Cabinet depth question

[sailor55330]

Hi

Trying to layout some shop cabinets to hang on the wall nut not sure what depth to make them. They will be used for storing things like routers, corded drills. Circular saws and othe misc shop items. What depth would you recommend? Laying things out is the hardest part for me

Thank you

[Neal]

I have some cabinets I repurposed from my kitchen which hold many of the hand tools you mention. They are roughly 12" deep (which is pretty standard for a wall cabinet.)

Everything fits, some items have to go in and be turned so the longer sides run parallel to the length of the cabinet box.

I'm going to be building some new wall cabinets this summer and I will design them to be a little deeper than my repurposed ones. I'm thinking I might make them deep enough to hold Bosch's L-Boxes (Bosch's answer to the systainer) or Festools Systainers. I'd rather think ahead than build them and find out later I wished they were deeper.

Since you are making the cabinets you have a lot of flexibility in that decision. Nobody will care if they are 12", 15" or 24" deep. You have to be comfortable with them. But I would advise you to think ahead to what you may buy in the future.

[JimD]

Another consideration (beyond considering what goes in them which is good) is the space available and what, if anything, goes on top. On one side of my new shop, I have about 16 inches of wall space before the garage door. On the other side, I have maybe 3 feet. So if I put cabinets on the narrow side, they need to be narrow, at least near the door. On the other side, they could be wider.

I plan a movable bench/outfeed support on the wide side that will be about 3 feet by 6 feet. On the narrow side, I plan a fixed bench for my radial arm saw and CMS. Both will have drawers below for tool storage. Both will be around 37 inches tall (or 1/4 inch lower than the table saw). The portion on the narrow side near the doors will probably be a storage cabinet possible for non-woodworking stuff. The rest will be 2 feet deep - which will stick out into the opening of the garage door but only a little. I need that much width for the saws to sit on. Most sliding CMSs need more width (I use a non-slider plus the old RAS).