Chop Saw, Powered Miter Box, or whatever you want to call it, these are are very useful in the shop. Mine is a lowly Delta 36-075 10" Compound Miter Saw (CMS) but with a little tweaking and a good blade it works very well. After tuning up my CMS, I added a Forrest Chopmaster blade and later a BladePoint laser guide. The Chopmaster blade leaves a wonderfully burnished cut that needs no cleanup. The laser guide I find useful when cutting pieces longer than 4' or when I need to cut at an unknown angle (moldings). Out of the box the biggest problem with a chop saw is the lack of support for almost any board you care to cut. There are a number of commercial stands available but these are targeted to the construction trade where portability is a primary concern. In the shop the best solution is to mount your chop saw on a bench along a large wall (see the New Yankee Workshop) but for the home shop you usually can't dedicate the space for it, hence the Chop Saw Station.
Around my shop I've settled on Incra Track for jig making and fences. It allows me to share stops between jigs and my miter guage. I also find it to be easy to set up and use, and it's accurate. For the Chop Saw Station I used two 36" lengths of Incra Track mounted on 3/4" baltic birch plywood. The resulting fence is attached to extension boxes with knobs over studs (allows a little free play for aligning things up). The remaining hardware are; a few carriage bolts, threaded rod, full-locking swivel wheels (from Lee Valley), piano hinges, plastic 4" dust collection hood for a 6" jointer, t-bolts, knobs, sheet metal (chip/dust slide), accuride drawer glides, and blumb hinges.
3/4" Birch plywood from Home Depot was used for most of the construction. Birch edge banding was applied to exposed edges. The legs, support frame, and extension boxes were made from 3/4" solid birch stock. The extension boxes tops were made from 3/4" MDF with Formica laminated on the top. Everything was finished with Shellac and then waxed. I like shellac for shop projects because it is so easy to apply, holds up well, and is easy to repair when things get banged up. Biscuits were used extensively for jointery.
The Chop Saw Station is a simple cabinet on wheels with extension wings that can be brought out when I set the station up. When closed the station is easy to move out of the way. Setting up the station takes about 2 minutes: fold out the wings, set the legs, and make sure things are square and planer. A 4' straight edge (ok Stabila level) works for this. The base cabinet is 29 1/4" (h) x 24" (w) x 18" (d). When mounted on the wheels and with the top affixed, the height of the station is 35". A fixed shelf was installed in the cabinet for strength and for storing other tools. Two drawers were added for storing wrenches and the like. You might ask, why not one drawer? The answer is simple, "That's where the dust collection chute is". Under the top I made a chute out of sheet metal to channel dust and chips to the back of the cabinet where I installed a DC fitting.
The cabinet top and wings are each 30" (w) x 20" (d). The wings are attached to the cabinet with a piano hinge. They're 3/4" birch plywood with birch edge banding applied. The top has a large hole in it so that dust and chips can fall out of the bottom of the saw. A little skirting under the saw helps with the efficiency. It's not a bad way of collecting some of the dust and chips these saws make.
The wings are skirted with 3/4" birch stock 2" wide. The skirting is attached to the top with biscuits and is mitered and biscuited at the corners. The skirting nearest the cabinet is used for mounting the legs. Birch blocks are also glued and screwed to the underside of the wings to help support the legs. Since the top is 30" wide there it overhangs the cabinet sides by 3". This allows the leg assembly to fold up under the wings and the wings to hang straight down when not in use.
The legs are made up from 1 1/2" square, solid birch stock. The bottom portion of the legs are a solid frame, the upper section is just two pieces of birch. Treaded rod connects the two pieces of birch used in the upper assembly. Slots are cut in the lower assembly for the threaded rod to slide through. A couple of bolts with knobs act as the locking mechanism for the leg assembly. The bottom leg assembly has threaded inserts for leg levelers to screw into. The extension boxes are MDF with laminate applied to the top and a skirting of 3/4" birch stock. The height is up to up (varies with the saw you use). The extension boxes are attached to the wings with a couple of T-bolts fed through the extension box and down through the wing to a couple of knobs. If "X" is the long axis of the chop saw station then there are a couple of flat braces in the "Y" axis of the extensions with 3" long holes in the "Y" direction. The wings have a couple of 3" long holes in the "X" direction. This allows a lot of X-Y movement to align the extension boxes.