Workbench Drawers

The shop theme in the last few months has been organization. As you can see from the picture, below, I had quite a mess under my bench and it was really not an efficient use of space so I decided to install some drawers.

With the exception of the drawer guides, this whole project was built with leftovers from other projects. The plywood for the carcass, drawer bottoms, and drawer fronts came from the plyo-box, rolling shop carts, and cut-off bin projects. The drawers and drawer pulls were all made from left over porch trim.

What I started from - quite the mess

First, I built a carcass of sorts to hold the drawers. The space it's in is not square, so this presented some challenges later on.

Here's the bottom drawer. It's the first drawer with drawer glides I've ever built. It came out quite well and encouraged me to keep going. As you can see, I used inexpensive under-mount drawer guides.

Undermount drawer guides

Here's the carcass with all the drawers installed. It was much easier to work on with it up on saw horses - but the work still did a number on my back.

Carcass and drawers in place. Drawer fronts still to do.

Here is the finished project with drawer fronts (3/4" ply) and homemade drawer handles. I went with homemade because I didn't want to spend any more money on the drawers and I had what I needed lying around. They're a little clunky looking but they get the job done.
You can see on the right another empty space under the bench. I'll probably build another set of drawers for that space. It's amazing how much better the drawers make the whole shop look.
Everything is made from 3/4" stock so it's all big and heavy. I'll probably use 1/2" for the other set of drawers.