Workbench

When I built the cabinets for the upstairs kitchen I always had at least one sheet of plywood across my sawhorses on which to work. Now that the cabinets are finished I have nothing to work on and I have more doors to build and some drawers. For a long time I have wanted to build a good workbench, but there was never the time to do it. I decided to make time and build one now. If I continue to wait I will not have any life left in which to us it once I finish it.

It will be a solid surface with sturdy legs and four casters for allowing me to move it around. The casters will not be used when the bench is used. I will explain in a future entry. Under the bench top and between the legs I will eventually build a storage unit for tools and supplies that are located in various places. More on that later also.

I have been working on the bench when it is too cold or wet to work on the stairs. Let me show you a few pictures of what I am doing. The first one shows what I have accomplished so far. It is a good solid surface built out of two by fours, eight feet in length. The surface is three feet wide. It is solid and heavy. Connie tells me it weights a ton.

The question you may want an answer to - well maybe not - is how did I build it. A simple answer is very carefully and with much hard work. I am sure that is not what you were looking for, so let us look at the steps.

I got 25 nice straight two by fours. The first step was to remove enough material from one narrow surface to make it flat across. That took two passes on the jointer as shown in the above picture.

Next I made one pass on each side to remove the high spots. That is why I needed 25 two by fours and not 24. This step would have been much more accurate with a planner, but I don't have one. With a planner you can guarantee uniform thickness. That is something I can't do with a jointer. A planner places a roller above the material to hold it down a precise distance from the cutting blades.

I actually did the work in three groups. You can see one set resting on my table saw and table extension. To keep the flat surface aligned I plowed out a half inch dado the length of the two by four with my router. I cut three quarter inch strips from half inch plywood scraps to place in the dado to force almost perfect alignment of two adjoining two by fours. I mounted a block on the bottom of the router as a guide.

The router in the picture is a Craftsman and is over 40 years old and still working. Cutting all those dados sure made a mess in my shop, but the process worked very well.

I finally got my first set of eight done. I planned to make three sets and then put them together as the last step to get the first picture above.

Where is my shop vacuum? Surfacing all those two by fours sure made a pile of shavings.

Cutting all those dados sure made a big mess; one I will have to clean up someday.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour through my shop today.