9VIDEO Simple Workbench Plans Tour

In this video, I want to give you a tour of some workbench plans. I've designed

this bench myself. It's based on a design that I first built back in the early

1980s and I still have that bench. It's not my regular woodworking bench anymore

but I still use it as a utility bench. It's a great design. Probably

thousands of people have made their own versions of this bench from the plans

you see here and it works really well. So I just want to explain how it's put

together, some of the fine points that you might not think of as you're just

looking at these plans. I also want to point out that if this thing seems too

complicated for you to build right now, that's okay. This isn't really a

bottom-of-the-barrel beginner's project. It's a little more advanced than that but if you stick with woodworking at all, you're really going to appreciate a

bench like this in time. So if you don't feel up to building it now, just put the

plans away for a while. It won't take you long before you understand how something

like this goes together and how to do a great job building one for yourself

The first thing I want to point out is the legs. They're shown here as 4x4s

and you might be thinking, well that's an awful lot of wood. Does it really need

to be that heavy? And my answer is yes, because that is one of the attributes

of a good workbench is that it's got some mass to it. I mean technically you

could use something smaller than 4x4s for the legs but they do such a good job that I recommend you stick with that. You will be pleased. You could make

a kind of an L-shaped version of the legs so you put two 2x4s together to

form an L shape and that will give you the same sort of width you want as the

4x4 but it's not going to give you the solidity and it is an extra step

You have to glue and join them together so just go with a 4x4 as if at all

possible. Another thing that I need to point out here is a kind of a danger and

that has to do with the problems that many workbenches seem to show after a

while and that's called racking. So if you look here at the front view, imagine

for a moment that the bottom of the legs stays put on the floor of this bench but

the top can kind of move back and forth. That would be called racking and it's a

result of the fact that the legs would be free to kind of hinge or bend as

where they're attached at the top and resistance to racking is why these long

rails are here. I mean they do provide extra support for the bench top that

goes across here like this but most importantly it prevents the racking

action and the way it does that is by firmly fastening to the top of the legs

Now these long rails they're 2x6s which means they measure about five and a

half inches wide which is enough width to make a strong joint here and here and

here where the long rails meet the legs and we're not just using deck screws

here either because if you just use deck screws on their own to hold the long

rails in place they would definitely not be securely fastened enough to prevent

racking. So that's why you see the carriage bolts here. Can you go with

thinner ones than 3 8ths diameter as shown here? Yeah you probably could but

in my experience building things stout and strong and beefy might seem like

overkill at first but it's actually what's required for something to last a

long time in the real world. So just a point of this 3 8ths that's the

diameter of the carriage bolts and the 6 inches is the length. Now in addition

to the carriage bolts which are nice because you can do the nuts up as tight

as you want and it'll draw everything together. You can see the nuts here the

back nut nuts and flat washers to distribute the pressure otherwise the

nuts just going to sink right into the wood and not be very strong for you but

other than these bolts I strongly recommend in fact I insist that you use

high quality wood glue on all the joints here that will do an enormous amount of

good to make your bench solid and as I mentioned before a solid bench is

definitely something you want. Solidity is one of the most important features of

any workbench. Another thing to consider here is this little note that you see

right here 24 to 48 inch leg spacing, leg frame spacing. Now that's kind of a

widespread so what you need to understand here is depending on what you

plan to use the bench for and also the material that you're going to use for

the top here the top boards and the shelf you can dial in more or less leg

frame spacing. As I explained in the instructions for this bench making the

leg frames is the first thing you do and you kind of make a judgment call about

how many you're going to need and you make these frames up so that they're all

identical there's three here shown in the plans but you could have as many as you want depending on how long the bench is. So you make the frames up first and

then what I recommend is that you do a little bit of testing just a little bit

of mocking up so you set these things up with say the material that you plan to

use for the shelf and just see how it looks see how well supported that shelf

is do you need to have 24 inch spacing between frames that would be fairly

close and that's what you want if you plan to put on some heavy things onto

these shelves and also a closer spacing allows you to get away with thinner

material for the shelf too if you wanted to economize. 48 inches is

probably about as far as you'd want to go I mean that that's what it says here

on the plans I don't think I'd ever go 48 myself maybe 36 at the most but like I

said it just depends on what you're going to be using for especially the

bench top and the shelf I'm recommending two by six top boards here so that's an

inch and a half actual thickness they can span a pretty good a pretty good

distance so I would aim for a spacing of maybe 24 to 30 inches or so and also too

