Making a Workbench

[Pr3ssure]

So I've started making my workbench out of 2x3's, my dad has a surplus of them so that's why I'm using them. I'm gluing it together in 3 sections I cut 9 of them to 6 feet long and that is 14 inches, so I'm gonna make 3 sections and then glue them all together so that will make it 6 feet long by 3 and a half feet wide. Which is fine for me for right now. If anything more than I need. I really just need something to mount my vices to and to do some small work on top of. I'm probably gonna get 4x4s and notch them half way on the top so I can screw it from above and the side, then I want to make a shelf on the bottom, probably 6 or 8 inches from the floor and maybe another smaller shelf right under the top that's only half the length of the table. I'm trying to figure out what to use as a table top so I have a nice smooth surface because I don't have a planer, except a hand planer and I'm not efficient enough with it to want to do it. My dad got really thin sheet steel that he put behind our wall mounted gas heater in the basement, at least I think it's steel. I think it would work but I'd like to make it a little thicker for durability. If I need to I'll just get good smooth plywood for it but I'm not sure what to do yet. Any tips would be appreciated, I'm not much of a woodworker but I've made a few things.

 

Also, for clamps I bought pipe clamps that you can just slip on any pipe that's the right diameter. So I've got some nice 5 foot clamps I paid about $15 for a piece instead of buying an irwin clamp from lowes for $50. Those things are nifty, need to just buy one every time I go to the hardware store.

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

A simple top is a solid core door. An excellent top is, use your 2x3's or better with 2x10 or 2x12, full length. Cut a piece of plywood to fit directly on top of the 2x10's, full size, end to end and front to back. A piece of sheet metal over top of the plywood, would be the icing on the cake. Yes, you can do whatever you want on the workbench, it will take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

Neil

[Pr3ssure]

I didn't ever think about a solid door, but that would probably make a decent table on it's own. I'm using 8 foot 2x3's so I'm cutting 2 feet off each one, I'm thinning about making a little 2x2 or 2x3 corner table out of it as to not waste any wood. I just need to find out how much some sheet metal will be and get it precut to fit the entire table, I'll probably just use plywood for the bottom shelf since it will just be for storage. No need for it to be metal. I'm loving doing all this work in the last week. I'm just hoping my dad comes home soon (he's a truck driver and hasn't been home in like 4 months) so he can give me the angle grinder he got me. He also got me a nice 6 inch bench vise and some random steel and probably some other stuff he hasn't told me about. Now my goals are getting a bench grinder that I can change the wheels out on and a nice belt sander. If I can find a nice 2x36 for cheap I'll do that but I'll probably just make a 2x72 and go all out.

 

Hopefully this coming spring I have money saved to pour a concrete slab to build a shop. I'm hoping to just have enough to pour a 14x18 slab, I'm just not sure how much it cost to have someone do that. Then I have friends to help me build the shop and one who's an electrician to run electric in it the right way.

[Charles R. Stevens]

2/3" mdf works well laminated into 1-1/2" planks, 1 4x4 or 2x8 or 2 2x4. Trim with hardwood. Inexpensive smooth tables. Around here 3x12 oak sleepers are cheep, but take some work to smooth. Make seriusly solid English style wood workers benches. 

[JHCC]

@Pr3ssure, unless you are responding to a specific detail within a larger post or are answering a comment farther up in a thread, there is no need to click "Quote". Just type your response in the comment box and click "Submit Reply".

You are making it harder for other IFI members to read the forum. Remember that some of us have slow internet connections, and big chunks of unnecessary text really clog up the feed. 

Thank you.

[Daswulf]

If mounting a vise on it you want it Strong in the legs and cross bracing.  As in it won't wiggle around when twisting and pulling on something in the vise. 

[ThomasPowers]

Wooden shelf?  You are not planning to work hot metal in the vise or use an angle grinder around it? 

Expanded metal makes a nice shelf as dust and detritus can filter through it.

On one of my vise work benches I have piled heavy scrap on it to improve stability---probably 500 to 100 pounds...flat plate on the top and heavy chunks on the shelf...

