Making mobile work tables

Words and photos: Damion Fauser

These trolleys have been a staple of my workshop capability for decades. They’re structurally solid, quick, cheap and easy to make, and scalable in size. They serve many functions in the workshop, from ergonomically and quickly moving volumes of stock to acting as table surfaces for storage, assembly, glue-ups and polishing.

I’ve used this fundamental build concept to design and make a whole range of custom furniture projects, from mobile breakfast benches to split-level BBQ trolleys, as you can see here.

Construction style

There is nothing radical about these trolleys, rather they are founded on simple joinery and framing methods, but I’ve added a couple of features that I believe add to the strength of this design.

Firstly, there is a set of stretchers that span between both the upper and lower sets of rails, and I’ve developed a fast and super-accurate way of cutting these into shallow recesses on the inside faces of the rails.

Secondly, the top of the frame is braced with a sheet of 9mm ply. I’ll talk more about the function of this later on. Otherwise, the construction is a simple matter of laminating some leg billets and creating basic frames with either dominos or mortise and tenon joinery.

Worktable dimensions

As mentioned, this design concept is so very scalable. Like any workbench, the height of the tabletop surface is critical. I have all of mine at one fixed height, which after careful consideration I decided upon as a careful compromise between being high enough so I don’t need to stoop and low enough to scoot underneath jointer tables and tablesaw outriggers. It also allows me to have assembled components and workpieces at a workable height for sanding and polishing. And having worktables at the same height means I can gang them together and brake the wheels to create a larger working surface.

I’ve made worktable tops in three main sizes, all based on the proportions of a standard sheet of plywood. My everyday workhorse trolleys are a quarter-sheet at 1200 x 600mm, and then I have two half-sheet (1200 x 1200mm) for my two primary vacuum-pressing tables. Lastly, I have a full-sheet table at 2400 x 1200mm that serves as my main dining tabletop working surface and also for my full-sheet vacuum bag when I need to press something larger.

Materials

You can make the frames for these trolleys out of pretty much anything, but I make mine out of hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) for its cost effectiveness, workability, strength and sustainability. Other than the frames, you’ll need a sheet of ply for the bracing, and whatever you choose for the tabletop surface. I use melamine – it’s cheap, generally flat, slick, moisture resistant, easy to clean up spills from, and easy to replace if it gets damaged. After that it’s a little bit of hardware – your chosen wheels and some screws.

Laminate, machine and joint the legs

Begin by laminating the legs. I make sure that I dimension my leg billets to be 10–20mm wider in both the x and y dimension than the mounting plate for the wheels. This ensures two things, firstly that the mounting plate does not protrude outside the profile of the leg (preventing knocks to ankles and shins etc), and secondly that there is sufficient leg material for the screws that fix the wheels in place to bite into.

While the leg billets are curing in the clamps (photo 1), dress the remaining elements – rails, stiles and stretchers – to size and dock those to length.

Cut the leg sections, then mark out and cut your chosen framing joinery – I generally use dominos for speed and lay out with a story stick for speed and accuracy (photo 2).

Choose the largest size domino that you can fit into the sectional area of the leg so the tenons from the rails and stiles don’t interfere with each other (photo 3).

Frame joinery and assembly

It’s far easier to glue up the frames in stages, starting with assembling the end frames (legs and stiles) first (photos 4–7).

While the glue dries, you can spend some time cutting out the recesses for the stretchers to notch into the inside faces of the long rails. This can be done in a number of ways, from pure chisel work, to drilling and chiselling, to hand-routing and chiselling. But for speed and accuracy, I take the time to make a custom template that lets me set up a pair of rails and cut all eight recesses in one go with a router fitted with a guide bushing.

Making and using the template

Take the time to calculate and double check the spacings for your routing windows in the template (accounting for the relevant offset between your chosen guide bushing and router cutter combination), then make the template.

As I’ve seen it, most people would try to make this type of template by trying to cut perfectly-sized windows out of a larger panel, but I flip that concept over and start by cutting some blanks that are the size of my windows and then by cutting the frame elements and gluing those back together around the windows, which get knocked back out after the glue has cured (photos 8, 9, 10).

Then make a cradle to securely hold both rails at a time, locate and fix the window template down and rout the recesses. These don’t need to be too deep, something like 5–6mm is totally fine here. You’ll see here that as I’m cutting the recesses into pairs of rails at once, I’ve sized the windows accordingly. Doing it this way ensures perfect alignment of the stretchers across the frame and also prevents any blow-out on the top edges of the rails were these to be cut individually (photo 11).

Now this is where you can start to get clever. Don’t even bother squaring out the corners of these recesses with a chisel, it’s wasted time. Rather, use an appropriately sized round-over and profile the bottom edges of the stretchers, end to end. By matching the round-over bit to the cutter used to cut the recesses, you’ll have a seamless fit with zero chiselling required.

For example, here I knew I’d use a 1/8" radius round-over bit to profile the edges of the stretchers, so I consciously planned for and used a 1/4" diameter cutter to cut the recesses. Note how round-over cutters are referred to by radius, and straight cutters by diameter, so ensure you match your cutters by doubling the radius to the diameter (photo 12).

Assembly and bracing

Once you’ve completed the rails you can then complete the second stage of the frame glue-up (photo 13). At all times when gluing frame assemblies together, check for square once the clamps are tight.

Once the clamps are off, cut your 9mm bracing ply slightly oversized in relation to the top profile of the frame assembly – I aim for 2mm all around. Glue and screw this down to the frame (photos 14, 15)...

...and then use a flush-trim cutter in a trim router to pattern the ply back to the reality of the frame (photo 16).

For me this ply serves two functions – firstly it’s like cyclone bracing in housing construction, adding enormous structural integrity to the frame. Secondly, it makes attaching (and replacing if you ever need to) the tabletop panel a total breeze – you simply screw through the ply into the underside of the top panel.

Adding further strength to these frames, I like to also drive large screws through the outside of the rails into the ends of the stretchers – in this case I used 6x100 screws (photo 17)...

...and plugged over the top with some contrasting plugs (photos 18, 19).

Of course you can use a solid timber panel for your tabletop, or even slats like an outdoor table. Simply attach these to suit and allow for wood movement where required.

Soften edges and sand surfaces where required and proceed with your chosen polishing regime. I’ve never polished my workshop trolleys but have used both oils and polyurethanes for more formal furniture projects.