For the longest time I have struggled with sheets of ply. Once I have wrestled them out of the back of the truck, and into the workshop (garage), I then have to cut them down to the required sizes. For bulkheads and such, or those times when I require ply to be cut into curved shapes, I lay the ply on a few saw horses and cut them with my jigsaw. But there are times when ply has to be cut accurately into other sizes, such as when making cabinets. For this right angle cuts are required, often with several parts to exactly the same dimensions. Although I have a small bench top table saw the top was too small and the fence not accurate enough to make the required cuts. Frankly, it was dangerous, and very frustrating. Some time back I built a guide rail for the Skill saw and this works well but it does take a little time to set up and repetitive cuts mean that the rail has to be moved for each piece.
I have neither the space nor the budget for a full size cabinet saw. Much as I would like one They do take up a lot of space, plus once they are set up you can't move them. I already had the Craftsman table saw so I thought that the bench you see here would do the trick. I can't claim credit for the idea, there are a ton of similar saw cabinets on the internet, but it extends the functionality of the saw by a factor of a hundred. After sketching out the idea on a couple of pieces of paper I set to work. There is a platform at the bottom to which 6 soft rubber-tired locking castors are attached. Screwed to the base is a storage cabinet to the right of the saw and a lower storage unit, below the saw catches the dust and lifts the actual saw to a convenient height. An after market fence is the icing on the cake, and allows for simple, fast, and accurate set up. The extra top work surface is made from two layers of MDF covered in plastic laminate, trimmed at the edges with some bits of maple.
The saw is super mobile and allows me to easily move it in the workshop, or even outside on sunny days, so I can drag the ply out of the truck and almost instantly cut it to size. The next upgrade will be to add a fold up outside table onto the rear, saving me having to set up a roller stand to support the back edge of an 8 foot sheet when working alone - which is most of the time.
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