6VIDEO Sawhorse Construction Tour

In this video, I want to give you some tips for building these sawhorses

This design is an original. I've created the design about 25 years ago

and I really like this way of making sawhorses, mostly because the results are super, super solid

There's no wiggliness or anything. I have about six or eight of these at any given time

They all live outside, because I don't have room to accommodate them indoors

and they will fail from rot long before they'll ever even begin to get wiggly

So let me start by talking about the top. That's what you see here

I like to use a 2x6 for this. Here in this drawing, it's shown as being 60 inches long

You can make it shorter, even somewhat longer. The length is not too critical

I do like to have matching pairs of saw horses that are the same length

Now that works well together, but the exact dimension really isn't critical

Now I mentioned that these sawhorses are particularly solid, and I want you to look at the end view here for that

The reason for the solidity is because of angles and bracing. So looking at this end view here, you can see we have a triangular shape that is thoroughly braced top and bottom by some cross pieces

They're not fancy. I have never bothered angling the ends. You can do that if you like

but instead I just cut them to length, fasten them on with some screws to the legs and it works

really well. It stops them from splaying out more. So that's one reason why these sawhorses are

solid because of the solidity in this direction. But there's also another direction too

and if you look at this side view, you'll see what I mean

Each pair of legs is not vertical. It's splayed out a little bit

In this case, I'm showing five degrees from perpendicular. And that's crucial

It makes all the difference in the world for keeping things solid

Now, that five degree from perpendicular could not be maintained just based on these

screws that you see going in here. By the way, you could use nails

I like to use screws. They hold a lot better. And if you ever need to take your saw horse apart because a part got broken something fell in it and maybe one of the legs is broken and everything else is good You can pull it apart very easily if you used deck screws But this brace you can see it down here is 45 degrees from horizontal

That's key. That keeps the legs splayed out, this five degrees from perpendicular

and it holds it there very, very solidly. So adding those diagonal braces

is really the last thing you'll do during construction. Everything is straightforward

in this design that there is one tricky bit that I want to talk to you about now

and it has to do with cutting the angle at the top of the legs

This angle is shallow enough. So this angle here that I'm showing you is

pointy enough, it's thin enough, that it's difficult to cut this on a power saw

And at this stage in your development, you probably don't even have a power saw

So you need to cut that critical angle in a different way

And that's why I want you to look at this drawing. Because what we want here is about 30 degrees from parallel

So in other words, about 60 degrees from square. Look down here you can see this is a scale drawing so you can see what 30 degrees looks like

it's just about perfect for a saw horse so how do you cut that how do you cut this angle here

because not only is it fairly shallow but it's on the edge of a piece of wood so we've got to

cut through a lot of wood here at the correct angle and what i like to use is a good hand saw the same

hand saw you're using for all of this initial work here in the course. And laying out the angle

is very easy. All you need to do is to mark a line that's two and a half inches from the end

of your piece for the leg. So if you imagine the leg would start off as just a regular, in this

case, 28 inch long piece of two by four. And from one end, you go down two and a half inches and

make a mark. So now with your hand saw you're going to cut from the corner of the board

to that two and a half inch mark and you're going to cut down square so it's going to continue down

as you can see here so that the top edge remains square to the sides of the two by four legs If you do that with your hand saw you going to have the correct angle on the top of the legs

and it's really going to work quite well. As I said, that's the trickiest part

Everything else is just a matter of assembly. Another important tip is the need, well, not the need, the advisability

to use glue on all the joints for this sawhorse. Now, technically, you don't need to do that

and your sawhorses will probably be fully solid, even if you don't use glue

But it's cheap insurance. It just ensures that everything is going to be as solid as it needs to be

and it's going to remain that way. Now, when it comes to glue, because sawhorses are often used outside

you'll want to use something called weatherproof glue. and that's the best kind that I like

It looks just like regular wood glue. You can even wash it up with water when it's still wet

but once it's dried, it undergoes a chemical change that makes it insoluble in water after that

My favorite kind right now is called Tight Bond 3, and it's fabulous

It just works really well. There's no need to finish, sawhorses like this

unless you really want to have a certain color but it really doesn't matter that much

and as I've said before you're going to want to use deck screws for putting this together

not nails you'll also want to make them in pairs because ideally

you're going to need at least two sawhorses of the same height

in order to work properly in practice I actually like to have four

because when you're cutting a piece of wood. Say it's resting on these sawhorses up off the ground. You're cutting the piece of wood

If you only have two and you make a cut in the middle of the board, well, the board is going

to buckle. It's not going to be supported. It's going to pinch your saw when the cut is coming to

its completion. But if you have four, then both sides of the piece of wood you're cutting

both halves, are going to be fully supported by two sawhorses. And it works great. And it makes a lot more

sense to make a bunch of saw horses at once too because it certainly boosts efficiency tremendously

Not only do you have all the tools out but you making all the same cuts at the same time with marking things out in the same way So decide ahead of time how many you going to make and then just get all your materials

and make them that way in one big batch. You'll love the efficiency and I guarantee you'll love these saw horses

They're as solid as granite. So I'm pretty much finished this video now, but I wanted to introduce you to this file here

This is one of the downloadable files that you can get as part of the curriculum material

and it's drawn in a program called SketchUp. Now, SketchUp is tremendously powerful and fairly complicated to use

but all you need to do for this project is to just look at the drawings

and see if you can gain something from this three-dimensional view. The main virtue of this view is that you can move around

I think you'll find this most valuable when you're actually putting the sawhorse together

Because you can, it's essentially like having a completed sawhorse right in front of you

as far as examining all the parts and how they fit together. Now, I'm using a program called SketchUp Viewer to view this

and that's what I recommend you download to. It's free. You can't draw anything with it, but you can certainly examine things

the ability, if you want to call it that, of not being able to draw on this is probably a good thing

because you're not going to tamper with the drawing and change it and mess it up and things like that

If you want to learn how to draw with SketchUp, then you can go online and you can find the program

and there's various options for it. But just a couple of things here as we finish up

I'm going to align this here. Look over here. This really, nicely shows the outward splay of the legs about five degrees or so. It doesn't take much

but it adds tremendous stability to the sawhorse. And of course, looking at it from this side

we can see the other angles involved. Just the normal splay of the legs is what you see here

And then these braces. These are absolutely key. Without these, the sawhorse is not going to be

strong and same goes for these angle braces here. They absolutely have to be in place and secure

If you put those things in place though, this is one solid sawhorse. Really think you're

going to like the design