Table Saw Cabinet Complete

I finally completed the table saw cabinet. It took a bit longer than I anticipated because real life circumstances dictate that some of my woodworking has to wait until the weekend. Still, after a small delay I completed the cabinet. I still have a bit of future work to do; I plan to build a small drawer which will sit above the blade caddy, a door to cover the blade caddy area, and possibly a couple of doors for the cabinet. I also will eventually add a couple of hooks on one side to hold the folding outfeed holder. However, those will wait for another day because I have some other, better projects in mind.

I finished off the blade drawers and added a couple of small strips at the back to act as drawer stops. You may be able to see it on a couple of the in-progress pictures, but one of my dados in the middle shelf was off by 3/4 inch due to a small lapse in thinking. Once everything was assembled, I took a leftover 3/8 inch wide cutoff and glued it into the dado. My wife often wonders why I keep a few random cutoffs, and this is precisely why - you never know when you need to add a drawer stop or fill a dado! After that, I took some 1/8 inch thick oak strips that were cutoffs from another project and made a face frame for the cabinet and interior edges (again - cutoffs came in handy). I didn't add anything in front of the drawers because that would involve cutting 11 openings in the facing, and that would have been overkill for this project. As it is, it leaves me a convenient space for the door that will eventually cover the drawers.

As you can see the drawers hold the blades very well, and I have room for my entire dado set plus a 40-tooth general purpose blade, with two spaces still free. The spacing between the drawers is pretty narrow, so large fingers would have a hard time reaching the holes. The tabs from the original Rockler plan would work better for the drawer pulls, but since I have narrow fingers it's not really a problem for me.

After I placed the bottom moulding, I cut two notches to correspond with the notches in the cabinet walls. These notches allow the back of the cabinet to slide over the rolling base on which the table saw sits. The cabinet sits right in place, with plenty of room for various table saw accessories. So far it is working very well to keep all my table saw stuff organized and out of the way. Now if I can just find a convenient place to store the large crosscut sled!

Update June 17, 2014 Jump to the first and second posts for this project:
First Post
Second Post