Making a Cabinet for all my Clamps - ( With Extra Hidden Storage )

This video is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform where you can create your own website. This workshop has never had enough clamps. I'm pretty sure that is today. So a little while back, I reached out to a company called Bessie, which in my opinion makes some of the best clamps out there. I asked them if they'd be willing to send me some of their products in exchange for me using them in my build videos and they did. They sent me all this stuff. Quick disclaimer though, it was me reaching out to them. They didn't pay me any money for this, but they did send me all these clamps for free. So up until today, the very few clamps I've had in this workshop have just been living clamps to this pipe here. But now that I have way more of them, I need a much better way of storing them. Also, this corner here is just a mess of just packaging material, a compressor, a trash bin and some other stuff and I want to be able to utilize this space much more efficiently. I want to build a big cabinet right here that's going to hold all my clamps and a bunch of other stuff. It's going to have one big pull-out drawer with access from both sides and we're even going to build a little secret hidden compartment right on the inside of it. Check this out. So to start, let's head over to the table saw and cut out all the parts for the project. That's it. These are all the parts. All in all, this is going to be a relatively simple project. These MDF pieces are going to make up the main frame of the build and these plywood pieces are going to make up the two drawers with the divider between that will make them act as one big drawer. And for the front, I've got this really nice ash veneered board. Looks pretty simple, right? However, there's this one tiny little annoying thing. There's a big fat sewer pipe right where I want to place the cabinet and as much as I would love to get rid of it, that's not going to happen. So I've had to make cutouts that will allow the parts to fit around the pipe. That goes for both the MDF frame as well as all the parts for the drawers. And since these aren't really critical dimensions and the back of these is never going to be visible anyways, I just cut these out on the bandsaw. And of course, because of this cutout, I can no longer have a solid back piece, so I've got that in two pieces as well. Enough talk, let's start by assembling this frame and then after that I'll show you how I'm going to make these two drawers act like one big one that's going to be able to take a whole bunch of load. I have to say, this thing looks slightly bigger than what it looked like on my computer screen. I've clamped all the parts together to see if everything fits right. It does and here you can see that annoying slot in the middle of it for a pipe. I'm gonna drill and screw all these parts together and then we can move on. I have to say, it's pretty handy to have these many clamps. And now that all of it is held together, take off all these clamps and then I'll apply glue to one side at a time, that way I don't need to fiddle around with trying to glue all of these panels all at once. It's a little bigger than I thought it was going to be. But here it is. Now, let's build a drawer. The drawers for this thing are actually going to be pretty simple. I'm going to start off by building the same drawers that I've built for most other projects in this workshop. I'm going to use the same bloom drawer runners and I'll start by building the beginning of two regular drawers. I'll build most of this out of this 15 mil plywood and for the sides, I've cut a couple of grooves in these boards using the table saw just by lowering the blade and then moving it over step by step until the groove now fits perfectly. Onto that board. So we'll put together two of these things, one for the top, one for the bottom. Now, instead of having a regular front on these drawers like I normally would, I'm actually going to use this big sheet of MDF, connect one of these parts to either side of it, effectively connecting both of these drawers together so that they act as one big drawer and when we pull out the front, the whole thing is going to come out. Did that work? Now, to stiffen this whole thing up, I'm also going to use a sheet of plywood, giving the whole structure a lot more rigidity, but also allowing us to mount stuff to both sides of this board, which we'll be able to access from both sides once we pull out the drawer. I'll get all these parts lined up, then we can glue and screw them together, but then I also have a couple of more really cool things that will go inside of here. Top part, bottom part, front and the divider is in place. Now, normally I would have just had a flat board going in the back here, but because of this annoying little cutout, I'm gonna have to piece that together. I have a bunch of small pieces so that it follows the cutout, that way we'll still be able to utilize this space up here. All right. This thing feels like a pretty big and relatively sturdy drawer. Let's start with all the fun stuff that we're gonna put inside. But