Bandsaw base storage - proof of concept

Art Mulder

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Location
London, Ontario
I have a compact basement shop, and so storage is always an issue. This year I plan to tackle that off and on and see what I can do about making better use of wasted space.

One thing that has always bugged me is the open base in my 14" Bandsaw. (Here is an old photo I dug up)
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It's one of those basic open bases with the splayed legs. And all that lovely space down there is boxed in by those crosspieces. I've thought about building a complete new base, but that is a lot of work! (I've also considered replacing the saw, which is another reason to NOT do all that work.)

But today I hit on an idea, and pressed ahead with a proof of concept out of scrap plywood found laying around the shop. Basically I took the middle brace from the front, and moved it down as close to the bottom as possible, and then fitted in a box. The brace is long enough to still reach from side to side, though I did need to drill some new holes in the legs and the brace:
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I considered fitting in angled pieces of wood, but I dismissed that as way too much fiddly work. Instead I built a rectangular box to fit into the space revealed by lowering that brace.
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The front of the box is supported by the front brace. The back of the box though... I considered lowering the back brace as well, but instead I engineered a slot across the back of my new storage box, and it now fits over/on the lip of the back brace. A couple of holes were drilled through the rear brace, and two screws were fastened into the back of the box. This did mean that the back had to be some fairly strong 1/2" plywood, and not the 1/8" that you might normally put on the back of a cabinet.
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And here is the finished proof of concept:
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At this point I plan to just live with it for a while. If I come across any issues, it is easy enough to rip this out and build a new box. I might end up leaving it as is, I might fit some doors on it, or I might fit in a couple drawers. It depends mostly on what I end up thinking should be placed inside there. Right now it's a pair of my nail guns and my Dremel Multi-Max clone.

It is quite satisfying to start and finish a project in one afternoon!
 
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