Trolley cabinet

In order to practice the techniques I'll be using for the blanket box, I decided to build a moveable trolley/cabinet to store my router table. It was also a chance to test out the router lift and the dust extractor I'd added.

The cabinet was built from timber readily available from the DIY store. Be careful when buying timber this way. It's often young, quick grown and prone to warp. It usually oozes sap somewhere too. Buy enough to pick your components carefully. I bought a pack of 2.4m long 44x18mm PAR pine and a sheet of 6mm ply 2.4x0.6m. It all came to about £16. The 12mm ply for the top and bottom came for some recycled ply I had at home. 

I began (with help from Ally I have to say) by cutting all the uprights and rails to length. Each side is a simple panel construction with mortise and tenon joints between the rails and the uprights. 

Using my router table I ran a groove down the edges for the ply panel and down the inside edge of the rear upright for the back panel.

I then used my tenon jig to rout the tenons. 

It worked really well and wasn't that difficult to adjust. I just took my time and made plenty of test cuts. Test fitting the first tenon in the groove was an exciting moment, you just can't see how excited I was!

The side panels were assembled first, and, having dried, the rear panel was added and the front rails too. The front rails were dowel jointed to the side uprights. 

I added a couple of runners for the table to slide on before adding the back panel to make fixing them easier.

The final picture shows the router table in the cabinet.

All that's left is to add some wheels (either Screwfix or Ikea for these). I could make a draw for accessories, but at the moment I've stored the dust extractor in the bottom half of the cabinet.