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To build anything of value, including a good workbench, you need...you guessed it...a workbench. So, to prepare for my dream workbench with full slideout drawers and a hutch above it, I built a lower end workbench that should get me through the hump. My primary goals were:
* Cheap
* Easy
* Somewhat portable - it may move around in the garage
* Hold most of the tools in one place instead of scattered around
* Good enough to use, crappy enough that I will still be motivated to build the better workbench!
I had one other additional criteria. My wife ordered some BeStar desks for her office and the tops were damaged. BeStar sent new desktops and told her to keep the old ones. Jackpot! I have a 66"x29.5" and 66"x20" desktop, a full inch thick with laminated tops, bottoms, and sides. They're made of some sort of manufactured board, either MDF or a high density particle board - I would guess particle based on the weight, with the lamination it doesn't matter that much either way.
I chose to use the deeper top. My plan called for a 39"Hx25"Dx60"W bottom, a slightly undersized 1/2" plywood top, the desktop on top of that, and a shelf made of hardboard approx 16" off the floor. The bottom is made entirely of cheap framing 2x4's cut to size. The shelves are simple square boxes with a middle crossbeam to support the shelf. The legs are 2x4's drilled into the front and back of the shelves. The hardboard was cut to fit the lower shelf and screwed in. The plywood top was screwed down into the top shelf and then I screwed up into the desktop.
When it was done, it weighed less than I feared and it held more than I anticipated. As you can see from the photo, I have some more work to do in replacing the shelves that are about 6" above the surface, but that's for another weekend.
Total cost: $60 plus some 2" and 1.5" drywall screws I already had and wood glue; desktop was free
Time: approx. 10 hours split across two days.
Tools used: Various drills, circular saw, table saw, belt sander, sandpaper.
Full sized - https://ronelson.dynip.com:8443/wiki...ersion_1.0.jpg
It accomplished all the goals. Cheap and easy were, ahem, easy. It's fairly light so aside from the horrible sound of the legs sliding across concrete, it can be moved without much effort. It holds all my tools except the table saw (duh!) and there's a lot of room for improvement, so I'm not going to sit on my laurels and deal with it forever.
My only complaint is that when I screwed the 2x4's together for the shelving, I didn't think about the aesthetics of the final look. I had to screw the legs on in an ugly pattern (further uglified by screwing up the top-left leg you can see on the full sized link) and in spite of this being a "throw away" item, I wish I had taken a bit more care. However, everything's fairly square for framing timber and no jointer or planar and the top itself is flat as could be, so I have no real regrets. This will let me get my garage in order so that I have room to build things and give me a place to work without being hunched over some boards laid across sawhorses. A straight back alone is worth $60!
Actually, it's going to be about $68. My #8 countersink bit snapped off, amusingly while not even applying any pressure. Wasn't so amusing at the time
* Cheap
* Easy
* Somewhat portable - it may move around in the garage
* Hold most of the tools in one place instead of scattered around
* Good enough to use, crappy enough that I will still be motivated to build the better workbench!
I had one other additional criteria. My wife ordered some BeStar desks for her office and the tops were damaged. BeStar sent new desktops and told her to keep the old ones. Jackpot! I have a 66"x29.5" and 66"x20" desktop, a full inch thick with laminated tops, bottoms, and sides. They're made of some sort of manufactured board, either MDF or a high density particle board - I would guess particle based on the weight, with the lamination it doesn't matter that much either way.
I chose to use the deeper top. My plan called for a 39"Hx25"Dx60"W bottom, a slightly undersized 1/2" plywood top, the desktop on top of that, and a shelf made of hardboard approx 16" off the floor. The bottom is made entirely of cheap framing 2x4's cut to size. The shelves are simple square boxes with a middle crossbeam to support the shelf. The legs are 2x4's drilled into the front and back of the shelves. The hardboard was cut to fit the lower shelf and screwed in. The plywood top was screwed down into the top shelf and then I screwed up into the desktop.
When it was done, it weighed less than I feared and it held more than I anticipated. As you can see from the photo, I have some more work to do in replacing the shelves that are about 6" above the surface, but that's for another weekend.
Total cost: $60 plus some 2" and 1.5" drywall screws I already had and wood glue; desktop was free
Time: approx. 10 hours split across two days.
Tools used: Various drills, circular saw, table saw, belt sander, sandpaper.
Full sized - https://ronelson.dynip.com:8443/wiki...ersion_1.0.jpg
It accomplished all the goals. Cheap and easy were, ahem, easy. It's fairly light so aside from the horrible sound of the legs sliding across concrete, it can be moved without much effort. It holds all my tools except the table saw (duh!) and there's a lot of room for improvement, so I'm not going to sit on my laurels and deal with it forever.
My only complaint is that when I screwed the 2x4's together for the shelving, I didn't think about the aesthetics of the final look. I had to screw the legs on in an ugly pattern (further uglified by screwing up the top-left leg you can see on the full sized link) and in spite of this being a "throw away" item, I wish I had taken a bit more care. However, everything's fairly square for framing timber and no jointer or planar and the top itself is flat as could be, so I have no real regrets. This will let me get my garage in order so that I have room to build things and give me a place to work without being hunched over some boards laid across sawhorses. A straight back alone is worth $60!
Actually, it's going to be about $68. My #8 countersink bit snapped off, amusingly while not even applying any pressure. Wasn't so amusing at the time
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