Brotherwood: 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.