DIY Mobile Workbench Part 2 All In One Woodworking Dust Collection Milwaukee Packout Storage

All right, today's part two of what I'm calling my ultimate all-in-one mobile woodworking workbench, and I'll be honest with you, I don't know if this thing's ever going to get done, but today we're getting closer. We're adding storage and some dust collection. All right, so I started off with storage first. For me, this is using Milwaukee Packout Toolboxes, and I wanted to set a toolbox that's built into the workbench, but I also wanted them easy to get to, easy to use, and then also easy to remove from the workbench and take with me. So I decided to build a set of drawers or shelves that each toolbox would fit on. The only problem with these toolboxes is that on the bottom they have these ridges that snap into the lid of another toolbox, and that's great. The only thing is when they sit on a shelf, they sit up. So instead of buying something already created, I decided I wanted to try to do this myself. I drew it up on a CAD program, and I'm lucky enough that I have the use of a laser engraver. So I used the laser engraver to cut out the pattern on an eighth of an inch hardboard. I stacked three of those up so that I could get the proper thickness, and then using a flush trim router bit, I cut out the outside pattern of each one of these templates. If I could do this again, I would have done it in multiple passes. You can see I'm going the full depth on the first run, and I'm kind of burning the outside of these, but it ended up working out pretty good. I went down roughly a half of an inch, and I ended on an even layer of plywood. So then the only thing I had to do to remove the center was use a chisel and pop the centers right out. And after I cleaned them up a little bit, the toolboxes snapped right into them. After making a few more cuts with a track saw, table saw, and miter saw, I had all the panels and the 2x4 braces that I needed to build the outside of these cabinets. Then I started drilling probably way too many pocket holes to attach all these together. I first installed the panel that's going to go under the bottom of the dust collection area. Then I installed what would be the right hand side of the cabinet, and then a 2x4 brace to lock everything in place. Now I'm using the back panel and a scrap piece to mark off the overall width of the cabinet. I'm using this measurement to install a 2x4 brace piece on the bottom and on the top to hold the left hand side of the cabinet. All right, so after measuring and marking the depth of the cabinet, I'm going to go ahead and install the back panel. And I'm only using a few of the pocket hole screws to start off with, just enough to secure it in place. Once I know everything lines up and is securely in place, then I'll go back in and put all the rest of the pocket hole screws in. After that, I install another 2x4 brace on top to help hold in the back panel. And then now is probably a really good time to go ahead and sand this because this is going to be an area hard to get to later. So each drawer is going to need a set of drawer slides. And for this, I'm using a set of 16 inch full extension drawer slides that I found on Amazon. And these are rated for 100 pounds. And I'm not going to lie to you, I don't have a fancy way of installing these. I know there's a lot of cool jigs and different ways of doing it out there. For me, I just like to measure up to the center of where each drawer slide is going to be installed. And then using a square, I like to mark out a square line from front to back that I can line that drawer slide up with. With the holes of the drawer slide lined up to the line we just drew, I mark out each one of those holes, pre-drill, and then screw in each drawer slide. I repeated that process 9 more times to install all 10 drawer slides. And then once all these are installed, it's a really good time to check out the width of your tray to make sure that it's going to fit in between these drawer slides. Then on each tray, I created a line right down the center that I could use to line up the inside of the drawer slide. And I repeated a very similar process of lining it up, pre-drilling it, and screwing on the inside of each drawer slide to each one of the trays. Then the only thing I had to do was install each one of the trays and test out the toolboxes. Alright, so last night I got all the toolboxes installed and I'll be honest with you, I couldn't wait. I immediately started opening these things up and organizing them and putting all kinds of stuff in here because I mean, they're just awesome. I'm really liking to pack out stuff. I try to do my research and figure out which direction to go. And by all means, I wasn't a Milwaukee person, but after seeing what Milwaukee has to offer, I think they have to have probably the best storage system out there. I mean, they're durable, they look good, they're well laid out where organization seems like it's going to be really easy. And I'm really liking these things so far. But I am curious to see what you guys think, what systems you like. Throw that stuff in the comments because I want to hear what you guys have to say. And I'll be honest with you, I don't think this system is perfect right here, what I have going on. I think you could go to Harbor Freight and buy some