first, a quick ad from today's sponsor, Squarespace. So, for as long as I've been making stuff here on YouTube, I've had my own website where I can share what I create with you guys. And I built that website using Squarespace. Squarespace enabled me to super quickly and easily create my own website so that I can share what I do. It's super easy to set up. It doesn't need any technical knowledge. Just choose from any of their award-winning templates and get started creating your own website right away. Squarespace has all you need to get your business off the ground, including e-commerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process and secure payments. On my website, I sell everything from build plans to 3D files, but whatever you want to sell online, Squarespace has the merchandising features to make your products look their best online. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, head to squarespace.com slash A-L-C-H for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, let's get to the fun stuff. Now, you might have noticed that this thing looks kind of mirrored to what it used to look like. You would be correct because I first managed to assemble the whole thing with all the parts upside down, basically, which meant that I had to take everything back apart, assemble everything again and now we're at the same spot, but this time around with the notch in the right place. So, right now, we've got this big drawer, which effectively has two compartments. We've got this shallower side of the drawer, which is perfectly gonna fit the height of these clamps, but we still got all this space here to work with and I'm gonna divide this area into two compartments by adding an additional brace in here. So, here's the cool part. I'm standing where the wall is now and the pipe is gonna go right here. Unfortunately, we're gonna lose the space behind here, but to make up for that, I'm gonna make a door, which is gonna go right here and onto this door, we're gonna have a ton of really cool storage where you can hang all sorts of different clamps. But since this is a door, we're gonna be able to flip the whole thing up and have a ton more storage behind here. I think that's gonna look really cool. I'll attach this, then we can flip it over and I'll show you how it's gonna work. Now, moving on to our door that is gonna hide our little secret compartment behind here. I mean, it's not that secret, only you know about it, but don't tell anyone. This door is gonna be super simple. I'm just gonna use regular furniture hinges. One part is gonna go attached to here, the other one is gonna go into the door and then they snap together. I've got this template that I made years ago. This is gonna allow us to pre-drill the holes for where these mounting plates are gonna go. And then we just need to drill the holes in the door, which I'm gonna do with this overly complicated looking drill jig here, which I've borrowed from the guys on the other side of the workshop. The really nice thing about this is that I can just drill all three of these holes and then I can literally just snap it, place the hinge, push it into a hole, clamp it down and we're done. And that is number three. Let's see if the door fits. In theory, it should be as simple as just lining everything up and just clicking all three hinges in place and now we have a door. But let's be honest, what good does a door do if we don't have any good solutions to store stuff behind it? That's why I've gone ahead and drilled a bunch of holes in the sidewalls behind here. I super simply did that by making this little jig so that I can drill holes much like an Ikea cabinet. Into these holes we'll insert these little pegs. So now we can have a ton of shelves that will allow us to utilize the storage space behind here really, really well. Now, I couldn't be bothered drilling holes the whole way up and down on both sides so I just drilled a couple holes in each location that will give me plenty of adjustability and it's all hidden behind this door. Now that means that we're on to the main last part of this drawer, which is the front. For that front I'm going to use this lovely piece of 12 mil ash board. And as you can see, I have already edge banded all the edges. And after a bunch of sanding, I get this whole thing a nice protective coat of some white pigmented osmo oil. And now the only thing that we're missing is some sort of handle. For that, I've already marked the location on the front here and I'm quite simply just going to drill a couple of big holes. And as simple as that, we've got ourselves a pretty nice handle so that we can pull out that drawer. Now, all we have to do is attach the front to our big massive drawer. I think the best way to do that is to flip the front upside down and then somehow get the drawer back on top of there. Oh god! Good thing that thing isn't heavy. As you can see, I've already cut a similar hole in the front of the drawer that time just with a bigger hole saw and now it's just a matter of aligning both pieces, attaching them together and then we can install it. The front is attached. Essentially, this whole thing is done. So