From The Workshop: A Drill Press Stand with Fastener Storage

I built this tool stand-slash-hardware cabinet mostly because I was tired of using a stepstool as a drill press stand and the floor as a screw organizer. That said, I did put up with the mess for the better part of 6 months, so I clearly wasn't that motivated...

I was inspired by this dresser and these tool stands, both by Matthias over at woodgears. I liked the strength of the box-jointed frame and the inset drawer grooves that the 2x4 stock allowed. Plywood is so expensive and dimensional lumber so cheap, it's clear why Matthias prefers working with building grade softwood. For the price of a single 2x10x8, I was able to build the frame that would have otherwise cost $40-$100 in plywood. Of course, the drawers still required a lot of plywood, but not much I can do about that.

I designed the unit in sketchup to test comfortable heights and drawer configurations. I wanted the top drawer for storing combination squares, rulers, and random homeless drill bits. At some point I plan on making a sorting index for the assorted bits, but it works for now. I took the design of Jeremy Schmidt's drawers and used the drawer bottom as the rails instead of using ball bearing slides. I'm not expecting the drawer to carry much weight and the drawer itself is only 1" deep, so the slides I have would not have worked anyway. One thing I would change is to add full length rails so the drawer doesn't bind when closing.


The rest of the drawers are on full extension ball bearing slides and are used for storing screws and other fasteners. The slides are simple without self or soft close features to break that I bought in bulk off of amazon, a real bargain actually. For drywall and construction screws, I usually just keep the 1 lb boxes in a Willamette file box and dig through the stack to find what I need. I used to use drywall screws nearly exclusively, but since starting the remodel, I've been using lath screws in most of my projects. The large head and aggressive threading work really well for jigs and workshop furniture made of plywood. Anyway, I set the top 3 fasteners drawers to fit the 1 lb boxes with a little room to spare.

I made the next drawer a little taller to accommodate some Costco sorting containers I planned on using to sort through my piles of miscellaneous screws. I'm not a huge fan of the form factor though, so I may end up using smaller containers.

The bottom drawer is much taller, and designed to store cases and larger indexes, like my forstner bit set. it also hold one of my old toolboxes that use to store taps and more random drilling related tools and accessories. I used to have all my tools sorted into these toolboxes ($5 from Home depot) sorted by use type. The individual small boxes made a lot of sense for a workshop that had to be moved around and put away at the end of each day, and I still like having discrete units I can pull out for specific tasks.



The top of the unit is large enough to store my brad-point index and miscellanious specialty bits I use on a regular basis. I also keep my 2-4-6 and 1-2-3 blocks here. I know a lot of people love making drill press cabinets to store their indexes and what not, but I've never been a fan of having to open doors to find what I need. Sometimes my indexes get full of wood chips, but a quick zap with the shop vac usually cleans everything off to my satisfaction.
Finally, the entire frame rests on adjustable feet since the floor is far from level.

Right now, the drawers are about 1/2 full with just screws. My problem now is that there isn't enough room for all the other types of fasteners such as bolts and nuts and I would rather not split the same class of hardware across more than one storage location. Likewise, there isn't enough room to also store all my hardware and fixtures like handles and knobs. An embarrassment of riches if I've ever heard one. I'm not really looking forward to building the next one though.

One thing I learned while working on the drawers is that I never want to do this for a living. Cutting the bajillion box-joints for the drawers was so tedious and mind numbing, I was ready to throw in the towel by the second drawer. it didn't help that the plywood I was using, while the nicest stuff at Lowes and home Depot, was still pretty crap and splintered like crazy while I was cutting. The glues just aren't that good, leading to the top ply or two to flake off and embed themselves in my hand at 60 mph.