cheaper, smaller little containers and you could probably put more stuff in this same amount of area. But I'll be honest with you, I really don't care. I think this looks awesome. If you can't tell, the entire workbench was designed around these toolboxes. There is less than a half of an inch in between each one of these toolboxes. And to make these fit, I had to do those patterns in the plywood shelves so that they would actually fit down in there. And we could save about a half of an inch on each one and they barely fit. So I was really invested in these packout boxes. I really think that I'm going to like them. And at some point I'll let you know how it's working, but so far I'm pretty pumped. All right, the next major part of the workbench is dust collection. And dust collection is super important to me, considering that I work in a smaller two-car garage that we actually like to park our cars in. And yes, I've read the comments in the previous videos. I know, I get it. I'm working on it. That's what we're doing here. But for this workbench, I think most people, if they were building this, they would probably put a larger shop vac in here, hook it up to maybe a cyclone, and then the combination of those two would work really well. But I wanted to do something just a little bit different. I have this one horsepower single stage dust collector that I bought from Harbor Freight a little while ago, when I bought my planer, to help me keep up with the chips from that. And this is kind of a more traditional or something that you would see kind of in a larger shop. And I want to try to incorporate this technology into the workbench. It works so well in some of those bigger shops because of the volume of air that it moves in the larger tubes that you can use. So it works very well with planers. I wanted to see if we can incorporate something like this into a smaller unit like this workbench. I have no idea if this is going to work. I have no idea if I can actually fit this thing in here, but I'm going to try. Besides the dust collector itself, I needed a whole bunch of other parts and fittings to make this work. And I chose to stick kind of a more traditional woodworking design. So I bought flexible hosing in both four inch and two and a half inch. I have blast gates, hose clamps, and other couplers. And I use these to pre-assemble a manifold. The main stretch of the manifold is four inches, going to a four inch blast gate. That goes over to my planer. Then I have three two and a half inch blast gates that'll go to my table saw, an auxiliary port, which I plan to use for like sanders and jigsaws, or maybe even basic cleanup of the top of the workbench. And then I have another port that'll maybe go to a future router table. Underneath the workbench, I test fit the manifold up as high and back and far out of the way as I possibly could. With that marked, I used a four inch hole saw to drill a hole to go over into the cabinet where the dust collection is going to be located. To install the dust collector, I removed everything that I didn't need. Then I made this cardboard template the size and shape of the motor so that I could use that to mark on the wall and cut a hole for the motor to actually stick through the wall. Once I had everything marked, I used a jigsaw and a Forstner bit to cut out the hole. This way the dust collector is going to mount up and kind of out of the way, and it's going to be pulling in cool air from the outside of the cabinet. Then to try to help the dust collector collect a higher volume before I have to empty it, and to help it deal with larger chips that we might get from the planer or some of the other machines, I'm using this plastic barrel in a kit that I found on Amazon to turn this into a cyclone. There's a lot of different options. I just felt that this was probably the best method for me because it keeps the height down in this tight space that I have. So using this kit was pretty easy. There's templates that you use to drill or cut two holes in the lid, and then you install the two 90 degree pieces in opposite directions. That gets the air flowing in that cyclone pattern, letting some of the larger chips sink down to the bottom. The smaller dust and particles will still get caught in the bag of the dust collector. So it should serve two purposes, collecting some of those bigger chips and giving me more volume before I have to empty this thing. And then when test fitting this, you can see there's not a whole lot of room in there, and I started thinking, man this might have been a good time to just use a shop vac. But it looks like we're going to have plenty of room for all the hoses to hook up, and then we still have room for the dust bag to inflate around the bottom of the barrel. For the miter saw dust collection, I wanted to try something different than I've ever seen. Because historically, dust collection on miter saws don't work that great unless you have a hood. So what I did was I removed one of these support pieces that I had in the previous video to make some more room for something else. That something else is this dust collection plate, and I'm going to try to suck air down through the bottom of the miter saw using this. To do this, I marked out the sides of the plate and then measured in the distance of the outside flange, and