now we're ready to install this in the cabinet. Luckily, we've already made that cabinet and oh, yeah, by the way, I filled in all the holes and painted the whole thing white. So now ready to install this onto the wall. As a base, I have this sheet of MDF here that I'm going to place on the ground just so that the cabinet will be a little bit lifted off from the ground. Next up is trying to get this thing moved into place. I think it's going to be a pretty tight fit, but that is tight. All right, it's in. See, it barely fits. There's only a couple of millimeters of a gap into this recess on the wall here. Now, this whole cabinet is still pretty wobbly and when we have this drawer that is going to be pretty heavy when we pull it out, I'm going to attach this whole thing to the wall. I'll mark up a couple of locations for screws and then I'll get out the hammer drill and drill into the concrete behind. This thing is not going anywhere. Now onto the drawer slides that we'll be using. These things are super easy to install onto the drawer. We just have to install these orange locking bits. These will make sure that when we slide the drawer in place that they lock in place firmly and then these get attached to the cabinet. The rails for the cabinet are super simple to mount. The ones in the bottom I could just place down there and then attach directly. The top ones need a little bit more measuring but they're also just screwed in place. And now we're ready to see if everything fits. What's my plan here? I don't really have one. That wasn't planned. I'm sure I could have done that more elegantly but it's on the floor. Oh my god, this thing is massive. So the goal now is to get both of the tracks to line up on top of the bottom. Then we should just be able to slide it in place and we're done. That worked! Guys, I mean, I knew that it should work in theory, but that it would work this well on the first try I'm honestly kind of surprised. And even the soft close works. All right, it's time to fill this thing up with all of my new clamps but first, because I know I'm gonna get a ton of questions about it, how much weight can this thing hold? Is it strong enough to support both the weight of the drawer itself and all the stuff I'm gonna shove inside of it? That would be a yes. I can stand inside of it. Now, these drawer owners can take 60 kilograms each. So that's 120 kilos. I don't think the frame is more than 40, which leaves me a plink of extra capacity to either stand inside of it or load it up with clamps. I'm gonna load it up with clamps though. So let's start with the back side here. This side is dedicated for these Revo clamps. You've already seen me use a bunch of these when assembling the cabinet. This is my first time using them and they're fantastic. To store these I made two of these wooden combs. I just cut those slots out on the band saw and then I just attached them with some glue and then screwed them in from the back. And now these go in like that. I've got two of these really long ones. Then I have four of these. This looks great. Four of these pretty short ones. Oh, I just love how easy it is to just shove them right in there. And then last but not least, these four, which since they're shorter, they'll go right underneath here. And then since we still have some space down at the bottom here, I just mount a wooden dowel here onto which I can hang these. I often use these when assembling drawers. They pull together all four corners with a strap. Those can live there. And then I've got some accessories that can live down in the bottom here. Oh, perfect fit. And on the other side, on the door here, I've attached a couple of strips of wood so that I can use that as storage for these style of clamps. I've got both big ones, medium ones, as well as teeny tiny ones. And one style of clamp that I haven't seen before that I just thought was super cool is this thing where the grip is built into the handle here. These will be great for reaching into tight spaces where you don't have a lot of space to turn the handle. And of course the clamps I already had will also get a spot on this wall. Isn't this so cool? A ton of clamps, super easy access, but the big question is what's hiding behind here? Ah, a ton of 3D printing filament. I guess what else, huh? Now, yeah, I'm losing a little bit of space in the middle here where I can't put any clamps because I still won't be able to open the door, but I mean, that's a solid amount of storage. I think I can fit about 30 spools of filament behind here. And I mean, yeah, it's pretty heavy, but the drawer works. It's still a soft close and it's relatively easy to open up. All my clamps are stored away. I've got a ton of additional storage. And you know what? I think this project is done. Oh, and I almost forgot. There's also extra drawer space on top here. But I have no idea what to put in there. And with that, I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you did, give it a thumbs up. If you're not yet, make sure to subscribe and ring that bell to get notified every time I upload something new. Again, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye!