I had some scrap plywood left from previous projects and had been thinking about building a Ryobi charging caddy. I did a rough sketch of some dimensions and then got to work on this design/build project that ended up a bit different and a whole lot better than I had originally planned.

A little backstory

I have bought into the Ryobi tool system and have three battery chargers. Ryobi makes what they call a "Super Charger." It's a single device that will charge six batteries—one at a time. Since I own three battery chargrers, I thought that it would be ideal to build a caddy that would hold my three chargers with the possibility to add three more later—with the ability to charge all six batteries at the same time.

Building the Ryobi charging caddy

As I mentioned in the beginning, this ended up being a design/build project. I did some rough dimensions and got to work. I first measured and cut out the 3/4" plywood that would be the handle, and hold the chargers. Then, I built the box base that the vertical plywood would be centered in out of 1/2" plywood. With just a few scraps of 1/2" plywood left, I couldn't cover the top of the box base fully as I hoped.

The space in the box under the chargers is where the power cords and a power strip is housed. As I was looking at the side of the box where the future chargers would be mounted, I dropped in one of my batteries and realized that it was almost a perfect fit. I tried different configurations of battery placement and settled on an alternating "stacked on end" solution where the battery posts would be one above another. I could fit four batteries inside the box. Looking at my remaining scraps, I determined I had what I needed—and enough space—to add a shelf above for another four batteries. This would allow me the ability to carry up to eight batteries in the trays, and an additional three on the chargers for a total of 11 batteries.

Evaluation

The Ryobi charging caddy ended up much better than my original plan as it would now allow me to carry batteries too. It's perfect for storing the batteries inside the warm house and out of the cold workshop in the winter. It also still allows me to charge up to three batteries all at once and easily move my charging caddy to wherever I am working.

Now that it's built, I've already thought of a few ways I'll improve it if I ever have the chance to build another.

I plan on adding a free Sketch Up file for anyone that wants to build this project for themselves.