then cut out the inside piece using a drill and a jigsaw. I then mounted the dust collection plate back in place, and then put the plywood back on top. You can see underneath the miter saw has all these open holes in the bottom, and I'm hoping that I can pull some of that dust down through into the dust collection. Then at this point, underneath the miter saw and where the most of the dust collection is located, I now have most of the hoses hooked up. I have the hose from the dust collector going into the barrel. The other port from the barrel is connected up to the main manifold of the dust collection, and then there's a sub four inch blast gate that goes over to the miter saw. Before it gets to the miter saw, it goes into a Y, a four inch Y, that splits off into a two and a half. The four inch part goes into the bottom of the miter saw, and then the two and a half is going to go up through the top into the rear port on the miter saw, which I'm going to show you how to hook up here in a second. But before going too much further, I want to make sure that I'm ready to attach the top. I'm going to do this by drilling a bunch more pocket hole screws around the outside where I have room to do so. Doing this is going to allow me to put all the fasteners underneath, and you're not going to see any of them from above. I'm also attaching two more supports in the front that line up with the miter saw, and you'll see what we use these for later. On the back of the workbench, I'm also adding another set of supports that I'm going to use to help me attach the dust collection, and I'm not doing this in a real fancy way either. The way that I found that worked the best for me was just to put in screws and then use baling wire to wrap around the manifold and hang over the hooks, kind of like you're attaching a drop ceiling. Behind the miter saw, I then installed this piece of plywood to the two supports on either side, as well as the piece of plywood on the bottom, just to enclose the dust collection. And then I also put pocket hole screws in the top of it so that I could attach it to the top of the workbench as well. Then after using a few shims, I installed all the pocket hole screws from the bottom to attach the top. Then I went around the outside using some decking screws to attach the top to the overhang. To finish off the dust collection for the miter saw, I drilled a two and three quarter inch hole through the top with a hole saw and then created a separate little hole for the power cord to go through as well. After fishing the hose up through the top, I connected it to the back of the miter saw with a custom 3D printed piece. The only reason I made this was because I wasn't happy with most of the adapters that I was finding out there online. Then it was just a balancing act of trying to figure out how much hose and power cord I needed up top, and I moved around a few different times to test fit to make sure nothing was binding up. Once I liked the way that it fit, I zip tied the power cord to the hose and we were pretty good to go. Underneath the miter saw, I created panels like these. This one is being installed in the front and it's fixed with probably too many pocket hole screws, but the panel on the right and the rear will both be doors that are easy to open and give me access to the dust barrel and dust bag, and then also allows me to turn on and off the dust collection that goes up to the miter saw. For the final installation of the dust collector, I used this foam tape that I had laying around from a previous project. I used it to line the hole that the dust collector motor was going through. I did this just so that it would insulate it from vibration and then also keep all the dust hopefully inside the cabinet. The dust collector is not attached in the most crazy way. I created this vertical piece on the other side and then lined either side, the vertical 2x4 and the piece that I put in there with that foam tape, yet again to help isolate vibrations and it's just kind of clamped in there and sitting in there. I wired up the switch on the other side and installed the safety cover and you can see how it's going to be pulling cool air from the outside of the workbench through into the inside and then I also hooked up the dust bag and everything fits in there pretty well. The last major component that I wanted to add to the workbench before using it was a stop block of some sort and to do this I'm using a piece of t-track, kreg measuring tape so that I can lay out consistent cuts, and a stop block that I bought from another YouTuber. To install it, I laid out roughly where I thought it was going to go and to determine where I was going to put it, I used a three-quarter inch piece of plywood to make sure that the stop block was going to hit something of that size and I marked out that distance from the front of the workbench. Once I had everything laid out, I used the straight edge as a guide. I then used my router to cut down a groove for the t-track to sit in. The t-track being made out of aluminum makes it really easy to cut down on the miter saw. Once it's cut to length, I install it into the groove that I cut earlier and then screw it down. Before installing the measuring tape, I want to make sure that I take into consideration the length of the stop block from the indicator