Building the FrankenCart

We hate wasting things around here. If we even think we might have a use for something in the future, we save it and store it. Probably the reason the shop is so cluttered, but what are you gonna do, ya know? Back on topic though. When I upgraded my toolboxes last year, I really didn't have much use for my old boxes. One had sentimental value, so I restored it and put it back into service, but there was a second that was actually in pretty rough shape. Rather than toss it though, we decided to take it and an old rolling work stand we had and perform some necromancy.

So what did we build? Well, with all the fabrication we've been doing lately, we thought it was time to put together some kind of metalworking cart. We wanted something that would hold all of our body tools, welding supplies, welder, and plasma cutter. But we also wanted something that we could mount both the bench grinder and the vice to as well. So, with half a plan, we started doing what we do best, tearing shit apart...

As you can see, we tried to just give everything a quick sanding, but things were just in too bad of condition for that to work out for us, so we ended up stripping everything down to metal and starting from scratch. After we got it into pieces, we had to weld on some additional steel to serve as a shelf of sorts for the welder and the plasma cutter. You can see those in the picture below.

Now as you know, painting is my favorite part of this whole thing, so I started spraying primer and color as soon as I got the chance.

The hardest part of the whole thing was the top section of the work bench. All the small partitions were hard for the machine sanders to get to and we really didn't feel like breaking out the sandblaster for them, so we just did the best we could. They aren't perfect, but they didn't turn out looking too bad either. The rust pitting in the bottom of the tray will be hidden by the drawer liners we'll be using, so that wasn't worth the effort of filling either. Hell, the texture might even help keep the damned thing from sliding!

Once the rolling cart portion of the project was painted, it was time to spray some color on the toolbox portion of this project. Not only that, but because we wanted to mount the vice and the bench grinder to the top of the toolbox at the end of this, we needed some way to thicken and reinforce the top of the toolbox to keep the bolts from ripping out of the metal. After all, this is a cheap ass WalMart toolbox, so we don't have a lot of faith in it. 

The answer to our problem with the top of the toolbox turned out to be simple. Plywood. But hell, we're kinda fancy these days, so we called Joanne in to stain and polyurethane the top board.

 With all the paint and polyurethane dry, it was time to assemble this thing and be done with it. As you can see, it didn't turn out too bad. We didn't bother to attach the wood to the top of the box, we just drilled holes and ran bolts all the way through both the wood and the top of the box when we mounted the grinder and vice and put lock washers and nuts on the underside. We did have to be careful not to use overly long bolts, just to make sure the drawers had enough clearance to close properly.

With that, the FrankenCart is complete! Now maybe we can get this shop reorganized and cleaned up a bit!  More importantly, this clears the way for our next project, which we'll be announcing soon. Until then!