Sliding table with outfeed/assembly table

[Matt Armstrong]

So, I made this to replace the old assembly table I had. This one provides full 28" deep drawers (16 of them) and a large 84"x66" surface for outfeed/assembly surfaces. The top is a torsion box made with 1/2" MDF and surfaced with black melamine (I thought it looked cool, hey). The entire cabinet and drawers are made from arbitrarily matched just-one-notch-above-shop grade maple ply. I used alternating leopardwood and purpleheart drawer pulls that I custom made. There is a cabinet door but in reality, I almost wish I had put more drawers on the non-sliding-table side. The torsion box is trimmed in bubinga wenge corner pieces.

Overall I thought it was a fun project and is infinitely useful. With the sliding table, I can get good dust collection while making miter cuts. I am still debating on the merits of a SCMS but it is an expensive purchase and one I'm not entirely sure should come first, given that I have the sliding table.

You can see my clearvue cyclone and ductwork floating around in the garage there, too.

Hope you guys enjoy my mini-shop tour... it's a work in progress always.

[Peter Quinn]

Fantastic Matt! That is one great outfeed solution. Very nicely done.

[Greg Sznajdruk]

Don't remember a better looking out feed table. Very nicely done.

Greg

[Paul Greathouse]

Beautiful project Matt, its great to work with quality material isn't it? What brand of slider is that and what are the slide distance capacities?

[Gary McNair]

Great looking piece. Did you attach the table to the saw? I am moving up to a new Powermatic and will need an outfeed table similar to what you've done.
On my current out feed table I cut slots into the surface to match the miter slots in the saw table. The saw is a 10" Contractor style. This was because my crosscut sled was deep and I felt I needed extra long runners.
I'm wondering now if that is necessary? Doesn't look like it's a problem for you?
Maybe I just need to rethink the design of my new, yet to be built, sled?

[Brian Kent]

Wow! Are your kitchen cabinets jealous?

[Harold Burrell]

OK...2 things are certain in regards to your post...

#1. This outfeed setup is GREAT! Absolutely gorgeous as well as useful.

#2. I will NEVER post any pics of my shop furniture.

:o

[Matt Armstrong]

Beautiful project Matt, its great to work with quality material isn't it? What brand of slider is that and what are the slide distance capacities?

Hi Paul,

Thank you to you and others who have provided the positive feedback! I am overly critical of my own work and am just getting started in this hobby so the encouragement is invaluable to me at this stage. The slider is an exaktor ex26x - I found it for sale on amazon for under $350, brand new. I decided this was going to come out of my miter saw budget... so far it's managed to satisfy my crosscutting needs. I posted a thread about this 'deal' on this forum but immediately after I bought one, the price jumped back up to the mid 700s. So there's my gloat. My anti-gloat is the unisaw itself - I unfortunately got one that had more problems than it probably was worth, but I've fixed them now.

The exaktor is supposed to have, when installed as they recommend (to the rear and middle bolts of the saw) 20" of crosscut capacity with the fence in front and 60" of crosscut capacity with the fence in rear. I moved it to the forward and middle bolts of my unisaw. I get about 30-32" of crosscut capacity (depending on the material thickness) with the fence at the front of the saw and just barely 49" of crosscut capacity with the fence at the rear. The bad news is that I can't completely clear the blade and crosscut 48 anymore. The good news is that I haven't missed that capacity once. I can still crosscut a standard sized door with the fence in the front and I'm fine with that much capacity.

Thanks again for the kind words, everyone :)

[Matt Armstrong]

Great looking piece. Did you attach the table to the saw? I am moving up to a new Powermatic and will need an outfeed table similar to what you've done.
On my current out feed table I cut slots into the surface to match the miter slots in the saw table. The saw is a 10" Contractor style. This was because my crosscut sled was deep and I felt I needed extra long runners.
I'm wondering now if that is necessary? Doesn't look like it's a problem for you?
Maybe I just need to rethink the design of my new, yet to be built, sled?

I didn't attach the table to the saw but I'm considering it just to reduce racking a little bit. The cabinets / surface are very solid but if you really start shaking them hard, they do rack just a tad.

Sleds seemed to me to require long miter slots to keep the whole sled aligned and stable. The sliding table eliminates this problem but I may eventually find a need for embedding miter slots into my outfeed table. So far, I'm able to get by with what you see there.

Note the router table built into the extension table of the table saw. I have to re-align it and get it coplanar with the outfeed table but having a long outfeed surface on a router table allows me avoid buying a quality dado blade and gives me some other advantages that I couldn't get with a standalone router table (of course, at the expense of some conveniences as well.)

[Sam Layton]

Matt, that is a great looking outfeed table. All of those drawers will sure come in handy. That is on my list of things to make for the shop.

Sam

[Matt Armstrong]

Matt, that is a great looking outfeed table. All of those drawers will sure come in handy. That is on my list of things to make for the shop.

Sam

Thanks! It is really nice to have a lot of drawers. I'm not even 30 but I hate looking in cabinets on the floor for stuff. I think my philosophy will be: "if it's on the floor, it should only have drawers. If it's on a wall, doors for all"

Horrible attempt at rhyming but something along those lines.

[Rick Potter]

OK, I admit it. I'm jealous. I have been thinking about one like this for a long time. I guess there are thinkers and there are doers. Nice job.

Rick Potter