[JHCC]

7 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Expanded metal makes a nice shelf as dust and detritus can filter through it.

I can vouch for this. I have a nice bench/storage space made from one of those cargo decks that mounts on a trailer hitch (salvaged from someone's trash). 

[Pr3ssure]

I never thought about that. Probably not expensive either. I've got my second have glued and clamped right now but I ran out of glue so I need to get more glue so I can stick them together tomorrow.

I really want to make the six legs out of 4x4s but I don't have any right now and probably can't make it to the store to get any until the weekend and I'm really gonna be anxious to finish it. Would it be a bad idea to put a few 2x3s together for the legs or should I just wait and do it right?

[Daswulf]

Were it me I'd wait. Someone with more experience in wood working may think different. 

[Michael Cochran]

I had someone tell me one time, "there's always time to do it right later." He then proceeded to do it half way because he was in a hurry. After his half measure failed he had to undo the damage and rebuild spending much more time than necessary if he'd simply done it right in the first place. 

Are you going to have something other than glue holding the work surface boards together?

[Pr3ssure]

I was thinking about taking 2x6s and making a frame around it, other than that, no. I was just hoping the glue would be good and I'm going to put some kind of steel plating on top of it for the work surface.

[Michael Cochran]

You might want to run a few boards perpendicualr to the others with some good screws holding each of your 2x3 boards to it. It would be a shame if the humidity changed enough for the boards to swell and pop the glue joints. If the steel on top is thick enough it's weight will help hold the boards down but if you go too thing you might find it causing some trouble for you later. I've seen wood do some pretty impressive moves when it collected enough moisture from its surroundings so I wanted to give some warning/food for thought. 

[Pr3ssure]

I was actually thinking about that. Doing that with the frame around it should make it solid. Once I build my shop I plan on making probably 2 more and doing it with all thread bolts all the way through and making them from 4x4s and still gluing them together. For now though I just need something to mount my bench vise and a bench grinder to. It's my first workbench so I hope it lasts but if not I'm not gonna cry over it, I already have all the material I'm using to make it except for the 4x4s for the legs and the steel plate I want to put on top of it.

[Glenn]

You may want to grove the edges of the table and attach angle iron flush to all edges. This provides additional strength as well as a damage resistant edge.

[VaughnT]

You're going through a ton of work to make the laminated top.... why?  If you're not going to plane it flat, you could save yourself a bunch effort and still get very good results by simply building a good frame and covering it with plywood.  If you're going through the effort to build a nice laminate top... go the extra step and plane if flat.  Even though you're not an awesome woodworker and don't have much in the way of tools, you can do a good job of it if you take your time and pay attention to the little details.  In the end, you'll have something that you can be really proud of.

Putting thin sheet metal over a substrate of laminated boards that aren't planed flat -- just asking for problems as the metal deforms through use.

You're idea of putting thin bit of sheet metal on top isn't bad.  A lot of shops have wood frames with thin sheet over top to protect the wood and make for easy clean up.  It's a tried and true style.  But if you have wavy wood under the metal, you're creating voids where the sheet isn't supported.  Drop something on it and you put a nice ding in the sheet.  After a year or so, no matter how careful you are, you'll end up with a top that's dinged and bent.

The joint between the top and legs is really important.  Screws are nice, but they don't hold over the long term as the wood expands and contracts.  All benches will wiggle a little bit, and this breaks the joint between the screw and wood.  Wherever possible, you want to use half-lap joints so all the wood members are as well supported as possible.

Cross bracing -- can't say enough about it.  You need braces that counter tendency for the bench to rock and twist as you work on top of it.  Even if you can bolt the bench directly to the wall, corner braces are a must.  All tying it to the wall does is decrease the number and stoutness of the bracing needed.

I don't worry too much about working with hot steel around a wood bench.  As long as you don't have saw dust piles up, you don't have much worry about starting a fire.  The mass of the wood in the bench means that you can drop a red-hot chunk steel on it and it won't burst into some huge conflagration.  Yea, it might light up in a little flame, but nothing you can't put out by simply wiping it with your hand.  And how many times to you plan on dropping red-hot steel on your bench???  Small stuff, the kind of thing you use for tinder when making a campfire, yea, that's dangerous to have around when you're throwing sparks from your grinder.  Big slabs.... well, it's just like spewing sparks onto a log. It ain't gonna catch on fire.

