Sliding Door Shop Cabinet

Longtime readers of this blog will no doubt have heard me complain before about my lack of workshop space.  My workshop occupies about half of a 2 car garage, and I'm always looking for ways to get more storage or workspace crammed in.  In that vein, I had one section of wall space that was being underutilized. 

 

You can see in the picture the section of wall on the right (to the left of the door) that has a single shelf with stuff just strewn about on it and some brooms hanging below.

 The shelf itself is really a shoddy affair - just a scrap piece of mdf laying on a couple of shelf brackets with all kinds of unorganized junk piled on.  You can also see a little hanger above the shelf on which I have sanding belts, and a peg in the wooden shelf bracket on which I have a router table insert and other various jigs hanging.

I wanted to make a cabinet to hang here, but the dust collector and toolbox (visible in the first picture) are too close to allow normal cabinet doors that open outward to open.  So I needed a different door solution, and I chose to make a cabinet with sliding doors.  Here is the sketchup design I came up with.

Sketchup Link

The first step was to break down a sheet of 3/4" birch plywood into the basic parts.  I did this with a skilsaw and a clamp on straightedge.

Parts

I was able to just rough cut the small parts with the skilsaw and then cut them to final dimensions on the tablesaw, but some of the larger pieces I had to cut to final size with the skilsaw because they were too large for my tablesaw.

Cutting to final length

Next I started to cut the joinery.  This is all pretty simple stuff: the top is joined to a rabbet in the sides, the bottom is joined to a dado in the sides, and the back is joined to a rabbet all the way around the top, bottom, and sides.  This is a very typical setup for plywood cabinet construction.  I cut the rabbets in the sides to receive the top.

Starting the rabbet in a side piece

Second cut to finish rabbet in a side piece

Then I cut the dadoes in the sides to receive the bottom.

Setup to cut dado in sides

Cutting dado in side

After cutting these joints, I realized that I had made the side pieces full width instead of making them a bit narrower to allow for me to glue on solid wood edging.  So I ripped a little off the width.

Then I cut some strips of poplar for edging, and glued them on the fronts of the sides as well as the bottoms.  The top doesn't get any edging since this cabinet is mounted pretty high and the top won't show.

Since I attached this edging after cutting my joinery, I had to go back and extend my dadoes and rabbets by hand through the edging pieces.

I also rounded the bottom edging over where it meets the front edging to help hide the transition there.  I realized later that I shouldn't have done this since the door track covers up this area anyway.

Next it's time to glue up the case.  This is a pretty large case, so it tested the limits of my clamp supply. I used bricks to hold the back down during the glue up, and clamped in all other directions.

With the case assembled, I now needed to drill my shelf pin holes.  I first made a shelf pin jig of sorts out of a piece of scrap 3/4" plywood.  I measured and layed out where to drill the holes...

...and drilled them at the drill press.

Then to use the jig, I clamp it in place, paying careful attention to which way the jig is oriented, and drill the holes with a cordless drill.  I have some scraps of wood slipped over the drill bit to limit the depth that I drill to.  I drill a set of shelf pin holes in each side, as well as a set in the center of the back piece.  These holes in the back piece are meant to provide a little support for the shelf in the center of the span, but I don't honestly know how much good they'll do.

Then I made the door track.  I started out by gluing up some pieces of poplar to get the thickness I needed...

Then I cut the slots for the doors to ride in with repeated passes over the tablesaw.

Once the track is cut to final length, I glue and clamp it to the case.  I had a little bow in the piece of plywood that forms the bottom, so you can see I have a scrap of wood wedged in place between the top and bottom to hold the bottom straight.

I also glued in another small block of wood just to reinforce the joint between the bottom track and the bottom of the cabinet.

I applied 3 coats of my favorite waterbourne polyurethane to all the cabinet surfaces, then hung it on the wall.

I made the shelves from some 1" x 12" spruce shelf board that I ripped down to width and cut to length.  I also applied the same finish to the shelves as I did the cabinet.  I considered making the shelves out of plywood with edging to match the cabinet, but the shelves are fairly long and sagging is more of an issue on long plywood shelves.  Plus I was out of the plywood and had the spruce on hand.  Spruce FTW!

The sliding doors are just pieces of 1/4" birch plywood cut to size to run in the tracks.  I also drilled some holes for finger pulls in them, and enclosed the holes at the back with some really thin aluminum plate I had in my junk pile.

These doors are finished in the same manner as the rest of the cabinet.

The doors have a little bow in them, so I want to go back and put some weatherstripping or door sweep type material to seal up the gaps between the doors and the cabinet.  For now, though, this cabinet is in service storing various finishing supplies and whatever else was cluttering up the tabletops!