Wood Cart

Here’s something I’ve been sitting on for some time and finally got around to doing. This is a wood cart I found on Shop Notes (well, Google found it for me). The garage is full of bits of wood leaning against the walls and this looked like it would tidy things up.

The main concerns were the size, its 8’ long as originally spec’d, and the cost. The plans called for 4 sheets  of pine at around $30 each with 4” wheels at $18 each. Ouch. So some compromise was in order.

By shrinking to 4’ long it fits better in the limited space I have in the garage and only requires 3 sheets. 2” wheels are only $3, but the big saving was not using pine board, but the cheapest of the cheap OSB (oriented strand board, a form of chipboard). This nasty stuff is wood chips glued and compressed together which is usually only used for flooring but is much cheaper, at around $12 a sheet.

So here it is.

Wood Cart

Along the way I learnt that OSB is very heavy. Far too heavy for those little 2” wheels. Surprisingly, they do hold the weight but moving it is a painful process.

Wood Cart

Here you can see the major features. There are buckets on one side to hold long thin bits, racks in the middle for long wide bits and a big space on the other side for sheets. There’s a lot of wood you can get in here. Just to be clear, that big sheet of OSB on the right is not part of the cart, it’s actually a spare 8’x4’ sheet.

On the whole I’m pleased with this. It’s ugly as sin and the wheels are going to break at any minute, but it does the job.