I'm going to show you how to build my third workbench design that's super sturdy costs under 200 and I'll show you how to avoid all the mistakes that I made when making my first workbench including why you shouldn't use two by fours three work three bench Tokyo Drift [Music] eights for almost the entire build but they don't need to be this wide so I'm going to rip them right down the middle yep I'm buying two by eights just to cut them into two by fours strange yes I am strange but it's not strange that I'm cutting them down because I want the top of my workbench to remain as flat as possible over time which is one of the biggest issues I had with my old workbench you can see that the top cupped about a quarter of an inch and trying to work on it nearly send me into anaphylactic shock now I'll get back to the whole 2×4 thing in a minute but the first step to success is to make sure These are nice and flat foreign if you don't have a planer don't worry I'll show you how to laminate a bench top so that it comes out nice and flat even without a planer but what you should go out and buy is a cheap Dollar Store paint roller because nothing screams quality like a pro painter 1.75 paint roller but what this globetrotting reminder of excessive trade route emissions will allow us to do is spread the glue out super fast so that it doesn't start drying too quickly and cause me to go into the hissy fit of the century and the great thing is is that I can just throw this away when I'm done with it I'm not a part of the problem you are oh I grabbed some extra two by material that's nice and straight and I'll be using them as clamping calls by cinching them across the top as I squeeze the boards together this will take out any misalignment I'm only doing the top in sections no wider than my planer can handle because even with the calls I can send the result back through the planer for a smoother result thank you [Music] nothing is more accessible than your local home repo so let me show you what to look out for when buying the lumber for your workbench might look at the stack the stack two by fours first and think whoa those are a good deal but I always avoid them see most of these have this Bullseye looking thing in the end grain called the pith but why is that a bad thing well the pith is the center of the tree and because of the way that wood expands and contracts as moisture in the air changes it is the least stable part and including it in your project can really mess it up where am I this is a weird edit whoa back at the shop you can see here that inexperienced Scott used all two by fours for the workbench top most of them have the pith in them so there are all kinds of delaminations and gaps in the top because the wood is warping as it takes in and releases moisture throughout the year so if you see a 2×4 with a pith in it avoid it this is one Bullseye you do not want but even without the pith 2x4s tend to be a little wetter because they are sold and produced a lot faster than larger dimensional Lumber can I ask you a really weird question how much faster do you sell two by fours and two by Eights yes right on thanks man the beauty of something larger like a 2×8 is that I can more easily find one without the pith then I can rip it in half and end up with two boards that are going to be more stable and dry over time which will result in a flatter workbench which is always gooder now that the SE are cleaned up with the planer it's time to glue them both together and this time although I'm only dealing with the one glue joint the stakes are a little higher because there is no way I'm fitting this whole thing through the planer after it's dry so it needs to be perfectly lined up I drilled several holes for dowels along the sides so that the two halves of the top will stay aligned as I'm gluing them up but I am still adding calls again to make sure that the entire top ends up as flat as possible when the glue dries belt and suspenders Maybe [Music] the height of the legs are going to determine the height of the bench top I'm six foot and I prefer it to be 36 inches high if you don't know what height you prefer you can add or subtract a half inch for the workbench height for every inch higher or lower you are compared to me so for instance if you're five foot eight tall then make a 34 inch high bench then just subtract the thickness of the top which in my case is three inches and that's your leg height see leg day is easy for the roughly guesstimated 40 percent of you that have seen my other workbench build you've probably been screaming at your screens wondering what about this beautiful Ash workbench that I made last year relax it's not going anywhere because it's still the bench of my dreams but this build is not for the faint of heart so I wanted to make a workbench that's easier to make for those who haven't yet abandoned their social lives for Woodworking and metamorphosed into a crusty old hermit it's also one of my best-selling set of build plans so naturally I'm turning into the capitalist I was born to become so for my new construction Lumber bends there are plans for sale on my website and the link is in the description I am waiting for my dump truck full of money now that we've figured out the leg height the joinery that we'll be using to connect the legs to the aprons is going to be half laps and if you've seen my joinery test video you'll know that the half lap is actually stronger than a mortise and Tenon in the scenario that I tested it in and it's a super easy joint to make too instead of cutting the Laps on the table saw you could glue this leg up in a way to naturally leave the half laps in place but in my experience this doesn't turn out as accurate as doing it on the table saw wood besides that would only work for these joints on the sides of the bench and we still have to do more of these to connect the sides together [Music] foreign [Music] like many children from a broken household one big issue that this workbench experienced was a lack of stability as you can see I thought I did the right thing by adding this big 2 by 10 stretcher below but clearly it wasn't enough and now I know a much easier way to prevent this racking from happening I'm going to lap in a few diagonal braces around the entire workbench and let me show you why using my delightfully half-assed stick model when you squish or pull a square from opposite Corners the distance between these two corners gets closer or farther apart now by diagonally bracing it hold please by diagonally bracing it it prevents the Square from becoming a diamond because you can't squish or pull that diagonal brace woodworker could use a track saw for this but we can use a circular saw in the same way the exact angle doesn't matter too much I'm just going to lay my diagonal brace so that it goes from corner to corner without intersecting the top and bottom stretchers clamp a straight edge down so you can cut the insi
