Building Your Own Workbench

Building a nice workbench is a very important task. Many people have come up with many approaches. DiResta showed us earlier this week how a simple design with solid welded frame could both look nice and possibly last forever. What if you aren’t set up to weld though?

Chris Finke built this workbench to be assembled using fairly basic tools. It is all wood and both elegant and simple. The recessed sections at the end for his router and table saw take this from just another ordinary simple table to a desirable work surface. Costing under $200, this simple design is worth checking out. Chris says you can find the plans he based his off of at backyardworkshop for free.

The one from Backyard Workshop were built by Jamie Cunningham. He was nice enough to share a sketchup file with us. He states that the plans aren’t extremely detailed (there is no cut list or dimensions), but you should be able to get it done from there.

The images and captions below are from Chris Finke, sharing his experience of building it.

This weekend, I finally got tired of having this guy be my only workspace in the garage. Any time I wanted to use my table saw, or planer, or jointer, or drill press, or router, I had to clear off this table, hoist the tool up there and clamp it in place. Talk about a lot of wasted time.

After 11 hours of work (including the trip to Home Depot to buy the lumber), this is what I’ve upgraded to. No more using the kids’ toys in the garage as temporary sawhorses! I can use the table saw, planer, and router in place, and I’ll be mounting a drill press on top too. The jointer will be stored underneath, since I don’t use it that often and it’s not that heavy.

Home Depot. My SUV can fit a 48″ wide sheet of plywood perfectly, but I guess MDF is sold in 49″ widths.

The base framed up. You can see on the side some 90º clamps I bought the day before at a garage sale. I am in love with them already.

I used the plans from http://www.backyardworkshop.com/blog-posts/woodworking/115-ultimate-workbench.html You can see the Sketchup model on my computer in the back of my car.

Framing the box for the table saw. So looking forward to having an outfeed table and not having the clamp the saw in place every time I use it.

I routed an opening for my router table to sit flush in the bench. Very happy with this too. (There’s a fence and stuff for this, it’s just not in the picture.)

The seat for the table saw.

My saw has a home!

My helper for the day. He volunteered to shop-vac all the sawdust, and I was not going to say no.

Finished (for now)! Total materials cost: about $170. I wanted to get it all loaded up with the rest of my tools, but it started raining and I was exhausted. I’m going to be adding some upper shelves in the middle two sections too for storing smaller tools.