The Woodshop Shed

Band Saw Cabinet

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


Short version: This is roughly a 24” x 24” x 16” cabinet I made with two drawers to put my Craftsman 12” band saw on. It is made of maple plywood with maple trim. The drawer faces are maple plywood with edge banding. The bottom drawer has dividers for blade storage and the top drawer is just a band saw spare parts crap catcher. The mobile base is a standard Rockler DIY kit.Longer version: I build this for two primary reasons.
1 – I absolutely hate x loathe the angled metal stands that come with many tools. They seriously drive me crazy with their odd shape and uselessness other than holding up a tool.
2 – I like to keep all the “stuff” for a tool at the tool so I'm not taking several trips around the shop for a blade change or fence setup.You may be wondering why this is made of expensive maple and maple ply. Well the answer to that is my dad is semi retired and runs a Home Depot tool rental department. A contractor brought back a damaged sheet of maple ply and a bunch of 1×4s that were twisted or had ugly grain. I guess they were doing a custom built something or other and none of the materials they returned passed muster. I got everything for about 30% of retail so figured why not use it all as practice pieces.The cabinet is basic 3/4 ply carcass and face frame with some extra top and side supports. I built 3 more face frames to trim out the sides and back. The top trip is a basic picture frame with some oak dowels to reinforce the corners. This was a rather challenging thing for no other reason than it was that one project that fights you the whole way.The full extension ball bearing slides were cheap ones I got off Amazon and had to wait for shipping from China. Like bonehead I didn't double check their measurements before building the drawer boxes. Well the slides are about 17/32” instead of a true 1/2” so I got to build drawer boxes twice. Good practice for me. Unfortunately I rushed the second set and the top drawer is not quite square now. After two sets of drawers and it being a shop piece I'm calling it good.I learned the hard way I don't like my battery powered trim router for some tasks. It's a little top heavy and i gouged the face frame. No big deal just make a trim piece and hide the ugly.
And while I was at it I never really liked the dust collection on this band saw so I used the factory metal bracket but built my own adapter. I epoxied one of those awkward crevice tools for a shop vac to the my custom braket.
Next step will be adding a 4” port to the bottom wheel cabinet opposite corner of the motor. I know its a lot of work for a 12” band saw but upgrading is out of the question for the time being so why not make what I have something I enjoy using.

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