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[shaneymack]

Thanks for the thumbs up folks.  

I had a lot of trouble making the tongues.  In brief, the router depth setting that was perfect for the test pieces I made, gave me tongues that were a bit plump on the production pieces.  I could persuade the joints to go together, but I was concerned that once I applied glue they might swell and give me more trouble.  

I don't have a router plane, so I squared up a small block of plywood and attached some 60 grit with rubber cement.  I then carefully made a dozen full length passes on each side of the tongue being careful to hold the block flat against the tongue.  This took just enough off to ease the joint.  Low budget hybrid joinery.  

Yeah, trying to glue up all the pieces at once is going to be too complicated.  I did want to see that all the pieces would fit and how much persuasion the joints were going to take.  It looks like it will go together pretty smoothly, but I will put together the base first then add the sides later.  

 

Good solution, Mark, glad it worked out for you !

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

[gee-dub]

On 4/2/2016 at 8:12 PM, sjk said:

You might think about turning your clamps 90 degrees and building slot racks so you can get several front-to-back in the cart.  Like those shovel holders you can buy that let you put 4-5 shovels front-to-back.

My current clamp storage is like what you've proposed, with the clamps spread out horizontally.  I've decided that for me, I'm wasting space.  When I get a break between projects I'm going to redo my clamp storage, which will free up some horizontal space.

I did that a while back and the increase in storage and ease of access to the clamps has paid off.

 

Before:

And in the same amount of wall space.

 

[Mark J]

sjk and gee-dub have a good idea here.  If I were doing something like this again I would consider this approach very strongly.  

Since the clamp heads are about 2 x 6 inches once you can rack four clamps sideways you are ahead.  In my application I could only put three clamps side by side, and for various reasons (not the least of which was laziness) I did not want to re-dimension the cart.  

Note, if you are going this route on a cart that will get jostled around ,you need to include some provision to keep the clamps from falling off.  I may still end up with a bungee cord retainer system on mine--we'll see.

Gee-dub, how did you anchor the "fingers" on to the back board in your application?  Looks like they are bearing considerable weight.  Is it just screws?

 

Another thing that I would look at doing differently is using thinner plywood.  Wdwerker said as much in an earlier post.  Besides costing less, it weighs less.  3/4" Baltic Birch is a bit more than 2.5 lbs per sqft.  There's a lot of sqft in this project and it adds up.  In fact this morning I am thinking I will put off the glue up for a bit, because once I glue this all together I won't be able to move it myself without the casters, so maybe it's time to think about those.  In retrospect 1/2" might have been robust enough.  

...and I got to figure out how to make those finger boards with the tools I have.  Router with a template sounds good, but what  do I use as a template  to make the template?  Gotta ponder that a bit.  

[gee-dub]

2 hours ago, Mark J said:

Gee-dub, how did you anchor the "fingers" on to the back board in your application?  Looks like they are bearing considerable weight.  Is it just screws?

A sort of a cross-dowel.  The plywood fingers are drilled for a 3/4" oak dowel that is positioned so that the hardened #10 screw threads pass through.  There is an additional #10 screw that keeps the finger from twisting.  I have 8 or so of these on my cleat wall that get daily abuse and have held up remarkably well, no sign of fatigue.

I think I have a couple of pics . . . . yeah, here we go.

[Mark J]

I like that idea.  And I just happen to have some oak dowel leftovers.  

[Mark J]

Well, I cut all four of the finger boards.  I took a while to come up with, and set up, a jig to cut the slots.  There are 26 slots on four boards, so 104 slots. A lot of work there, too.   But after several days of working meticulously I have carefully and precisely cut all of the slots only to find that they don’t line up from board to board.   

Measuring the distance for 20 slots each 2 inches apart should be 40 inches.  I am getting between 39 ¾ and 39 ½ instead.  Now ¼ divided by 20 comes out to 1/80 inch average error per slot.  Geez!

The jig has a hole to except a short 7/16 dowel pin.  The pin then fits in each successive 7/16 slot fixing the exact distance to the next slot.  Turns out the dowel is not actually round but oval and is short of 7/16 in both directions.  The difference?  You guessed it, one or two 80ths of an inch.   

Two of the boards should work for the parallel clamp side, and the other two I may be able to adjust for the quick clamp side, but Ughhh!   

The Wood Sprites have not smiled upon me.  Smirked, yes; smiled, no.   

[sjk]

I hate when one clutch/herd/gaggle of wood sprites moves out of my shop and a new group moves in.  It takes a long time to figure out what sort of ritual sacrifices the new group demands in exchange for my dowels remaining round.

Sorry to hear to hit troubles, but glad to hear the pieces may still be usable.

[Mark J]

Sorry folks, I haven't been a good forum member.  It's been two months since I was last on the site, and longer than that since I gave any follow up on this project.  Let's just say life issues.  

I did finally finish the shop cart.  I was able to pair up the finger boards by using the two best for the parallel clamp side and aligning the other two so as to spread out the error.  

Here are some pictures:

And here's a picture of the cart parked on the wall.

I am generally happy with how it came out.  Lot of good lessons; some of which I may  even remember to apply to the next project.  

Next step is some serious shop clean up and reorganization.