Plan ideas

Shop Furniture Sliding Storage Cabinet

I like shop cabinets. After having a few in my old shop and seeing how clean and organized they kept everything, I fell in love. The old shop had a series of three custom built rolling cabinets that stored under my old, massive miter saw bench. Each was built of MDF. They were open on one side and had a single shelf. Three 19” toolboxes fit beneath the shelf and four 16” toolboxes above the shelf. The tops had a 1” overhand to assist with clamping . . . but I digress. This post is about the new sliding storage cabinet.

The new cabinet is inspired by the Grizzly H5654 cabinet. The Grizzly has a pair of doors on the front and two slide out drawers on each side. It houses a total of 7 pegboard panels. When I first saw it I was enamored with it’s ability to store so much in such a small area. And it was all stored in a closed cabinet to keep the contents dust free.

The more I thought about the Grizzly, the more hung up I became on its biggest design flaw - the drawers which slide out to the side. They meant that the H5654 would take up twice as much wall space as the width of the cabinet. As I plan to fit in as many cabinets as I can along my walls, this was a deal killer for me.

Knowing that the solution was to have all of the drawers slide out from the front, I began to hatch my own idea for a slide out cabinet. I bough some 2’ x 4’ pegboard and a sheet of 3/4” OSB from Lowe’s. I let efficient use of the pegboard determine the size of my slide out storage drawers and then I designed the rest of the cabinet around them. The drawers ended up being 16” deep by 24” high.

The cabinet is 28” wide by 28” high. It’s made of the 3/4” OSB assembled with pocket screws. It’s attached to the wall via a French cleat so I can easily move it around as I continue to work on the shop. As it is currently my only wall cabinet I have extension cords hanging on one side and air and vacuum hoses on the other. The cords and hoses hang on cheap metal garden hose racks.

I finished it off with some satin finished drawer pulls which don’t really match anything, but I like the look of them anyway. I was too lazy to sand or finish the cabinet. Even in it’s naked form I’m loving it. The sliding storage cabinet now houses my tape, most of my hand saws, all my headphones and some cordless drills. While I’m sure the contents will change over time, the cabinet itself will certainly serve many years of faithful services in my penultimate woodshop.

What kind of cabinets have you made for you shop?