to the end where the wood actually hits it. Then using that measurement, I mark out where the measuring tape is going to go. Then I cut it to the length that's going to be on top of the workbench and I carefully apply it to the workbench using the adhesive that's on the other side. There's some really cool things about this type of stop block. It has some built-in adjustability so if you don't get the measuring tape in the exact right spot, you can adjust it a little bit right to left to make it exactly what you need. It's really easy to read and you can lock in and dial in some really precise measurements. The other thing that I really like about it is it being in the t-track, I can move it around to different parts of the workbench based on what I'm doing or I can just completely remove it and have a flat open spot to work. To finalize the dust collection, I'm using one of these automatic dust collection switches and so far it's pretty cool. The top plug either goes to your shop vac or in my case the dust collector and then the bottom two ports are where you plug in your machines. I'm using the two power strips so that I can plug in more than just two machines but the way the switch works is it has three modes. It has an auto, an on, or an off. In an auto mode, as soon as it senses current draw in either one of the bottom two plugs, it will automatically switch on your dust collection system. So I'm mounting this in kind of an easy to reach place right by my toolboxes. The top plug is getting plugged into the dust collector and then the other two are getting plugged into extension cords. The one extension cord runs in front of the table saw and over to the side and it plugs into the planer and the table saw because I don't think I'll ever use those two at the same exact time and overload the system. And then the other extension cord runs around back over the dust collection manifold and back to the miter saw. All right so at this point and kind of like I alluded to earlier, I don't know if this workbench is ever going to be finished but I think right now is a good stopping point. I've already started using the workbench and I'm really liking the layout and the way things are working. I have a ton of ideas of things that I need to add, ways that need to add storage or reorganize some things. But before we go anywhere I just want to give you kind of a quick walk around in case you missed video one or if you just want to get an overview of what's going on here because we've packed a lot of stuff in kind of a small space here. All right so starting off with the size of the workbench, it's roughly 37 inches tall, 9 feet long, and 32 inches deep. And really the reasons that I went with those measurements was because of one, the table saw. The width of the table saw needed to fit in here because it's built into the workbench. Nine feet long kind of came from the space that I had to put it in so if you have a smaller space if you can only make it eight feet you can shrink this down and it'll still work. In the height I wanted it to be comparable to a countertop height and also I had in mind that I was going to use these toolboxes. So at some point I alluded to that the entire workbench was built around these Milwaukee Packout Toolboxes and they were. I knew how many toolboxes I wanted and I knew how tall each one was and what I was going to have to do with that patterning and then the type of casters that I was going to use and that determined the height. While we're on the topic of storage, these Milwaukee Packout Toolboxes, I told you they were awesome. So far they work really well. You can just pull these out, the toolbox removes nice and easily, you can put it back on here pretty easily as well maybe, and then they unlatch and you can use them right here. You have full access to open the door all the way up or you can pull any one of these bins out individually, kind of close this, and then use it while you're working which is kind of nice. Then as far as machines are concerned we have three major tools here. We have the table saw, the miter saw, and the planer down below and the important thing is these three are working together well in this tight space. So like nearly every table saw, the blade plunges below the surface so you have an open area to work. Then the thing that I've really liked about this is the fence. The fence not only is pretty accurate for a saw of this price range but it removes and installs really easily. There were some people in the comments before that were worried about the accuracy of once you remove it and put it back in and I'll be honest with you the way that it clamps back in, I haven't had to redial in this gauge or anything. It still comes out really accurate to the measurement that we had in there before. Then something that's different the way that I utilize the table saw as opposed to other people that make workbenches like this, number one I used a little bit larger of a contractor grade table saw. Some people use the the smaller DeWalt ones which are nice but I like to go with something bigger but number two they normally have theirs rotated 90 degrees of this so you're cutting boards into the direction of where the miter saw is and you either have to remove the miter saw where mine stays pretty much fixed the entire time I don't