Inspired by
Jay Bates, I built something like his work station, with the emphasis firmly on '
something like'! I positioned it along the back wall of my single-car garage which was a little over 8 foot long, with the mitre saw dead centre. It looked the business and worked great - providing I never wanted to do anything longer than cutting 8ft lengths in half! So I moved it to one of the long walls, kept the mitre saw central but at least now I had some wriggle room if, e.g, I needed a 6 foot section from an eight foot length.
It had about a million drawers! I had deep drawers on the base on heavy duty runners which housed things like a Festool Plunge Saw in a large Systainer and similar. On the upper section, the drawers were smaller front-to-back and shallower height-wise so I could fit loads on each side, even allowing for the fact what would have been the bottom drawer was acutally fixed in place, had Incra T-track Plus inserted either side for accurate measurement with a straight edge used to line bothe siides up with the mitre saw's fence. But being on the shorter side, the uppermost drawers became dumping grounds as I wasn't tall enough to see what was in them! I had a cubby-hole unit bridging the whole lot and that was probably the most useful storage area. It was divided into sections. One section had shelves fitted, on which sat a Stanley mains-powered nailer in its case, one of those ubiquitous drill and bit sets that didn't take up the whole shelf so I boxed off the back to stop the set from going too far back and this then offered space for more drill bits. Another shelf held a multi-compartment container with a selection of screws and I can't remember what was originally on the top shelf but it did become somewhere to store my kneepads. Another section had my cordless drills and drivers suspended from a notched shelf with more drill related accessories and spare batteries stored below. The other sections remained 'open', one was a perfect fit for my Trend Respirator, another right height for a Makita DAB radio, one housed a boxed set of Stanley chisels, a mains-powered drill in polyprop case, a Stanley 1/2" socket set and Bosch hole-cutter set in other PP cases, and one contained various oils, waxes and other fluids. I could have stored even more on top but that seemed the ideal place to position an amp and speakers to play an old ipod through.
I boxed the saw in, hoping to force dust into a Black Hole behind the saw, connectd to the dust extractor. Was still the dustiest of machines but the boxy part held the iPod as well as battery chargers attached to it and power points with integral USB ports for powering/recharging them all.
I had to take it all down when I sold up but even then it hadn't finished being useful, the cubbyhole unit was sealed up with ply offcuts and the drawers were used as packing crates. I'm not sure I shall reassemble it whenever I set up the next workshop as it does take up an awful lot of space. I want to revamp my
Timothy Wilmotts MFT cart and I'm considering attaching the mitre saw to a length of timber with support tables either side that can be clamped to the MFT when in used and suspended from the wal when not needed. Or a rolling cart with foldable wings.
