Quickie Project: Foam Brush Rack

 I bought a bulk set of disposable paint brushes from Grizzly recently.  The set was on sale for $15, and I couldn't pass that up.  However, readers who have been following along for a while will know that my shop space is limited and I have to come up with a creative way to store virtually everything I purchase.  The set came with 50 foam brushes, 50 chip brushes, and 50 acid brushes (which I use for spreading glue).  The chip brushes can be hung on my pegboard since they have hanger holes in the handles.  The acid brushes are small enough to just be stuffed in a drawer somewhere.  But the foam brushes are a little more difficult to store, so I decided to create a wall hanging storage setup for them. 

I started out by cutting a number of parallelograms out of 1/2 inch thick scrap pine.  I did this by setting my miter gauge to about 5 degrees.  Then I made a cut on the end of several pieces.

Then I set up a stop block to set the length for the next cut.  This length is the same as the width of the workpiece, so this would be a square if I wasn't cutting at an angle. Subsequent parallelograms can be made from a longer piece by just repeatedly pushing to the stop block and cutting.

This leaves me with a bunch of parallelograms.

I then take a parallelogram and place one corner point in the kerf in my tablesaw sled fence and align the opposite corner point with the kerf in the sled bottom.  I hold this piece down with a piece of scrap to keep my hand out of the way, and cut it apart.

What I'm left with is a number of triangles that are intentionally out of square.  These are meant to be hung up such that the top is sloping backwards to keep things hung on them from sliding off.

 I mount a bunch of these triangles to some 1/4 inch scrap plywood with glue and brads.  I just laid out the position by eye, using some of the foam brushes as spacers. It doesn't take a lot of strength here because these are only holding up the weight of some foam brushes. 

Here are the holders in use, storing those foam brushes!

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Drill press cabinet

I decided to make a cabinet to fit under my drill press to make use of some of the empty space. I feel like 95 percent of the time my drill press table will stay at the current height and if i need to lower the table this cabinet will be easily removable. I used Steve Ramsey's design for a simple shop storage cabinet Steve Ramsey Simple shop storage cabinet.   I made this cabinet from 3/4'' birch plywood and used solid oak for the drawer runners.



I started by cutting the piece of 3/4'' birch plywood that would make up the sides of the cabinet. I cut the dadoes that would hold the drawer runners with my router. After the dadoes where cut i split this piece apart  on the table saw.

Next i cut rabbets on the 3 edges of the side pieces. I also cut the rest of the pieces for the cabinet including the top, bottom, back and the drawer runners.

It is still too cold to do any gluing or finishing in the garage so i brought the cabinet inside to assemble it. The cabinet is held together with glue. Building this cabinet really made me want a pin nailer, it would have helped in almost every step of this project.

I glued a piece of oak in between two of the runners to help keep the cabinet square.

Now its time to make some drawers! I cut all the pieces out to make the drawers from birch plywood and some pine plywood because i was not going to have enough birch. I cut rabbets on the sides using the table saw.

I also cut the slots that will hold the hard board bottoms on all the drawer pieces using the table saw.

Here are the drawer bottoms.

I decided to glue and screw the drawers together since i didn't have enough clamps to assemble all the drawers at once. I pre drilled all the holes on the drill press using my new table and fence system.

Gluing up all the drawers.

Here is a pic of all the drawers assembled and drying.

I cut a piece of hard board to put on top of the cabinet. Personally i think tempered hardboard is a great product to use as the top for almost any work surface. Its cheap and pretty durable, also its nice and slick. I just screwed this down with four screws so it will be easy to change if it gets damaged.

Later I use  my router and a flush trim bit to trim the hardboard to the proper size and shape. I put the false fronts on the drawers one at a time allowing the glue to dry a bit then removing each drawer and putting 4 screws through the back. I used some washers to space the fronts so i would have even gaps.

Next I installed some handles on the drawers and test fit the cabinet.

Everything fit great! The back of the cabinet is recessed and the top and bottom notched out so the cabinet will fit around the drill press. I decided to put these strips of hardboard to close the back in a bit.

I also plan to put the cabinet on casters so it will be easy to move when i need to lower the drill press table. I will also be adding some sort of system to hold the cabinet to the drill press once i have installed the casters.

Now I can keep all my drill bits close to my drill press.

My table saw dust drawer was packed full after this project.

Hope you enjoyed!

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CD Storage Cabinet

My wife and I have both collected CDs over the years, and we have enough that we need a new place to store them.  I actually still buy music on CD from time to time, despite the fact that this is quite unfashionable.  That being said, I also buy it digitally so I have nothing against that.

We decide to go with a wall hanging cabinet to store them, and we want to put it in our guest bedroom.  The trim in our house is white, and this room already has a white builtin, so I'll need to paint the new cabinet white so that it goes with the room.

I drew up a plan in sketchup to hold all the CDs we have and still give us some room for expansion.

Sketchup File

I choose some 3/4 inch "whitewood" plywood from Lowes and some poplar for the face frame and edging for the exposed plywood edges.  After looking at this plywood, I think it's face veneer is poplar.  I also bought a sheet of 1/4 inch plywood for the back.

Construction of this cabinet is pretty straighforward.  I cut the plywood pieces to rough size with a circular saw and cutting guide, and then cut the final dimensions on the table saw. 

The basic plywood case goes together with dadoes and rabbets. The sides are rabbeted on the ends and dadoed in the middle to receive the three shelves, and the sides, top, and bottom shelves are all rabbetted to receive the back panel.

The face frame pieces are just cut to final length and then attached to each other with a pocket hole screws.  I make these with my pocket hole jig.  It's not the strongest joint in the world, but it's quick and it's plenty strong for this application.

I cut biscuit slots into the front of the plywood shelves and the back of the face frame to help me align the pieces during glue up.  This really turns out to help a lot, and I'd recommend you try it if you build any face frame cabinetry.  Once these are done, I glue and clamp the face frame to the plywood case.

After gluing on the face frame, the middle and bottom shelves were left with the face frame slightly proud of the shelf surface.  I trimmed the face frame closer with a block plane and chisel for the tighter areas, and then finally sanded it flush.

I fit some spacers in between the middle shelf and the top and bottom of the cabinet to keep the shelf from sagging.  The middle shelf is also glued to the face frame which should discourage sagging as well.

The back of the plywood case has a deep rabbet all the way around to receive the 1/4 inch plywood back as well as a couple of cleats to beef up the cabinet at the mount points.

The header and footer are made from plywood with 1/2 inch poplar strips glued onto the edges.  I ripped these strips out of the same material I made the face frame out of.  I glued on the edging strips and used brads to hold them in place while the glue dried.  Then I routed a roman ogee shape into the edging to dress up the cabinet a little.

The header and footer are glued onto the plywood case.  The footer has some scrap 3/4 inch plywood spacers glued in between it and the bottom of the case to provide clearance for the bottom of the face frame.

I painted the cabinet with typical interior latex wall paint.  After that was dry I put water bourne polyurethane over it to prevent blocking (latex paint staying tacky after dry).  The water based poly did seem to check (crack) a little, so I'm not sure if its compatible with the latex or not.  Or myabe I didn't give the latex long enough to dry out before I top coated it with the clear.  I gave it at least overnight, but maybe I should have given it a couple days.

Here's the cabinet hung up and in use!

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