A Bench with Interchangeable Work Surfaces

Long-time Make: friend and contributor, Andrew Lewis, created this clever workbench surface for the wonderful new shop that he’s been building, called Shedlandia. He writes:

I made removable work surface sections held in place with clamps, so that smaller bench tools (like bench grinders) and special surfaces (like fireproof bricks or a marble sheet) can be swapped in and out quickly.

As you can see from the images below, the build involved little more than cutting out a section of the top spoil board on the bench the size that he wanted the replaceable area to be and then installing two small bench toggle clamps on the front edge to hold the work surfaces in place.

Check out Andrew’s site, Shedlandia. He’s been documenting his and his wife’s life on their new mini-homestead, building a dream shop, maintaining a garden, contemplating what it means to be a maker, and other makery theory and praxis.