Easy to Build Miter Saw Station

This week we are finally getting back into shop projects and we are starting with a miter saw station! This is very much needed, our miter saw has been sitting on the floor for a long time and it now has a home! There are a lot of great features in this design with the t-track tables, casters, and a lot of storage. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks Rockler & Inventables for Sponsoring this Video!

Products Used: (affiliate links)

X-Carve Machine: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

T-Track Table Top: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

24x36 Shop Stand: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Casters: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Hinges: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Drawer Pull JIG IT: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Glue Applicator: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Router Table: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Router Table Stand: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

T-Track Accessories: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Plastic Shims from FastCap: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Accuride HEAVY DUTY Drawer Slides: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

Walrus Oil Wax Finish: http://bit.ly/2NtYwQm

The frame of this Miter saw stand is made from Rockler’s shop stands (affiliate link). Now these stands are customizable by offering stretcher lengths from 18” to 60” long and two leg lengths of 28” and 32”. All three stands we used are 24” by 36”, but the middle stand uses the shorter 28” legs. These stands come with leveling feet, but we opted to add casters to keep everything in the shop mobile. The last step of assembly is we added a T-Track table to the top which will be very useful later.

In order to close these stands in, we used 1/4” plywood in for the back and 1/2” plywood on the sides. Using existing holes we screwed the plywood in place. These sides will give us a place to mount our drawer slides, keep dust out, and give us mounting options for storage in the future.

Now onto drawer slides. We have to build up the thickness of the sides so that the drawer slides don’t run into the legs. First we cut (2) 1 1/2” wide strips of 3/4” plywood and glued them together. Next we marked the center of each drawer onto the blocks. Mark the center of the strip on each drawer mark and pre drill a hole for mounting the slides. This will ensure the slides are mounted square and in line with each other. Open the drawer slides and mount them in place using the supplied screws. Make sure you use the same holes on each slide and line the up with the pre drilled holes. After installed and I’ve made sure everything is square I added several more screws. Speaking of drawer slides these are some super heavy duty Accuride slides (affiliate link).

Once you have made both side assembles its time to mount them inside the stand. I held the assembly in place while Molly used a 3/4” spacer on the front. This spacer will allow the drawer front to be flush with the front of the stand later. I predrilled holes through the inside of the stand and Molly used screws from the outside to secure the assembly in place.

Once both sides were installed it was time to make the drawers. We will have two shallow 6” drawers and one deep 12” drawer. The 6” drawers have a 1/4” plywood bottom and the 12” have a 1/2” plywood bottom. This is a super simple method of making drawers. First we used glue and brad nails to tack the sides together. Then we squared up the sides using the bottom as a reference, added glue, and brad nailed it down. To ensure the drawers are super strong we came back and added screws in the sides and bottom of each drawer.

Now its time to install the drawers. First mark a line down the center of drawer. Remove the slide and place it on the line you’ve drawn. The front of the slide should be flush with the front of the drawer and centered on the line. After pre drilling holes I used a the supplied screws to attach the slide. When you flip the drawer over use some scraps to keep the slide you just installed from being banged up. Lastly slide the whole drawer back into the slides. With these slide we had to pull the ball bearings forward before sliding the drawer in place. Don’t force the drawer into the slides and be sure to read the manual of your slide before re installing.

Moving onto the drawer fronts. Cut a piece of 3/4” plywood to the correct width and I little longer than it needs to be. This is going to allow us to have a continuous grain pattern on the front of the cabinet, so be sure to orientate the plywood with same way if you are doing multiple stands so that the grain direction goes the same way. Now cut each drawer front in the order they go on the cabinet. We had two 6” tall fronts and one 12” tall front. Be sure to cut these a little undersize so they have a gap in-between each drawer.

The easiest way to attach these drawer fronts is to use the holes for the drawer pull to temporarily hold them in place. We used a jig from Rockler to drill 4” on center drawer pull holes. This jig makes keeping the holes consistently the same so much easier. Use spacers to help align the drawer front and then pre drill holes through the drawer pulls and into the drawer box. Once you screw the drawer front in place you can open the draw and attach the drawer front from the inside before removing the screws in the drawer pull holes. Repeat this on all the drawers making sure you keep the grain direction the same.

Moving onto the center stand. We will repeat the process of adding sides, but this time we just used 1/4” plywood on all the sides and added a 1/4” bottom. The center cabinet will house the shop vac as dedicated dust collection for the miter saw. We have a full dust collection video coming soon so be on the look out for that!

We are adding a door to the front of this cabinet, but we need a place to mount the hinges. For this we added a 3/4” plywood strip to the inside of the leg. After adding that board we cut the door out and add the hinges.

We are going to use our X-Carve machine (affiliate link) to carve out Maple drawer pulls. We have a link to the project page below where you can get the file and carve your own. These were super easy to make and only took 5 min to carve. We have a bunch of projects using this machine linked in a playlist below if you want to see more. After they came off the machine we decided to round over the edges using the router table. I acknowledge my hands were to close to the bit and I will have to do better about that in the future. After a bit of hand sanding we applied a wax finish to the handles. We used the same Rockler jig to mark the hole locations on the handles and pre drilled the holes. Lastly we attached all the handles to the drawers using wood screws.

Before sliding the stands in place we drilled 4 holes in the back of the stand to allow us to route dust collection and power. We have a nifty way to setting up dust collection for this and we will cover that in our upcoming dust collection video. We slid the stands in place and found the Miter saw needed to be lifted about 1/2” to be flush with the side tables. We slid a piece of 1/2” plywood under the saw and secured it with screws. We want to be able to easily remove the saw so we decided to use these T-tracks stops in the front and an auto lock T-Track clamps in the back to easily be able to secure and release the saw.

Because we used T-track table the options for accessorizing this stand are endless. One quick and easy way to make repeatable cuts is by using a T-Track stop, but there are literally so many ways to upgrade this stand. You could make adjustable fences with measuring tapes, flip stops, and so much more. We haven’t decided what all we want to do up top so leave a comment down below with your ideas and maybe we will implement them in a future Project. That’s going to do it for this weeks project I hope you enjoyed!