The second project comes first

  

I'm writing about the second project, because it took more time and thought. Plus it came about from more connection with the community woodshop and makerspace.

The long video describes the searching process, but here's the executive summary: if you have lots of workshop space, you can look for big workbenches with sexy vises made by Sjöbergs or Grizzly or make your own. If your space is small like mine, you have to refine the search to a higher degree. Make some overlapping circles with words like 'toolbox storage', 'portability', 'size', 'truck bed', and see what comes up in the connected center.

There are two people whom I have to give credit to: 

Ron Paulk runs the Smart Woodshop, and has a great design for the Smart Bench that fulfills a lot of the small shop requirements. It's portable, it has a large surface area and is supremely rigid, and handles a variety of projects with dog holes and clamping possibilities. 

The only drawbacks - for my situation - is that it doesn't combine with tool storage, and when in storage mode it still occupies a fair amount of precious garage space.

Timothy Wilmots of Benchworks used to have a cabinet shop and an internet store for his woodshop design plans, including the MFTC Multifunction Workbench. This is a great design for anyone with Systainer toolboxes. 

It's portable and can be moved within the garage or via truck to the project. It's functional as tool storage, both in stowed mode and when the workbench is deployed. And the workbench has a large and useful surface area, and then stows in a much reduced footprint to keep the garage clear. Plus, with some simple extensions attached to the workbench, it turns into a full plywood breakdown station or assembly table.

In my workshop, I was storing tools in Milwaukee Packout 2 and 3-drawer stacking boxes, and I loved the concept of a rolling stack of toolboxes that could be taken to any job and then returned to the garage. However, when the stack of 4 toolboxes were tucked in the garage, they become difficult to access without unloading the tower. So I channeled some 2007 Steve Jobs, and tried to combine all three things that I wanted: Packout toolboxes that are accessible at any time; a folding workbench, and a portable rolling system.

Project #1 started with the height of the table saw, to act as an outfeed. This Project #2 starts with the dimensions of the Packout Toolboxes and the drawers that will be used to hold and access them. Once the size of this interior package is known, then the outer workbox shell can be built around it. And the size of the workbox shell will determine how big the workbench needs to be. A fair mount of SketchUp time, and iteration, but this is all doable taking it step by step.

It would be nice to lighten the package a little with some accent holes, plus the Milwaukee Red shows through the body nicely. I'm only so good with a jig saw, so I really wanted to get a clean way to make templates for cutting the accent holes, fenders, rotating locks, etc. So I started with a CNC class at The Facility makerspace out of Edmonds College, and ended up with a full sheet of MDF getting turned into useful stuff. 

And as long as the CNC was making clean curves on pieces, I went ahead and let it make the MFT worktop as well. Dog holes placed by computer - can't get more precise than that!

And now it's complete! I did a little Forum, Reddit, and Youtube posting in the same places that I found when I was looking for a portable workbench. It's a little tricky to balance limitations on self-promotion with links to an Etsy store, but it seems to be working. And at least one person has purchase the plans for this Workbench ROlling Cart! (So far the name WRoC is working, but we'll see if something else sticks.)  

Stick around for the first project description. We'll have the plans for it up soon!