I make this stand for less than £30 from MDF, using pocket hole joints and no table saw. This design fits my sliding compound mitre saw, but can easily be adapted to other mitre saws.

Tools you will need

Compound Siding Mitre Saw
Cordless screwdriver
Wired Brad Nail Gun

Sketchup Plans are available here

Cutting the MDF sheets

For this project I went to B&Q with a cutting list. Prior to going I used Sketchup to layout all the parts on a single sheet of MDF and then took the drawing with me. Fortunately the large B&Q on the outskirts of Exeter has a decent panel saw cutting service. I think you are allowed 10 cuts maximum and they don’t seem to charge if it isn’t busy.

I picked a quiet Tuesday morning last week to go in. They were happy to cut the board as I required, but you do have to watch things carefully because some of the panel saw operators are better than others. I chose to just get them to rip the boards to the width I needed, i.e. 610mm. I chose 610 as it’s half a sheet of MDF width and would make things quicker to cut.
Once cut I was able to load them into the car (which was a bonus as it was raining hard) . I also bought a pack of piano hinges. Total spend £30. The rest of the materials for this project I would make from scraps and spares I had in my workshop.

Pocket hole joinery

As this build is for the workshop I went for speed over aesthetics. Pocket hole joinery is great for this and as long as you glue the joints they will be strong enough. The only drawback I find with pocket is the cost of the pocket hole screws. A while ago I did some research and discovered that a fair few people use normal woodscrews with washers on them.

I set up a test piece of MDF and fine-tuned the screw depth and drill stop settings to make sure I didn’t go through and out the other side of the joins. This is just a bit of trial and error but once you establish the settings on the little Kreg jig then it all works well.

Clamping and gluing

Clamping and holding a carcass like this one is all about keeping things square. Help yourself by clamping guides on your worksurface first as reference for putting the sides together. Then once you have the carcass sides together and clamped I tend to pin nail and then screw in the pocket holes, that way things don’t tend to move or go out of square. Glue is a must with pocket holes.

Top shelf height

The only critical measurement for this project is get the top shelf height right. The wings of the table want to fold up to be co-planer with the surface of the saw. The shelf height you need will depend on your saw, but basically make the shelf height the same as the height of your saw base minus the thickness of the material you use for the wings.

In my case the base of my saw is 105mm high and the material I am using for the wings is 18mm MDF, so shelf height needs to be 105mm-18mm=87mm.

Wings and supports

As you can see in the video the piano hinge is used for the wings and supports. The only tricky bit is getting the spacing right so that it folds flat.

Going mobile and space saving

The overall foot print of the base is 610mm x 640mm which means the saw doesn’t stick out of it is turned to 45 degress. With the wings folded out the full supported width of the Mitre saw station is 2,300mm (2.3m) which is really useful when I need it. The castors I used on the bottom are rated to 70kgs each. Get them here.

How to Make a Mitre Saw Stand