ever plan on moving it or you have to offset the table saw so that it goes past behind the miter saw and I don't have any of those issues. With this I'm still able to use the full range of the saw so the fence only goes over 30 inches so I have a max of 30 inch ripping capacity anyway and I'll be honest with you I really don't exceed that too often so I think I'm going to be okay there. If if things got bad I could put the larger side going off that way with another support but I really like them facing the same direction so I'm hoping that I never have to remove the miter saw to do anything with the table saw. I have an infinity room over there with correct supporting that I could cut stuff over there so then on to the miter saw it's over here in its own nice recessed area so that the table is flat with the bed of the miter saw making it really nice and easy to line things up you don't have to block anything they sit right down on the table the fence moves out of the way so anytime we're cutting something with the miter saw we have a ton of room here nothing really gets in our way then the stop block that we installed earlier I actually purchased this online from another channel shop nation I'll be honest with you I'll link it down in the description below I saw it on his channel and I really liked the idea that he had here and in purchasing it it's actually it's a really nice product it's all 3d printed he makes them himself and they're really cool and really nice and then another cool thing about it is it's completely removable so it'll never get in the way of the fence and I'll have a nice open area to work now down to the planer and you guys have seen this probably on the other video but it has in feed and out feed tables that can be attached or removed they can also flip up and this is on a slider where the planer can slide out and be used out on this side of the workbench it can also be used while it's underneath the table saw as well I believe I can raise this up about three and a half inches and it actually goes up underneath the bottom of the table saw and I can plane stuff right in here going through this direction a lot of people in the previous video asked why I didn't rotate it 90 degrees well I think you guys found out I had all this storage stuff planned down that direction in the dust collection it was going to be there as well some people made the good point of rotating it 90 degrees and having it slide out the front and go that direction as well which is a good good idea as well I'll be honest with you at the time I was concerned about the 92 pound planer hanging over the short distance of the workbench and making it a little you know tippy or not as stable but realizing how heavy the rest of this workbench is now I don't think that's a big you know huge deal so if that's something that you're into you could rotate this 90 degrees and then have the wood going kind of parallel to the workbench but if you did that you would have to change part of the workbench down here so that you could mount it a little bit lower so that it wouldn't hit the table saw because we are we are real close down here so the last major thing that I incorporated in the workbench was dust collection and you saw that I did that in a little bit different way than some other people as well here's the controller for the automatic dust collection three settings on off or auto in the auto setting like I said anytime I use any one of the machines it'll sense that current draw and then start the dust collection which has worked really well the only downside is with the dust collector it takes a little bit of time to spool up so I found out if I'm making multiple cuts on the miter saw in a row I just opted to use the on setting and then turn it off when I was done I didn't use the auto setting because by the time you pulled the miter saw down and got through the piece of wood the dust collection was just barely spooling up and it was taking a little bit of current from the miter saw so the miter saw wasn't all the way up to speed that's the only issue I've had so far no problems with the planer no problems with the table saw but then like I said with the miter saw I just left the dust collection on the entire time so now one of the complicated mess that's underneath the miter saw and you can see that I now have doors on both sides here so it's easy to access and get into here so far the the yellow barrel that I'm using for my dust collection is working pretty well the one minor problem that I'm having with it is it is still a little bit difficult to remove these tubes and hoses up top here are flexible and they're permanently attached to the lid so the way that I get it out is I undo the lid push the lid up and then pull the dust barrel out there might be an easier way to do that but for right now it's working pretty well then like I said the back side has a door as well making easy access to the actual dust collector itself this door is really nice because I can get to the removable dust filter bag that's down here that collects most of the small particles and so far the combination of those two is working out really well the bigger chips are in the barrel the smaller particles are in the bag and it's really easy to empty that bag and the other thing that I was kind of worried about or