For me, organization is an important part of creating an efficient workspace and keeping frustration to a minimum while woodworking. It’s hard for me to keep it organized but, I like to start a project with a clean slate. The smaller the workspace, the more important it is to me. Whether workshop or desk, organization is important, that and not trying to put 10 gallons of stuff into a 5-gallon bucket.
I know there are woodworkers out there that will disagree with me or, at least, they don’t mind working in what some would consider a cluttered and disorganized shop. And, that’s fine. They know where everything is in their shop and they create projects of wonderful craftsmanship in an environment that they are comfortable and familiar with.
You can see from the photos on this site that my shop is far from organized in its current state. So, how can I be talking about organization you may ask. The fact is that I had odd pieces of lumber and sheet goods stacked all over the place. One stack in my shop area and two stacks in the other part of the garage. I had to keep looking in each stack to see if I had what I needed at the moment and I had to keep moving the stacks around to get to things behind them.
To solve this problem, I built the Lumber Cart shown above. I don't have very much space overhead and no open walls at this point so I searched around for materials storage on wheels ideas and found a design I liked in ShopNotes, Issue #55. It had storage for lumber, cut-offs and sheet goods. It had a panel-cutting guide as a bonus. Originally designed to store a full 4’X8’ sheet of material on edge, it was too big for my small area. I adapted that design to a 48” X 25-1/2” footprint that works better in my space and left off the cutting guide since I figured that I would have to have already cut a panel down to use the smaller cutting guide.
Additionally, I changed the method of construction and the material from plywood to OSB; it saved me a lot of money (2 full 4X8 sheets, $20 vs. $50+). The most expensive single part of building the cart was the 3” casters. I’ve since found a cheaper source for those as well; which is good because I have several mobile workstations, storage and cabinets yet to build.
Now I have all of my larger pieces of lumber and sheet goods in one out-of-the-way place, easily movable if needed. This is just a start but, it will help to cut the frustration level on my next project.
Do you store your lumber and/or sheet goods on wheels? If so, or if you have other recommendations, I invite you to share them.
I’ll go through the building process of this materials cart in upcoming posts. Stay tuned.
See Also: Lumber Cart Build – Part 1 – Building the Base
Lumber Cart Build – Part 2 – Preparing the A-frame Parts
Lumber Cart Build – Part 3 – Assembling the Cart
Lumber Cart Build – Part 4 – Accessorizing
Lumber Cart SketchUp Models
Lumber Cart Shop Drawings
Since 2007, Cerritos College has put on a Woodworking Celebration at the end of the Spring semester to showcase student projects. The Celebration features lunch (mentioning lunch first is an indicator of the position food holds in my list of priorities), an auction, a raffle (all woodworking related items), and a juried competition. This year’s judges for the juried competition were Jennifer Anderson, Jim Ipekjian and Tim Peters. Check out my photo gallery for some pictures of the ribbon winners. If I missed any of the winning projects, I apologize. I know I missed a shot of the People’s Choice winner. Again, I apologize.
