehand cut the pieces.

 

  1. Then using a straight edge, I marked the tops of each of the dividers and cut the angled line using my Osborne miter gauge.
  2. Then, I disassembled the temporarily attached side of the hardwood storage unit and screwed the dividers to the plywood side. Truth be told, I realized after attaching the front to the cut off bins that I couldn’t secure the bottom of the shelves unless I disassembled the unit so I’m telling you this to spare you the same mistake.
  3. I permanently attached the plywood side to the shelving unit using drywall screws, and attached the front of the cut off storage pockets. A tip I can share with you is to use a straight edge or a stop block of some sort to transfer the screw position across the long 8 ft span for each shelf. I guess you could snap a chalk line, but I found that using my shop made stop block and straight edge it worked just fine.

 

  1. The greatest challenge for me doing this project was to figure out how to attach the assembled unit to the rolling base section. Since the assembled section weighs the same as 3 sheets of ¾” plywood it was very heavy.

 

Normally, if it were a smaller project, I would just roll the thing on its side and screw it in, but that was not an option. Finally I decided to toenail the unit in with my framing nailer so that it was in position for final assembly. You have to be careful when doing it this way though because I fired some nails at the wrong angle and had to get out my grinder and remove the nails that were exposed in the bottom of the cut off pockets. Then, I used an automotive floor jack to lift a side of the unit so that I could glue and screw the base to the upper section. Here’s the finished project.

 

 

Overall, it’s a functional unit for the shop but nothing that David Marks is going to be impressed by. I like having a cart like this so that I can more easily get to boards that were previously leaning against my shop wall though with only some cut offs and a sheet of mdf this thing is already very heavy to push around even though I’m using 4” casters. One of my pet peeves is that when I start on new projects, I end up storing the wood on the floor in my shop and it can be pretty disruptive and get in the way and I expect that I will be rolling this cart out of my shop when I work and it will be nice to use it for unloading my truck when bringing lumber home. Now I just need to get some nice cherry or purpleheart stock on that cart to tempt me to build something more impressive.

 

Thanks to Vanguard for the dimensions and to Toolferone for posting the pictures of his cart.