this is my old workbench and this is my new workbench and this is my small shop my really small shop and because space is a premium i needed to build a workbench that pulls multiple duties so i'm going to show you how i designed and built the perfect workbench for a small workshop [Music] after filling three garbage bags of sawdust i was ready to laminate the boards that make up my legs and my aprons and my rails so that they can be a little chunkier then i went back to the milling process to take those parts down to final dimension and created another half a dozen bags of sawdust this design will have panels that enclose the sides and back i guess you could call this a shaker style workbench but i feel like that term gets thrown around a little too willy-nilly so i'll refrain from calling it that ever again anyways the panel stock was milled up filling 11 more bags of sawdust and then glued up using biscuits for alignment i forgot to mention a couple of things first this bench is made out of ash second if you want to make this bench you can by buying these plans link in the description third for the joinery i used dowels i used dowels to join the aprons and rails to the legs of my bench dowels don't seem to get a lot of lovin in the youtube space because the almighty influencers like their fancy dominoes but i don't have a domino so that i can be a woodworker of the lay people and people know dowels because we've all put something together from ikea with dowels in it but i promise you dowels are super strong when used with real wood the jig i'm using is called the dowel max and they sent me their jig a while back because i was having trouble with two other dowel jigs that i own this jig hands down is the best dowel jig i've used by many orders of magnitude there is an affiliate link in the description if you want to check out the dowel max i almost got through everything without making a mistake but at the very end i had the jig flipped around and drilled where i shouldn't have no biggie i plugged the holes flush trimmed them and re-drilled accordingly the panels get a half inch rabbet on all four sides using a dado stack and the table saw i needed dados in the aprons and rails and legs to accept the panels i set up a quarter inch wing bit slot cutter thing on the router table so i can make stopped dados on the legs i cut the same groove in the side rails but then i realized i wouldn't be able to fit the long rails on my router table without it hitting the wall so i set up my box joint blade and my table saw and i open up the door to the storage room behind my shop so that i could cut these hold the phone stop the bus put it in park there's something that really bugs me that happened here do you see it right there right it's right there my original bench was never built to be an outfeed table so it was always a bit lower than my table saw but i never liked that the problem is that i see so many people here on the youtubes and on the instagrams without feed tables that are lower than the table saw why it makes no sense you don't have an outfeed table you have an out catch table it defeats the purpose of an outfit table if your workpiece is unsupported as it exits the cut and that people is what grinds my gears in other words not the safest thing not the most accurate thing and really just not the most fun thing to have to deal with so just put some leveling feet on your outfeed table so you can get it in the same plane as your table saw make sure you don't skimp on these remember for a small shop this workbench has to wear many hats so the leveling feet need to be substantial and if you don't believe me ask my buddy john how well his are holding up not looking to give these a good review on amazon that's why i installed these hefty machined aluminum ones with threaded inserts on the bottom of my legs there is a jam nut to ensure that they stay put at the correct height but scott now my miter gauge won't work so just extend your table saw's miter slots by routing into your tabletop i made a quick template that hooked on the back of my top and i used a spiral bit and a collar to guide me mbd so we have leveling feet we have miter slots but i think there is a third thing that needs to be considered if you want your workbench to double as an outfeed table and that is a place to clear off your top for when you want to use your table saw small shops don't have extra room for spare work surfaces so this is one reason why i built my drawer cabinet shorter with a shelf on top so that i can quickly shove everything that's on top underneath so i don't get into a pickle mid rip i'm a big fan of pre-finishing i'm a big fan the way the rails and the aprons and the panels of this design are all offset really allows you to pre-finish without having to worry about flush sanding any mating surfaces that are in the same plane the name of the game is to sand everything then finish everything individually and it's as simple as that no getting on your hands and knees trying to get in every nook and cranny while fighting drips and buildups and corners and all that nonsense i used osmo pollocks because i'm trying to simplify trying to marie condo my finishing process the glue up was going to be a little tricky there are a lot of parts to this so trying to glue it up all at once was going to be next to impossible so sub assemblies are the ticket here and i started by gluing the back together the front was next which was similar to the back but a lot simpler since there's no panels or dividers this was already pushing the limits of the space i had to glue up on top of my bench so there was no way that i was going to be able to glue up the rest of it so now was time to say goodbye to my faithful old bench that gave me many fond memories and it was wonder ah this thing was a piece of crap so screw that the rest of the glue up albeit a little intimidating went without a hitch there was enough wiggle and bend to be able to glue up one side at a time even without the bench this was still a struggle to glue up in my tiny shop and an assembly table would have been really nice right about now a great assembly table should be flat dead flat flat enough how flat is flat enough i mean if you ask five woodworkers this question you're probably gonna get five different answers ranging from half of a tenth of a thou to slightly better than a urinal trough i mean my old bench which was like six years old had a dish in it that was about a quarter of an inch deep and it was kind of a pain but it really didn't affect the outcome of my past projects many woodworkers preach the advantage of a torsion box top for your assembly table or even workbench and from what i can gather there's really one main advantage because a torsion box is a webbed frame that has a sheet on top and bottom that are glued and screwed it is very rigid yet many people preach that you can only achieve a dead flat surface with a torsion box i