couldn't plan for was that that bag expands nicely and kind of fills up the the rest of the volume in here so it's a really tight space but when that bag does inflate it inflates and kind of fills in the space around the dust barrel now we move over to the major dust collection manifold that I made using more kind of traditional woodworking dust collection parts you saw earlier that there are three main two and a half inch blast gates that come out of this one of them that's still not hooked up to anything which is probably going to end up being a router table sometime in the future once I figure out where I want to put this exactly we have one that I'm calling the auxiliary port that has just a longer hose with maybe a shop vac attachment attached to it so that I can move it all around the workbench and just clean up dust in other places or I could hook up like a jigsaw or a sander or a router even something like that and I could even hook it up to this extension cord that goes over to the automatic dust collection switch and it would work all in one all together which would be kind of cool and then the last two and a half goes over to the table saw I'm not 100% sure I like the route that it takes going behind the workbench I need to find a better way to route that and dust collection for a table saw is notoriously terrible like this one so yes people in the comments told me sawdust is going to be falling from the table saw on the planer and this two and a half inch tube is definitely helping but the dust collection for these saws is terrible so building a box and maybe even having a dedicated four inch hose that goes to that with some other modifications might be in the future as well but so far this is doing a pretty good job then tucked up in there at the end of the manifold is a larger four inch blast gate that has a dedicated four inch hose that's going over to the planer to collect those chips the four inch hose that goes to the planer fits really nice underneath the bottom of the table saw and it just hangs here waiting to be used then when I'm ready to use the planer all I have to do is grab that four inch hose and plug it in and then the only problem that I have right now which is one that I could solve is I can only use the dust collection when the planer is completely pulled out because I still have this brace piece in here and for whatever reason I can't bring myself to notch it or to get rid of it even though it's not necessary anymore because I have another support up here that you can't see I just can't bring myself to do it yet then the next major addition to the workbench that I've been alluding to and you guys have put it been putting in the comments that unfortunately won't make it into this video but will be in a future video will be the addition of a router table and what I'm thinking is putting it over here on this side the workbench near the table saw it'll sit flush into the workbench so that it won't disrupt anything that we're doing it won't affect how we use the table saw the miter saw or anything else the fence will just slide over it when the when the router is down in the table and the way that I plan to do this is using this kreg router lift and you can see I already bought the thing and I'm so I'm pretty well invested and I'll put the link to it in the description as well as all the other stuff that I used in here but if you do go look at this link you're going to find out that this thing is probably crazy expensive and overpriced but I'll be honest with you when buying it it looks like a really quality product I haven't used it yet so I don't know but the features that are on here the easy accessibility of it the dial gauge in the front that allows you to fine-tune things and lock things in place seems like it's going to work really well plus it looks really nice so what this will do is this will mount right in the center of this board only it'll be flush down to the bottom and then my router will fit inside of there I'm going to be able to use this fence as well for a fence for the router table I'll probably just make an adapter out of plywood that you know a lot of other people on youtube create I'll be able to hook up dust collection directly to that fence which will be kind of cool I might even include dust collection down below build a box around it like I am potentially for the table saw so do dust collection in a little bit different of a way because these things produce all kinds of dust but that's something that will be coming in a future video I don't really have time to do that right now and I'd like to hear your feedback on that as well so up to this point this is probably the longest video that I've ever made and probably rightfully so with all the stuff that we packed into this work bench and we're not done yet but if you made it this far I really appreciate it and I'd also appreciate you maybe giving the video a like if you're curious about what I'm going to do in the with this bench and or some of the projects that I'm going to be building using this I consider subscribing I really do appreciate the comments that you throw down in the in the comments section even if you're telling me to buy a car cover which I do need to do but that being said I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope to see you in another one