Look around the internet for old-school woodworker's benches.  Those guys were pros and had their benches designed very well.  Copy them.  They knew what they were doing.  No need to reinvent the wheel.  

 

[Pr3ssure]

On 11/16/2017 at 1:57 AM, VaughnT said:

You're going through a ton of work to make the laminated top.... why?

 

I don't plan on laminating the top, I think someone just suggested it. It's already flat, just the small voids where the 2x3s come together and the corners are kind of rounded. I plan to either use nice plywood to go on top or get a piece of steel to go on top of it if it's not too expensive. I wouldn't get one that's super thick unless I got it for a really good deal but I'd want to get it thick enough that it's not going to bend because of the little voids between the boards. Probably gonna end up with ply wood but I want a nice metal top on one at some point.

As for bracing, I'm probably going to make six legs for it and use the bottom shelf as bracing and use angle braces on the corners. I'm going going to try and do the half lap joint thing, I didn't know what it was called until you said that but I'm not sure how difficult it will be to notch the wood like that with the tools I have. I'm sure I can figure it out though.

I really only plan on using the table to mount my bench grinder and bench vice and eventually put a belt sander or various other table top tools for now. By the time I have enough tools for more than one table I'll probably have my shop built and I plan on making a few more really nice workbenches.

I just saw this video earlier and I'd love to do something like this eventually. 

[ThomasPowers]

I used to get free 3x4" and 4x4" hardwood from the sign  maker across the alley from me.  He's get metal and plastic in on 4'x12' heavy duty pallets and then junk the pallets.  Often oak.  I learned a lot of tricks for pulling the twisty nails from them! (first try with a good crowbar, then if the tops pull off, I had an large ugly set of visegrips I'd grab the stub and try to pull with a board under the curved side of the visegrip jaw. If that didn't work I'd heat the nail with a propane torch till it heated inside the wood as well and pull with the visegrips.  Don't recall that any ever escaped me...)

[Tommytaptap]

That old trick works very well with a sheared off or anyway stubborn machine bolt that's trapped eg engine block bolt. heat her up and twist her out-no problem.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Try a bit of hit wax on that machine screw thread. The heat will wick it in like solder and help jubricate the threads, some times it's also worth trying to turn in a turn befor trying to back it out. But I also would never forget the weld a nut in trick. Heat and a new head in one operation

[VaughnT]

On 11/16/2017 at 2:20 AM, Pr3ssure said:

I don't plan on laminating the top....  

By joining the 2x3's together, you're creating a laminated top.  Doesn't matter which direction you're gluing them up, they're still laminated together.

For what you want to accomplish, I'd skip the 2x3 top altogether.  Use the 2x3's to make the frame of the top, then fasten down two sheets of plywood.  This will make the top very rigid and heavy without all the work of gluing up the sticks.

You can use the 2x3's for the legs easy enough.  And you can double them up so you don't need any fancy tools to make half-lap joints for the top and lower shelf to fit to.  It's super easy and leaves you with 4x6" legs that are plenty stout.

Bracing isn't the same as legs.  You can have six legs and still be a very wobbly bench.  Corner braces oppose the wracking forces that come with working on the bench -- and it's those twisting forces that break loose the joints between the various parts.

[Pr3ssure]

2 hours ago, VaughnT said:

By joining the 2x3's together, you're creating a laminated top.  Doesn't matter which direction you're gluing them up, they're still laminated together.

Ok, I didn't know that was what was meant by laminating. I don't know what I thought. Makes since now.

And I like the idea to use 2x3s for the lap joints so there is no complicated cutting.

But I already made the bench top out of 2x3s, it's plenty sturdy and I'm happy with how heavy it is 'cause I know it's going to last and be heavy enough to stay on the ground with doing work on top of it.