you can fudge that a little bit too there's no need to have an exact measurement for instance if you're making this bench to fit between two

walls for instance and you want and you want it to fit all the way between two

walls to take up all the space well maybe maybe you'll put that maybe all

you need is a center leg frame in that case because of the distance involved

and so maybe you'll put it at you know 29 and a half inches from its neighbors

just whatever it is in the center so not critical for dimensions it's not like

drywalling a house where you have to have the studs at a certain position so

that they line up with other building materials that come later it's really

just whatever works and whatever is solid and suits your situation as well

another thing to pay attention to is the way I have arranged these cross pieces

here on the ends in relation to the legs so you can see that the cross pieces on

the inside face of the the pair of legs here same on the other end and you might

think well why wouldn't I not want to put it on the outside wouldn't look

nicer just sort of seem a little more like it should be but there are

practical reasons for putting the cross pieces on the inside face and one is you

can see here it leaves the washers and nuts exposed to be tightened easily

without having to climb underneath and put a wrench in it you know from time to

time you know maybe once every couple of years or so you might have to tighten up

these nuts in order to keep the bench stable that's one of the nice things

about bolting it together is that you can reintroduce some solidity to the

bench of it if the wood shrinks and the bolts start to get loose so that's one

reason another reason just take a look down here you see with the cross piece

on the inside face of the legs it's very easy for us to have the shelf fully

supported along its end even where the legs are because the leg doesn't enter

into it but if the cross piece was on the outside we'd have to cut notches in

the ends corners and corners of the shelf in order for it to fit on here and

extend past the legs in order to be supported by the cross piece if it was

on the outside but so you can see here putting the cross piece on the inside

solves two problems and just it's one of the reasons why this bench is fairly

easy to make even for beginners at this stage I wanted to point out something to

do with the top several things actually look here you'll see the optional raised

side and back pieces now those are optional because you don't need to put

them on but it is kind of nice to have a kind of a raised rim around the top it

stops things from rolling off especially at the back of the bench you

know something rolled off a bolt or a nut or a screwdriver or something you

need to fall down and fall down behind the bench and under the shelf and it's

hard hard to get it hard to retrieve that thing again so the side and back

great idea you'll like the bench more if you put those on another thing to the

optional replaceable plywood top now I like the two by sixes for the bench top

because they're solid there's a fair amount of wood there inch and a half and

the wood is fairly wide five and a half inches so those those pieces of wood are

pretty strong and they do deliver a fair amount of mass to the bench and as I

said that's that's important for a solid bench that you can rely on the problem

is the gaps between them I mean if you're doing something on the bench that

involves some creating some sawdust for instance or you know anything that's

this messy and leave some sort of dirt behind it's gonna fall through those

cracks I mean you can you can make the boards as tight as you want but the the

gaps will open up between them so not only will the whatever dirt or sawdust

fall down and get on your shelf underneath and everything that's on it

but when it comes time to sweep that bench it's even worse because now you're

moving the dust around with your little broom and you're kind of working it down

in the cracks and gaps so that's why I like the replaceable plywood top now I

say replaceable because you should not fasten it with glue you're not fastening

it for the long haul you really only want to put it down with screws and that

would be enough screws to hold the plywood firmly but but no extra so

screws along the end maybe one in each 2x6 board underneath on both ends and

then maybe one or two more rows of those screws in the center the idea is is

twofold first of all now you can clean your bench and you can sweep it properly

without dirtying everything underneath also the top of any workbench eventually succumbs to damage and it sure is nice to be able to just take a ratty old

piece of plywood off and you know get rid of it after it's been there for five or ten hard years of use and replace it with something fresh so the bench becomes

maintainable then and it's something that never really gets rickety or broken

down or too marred to be useful just before I finish up I wanted to point out

that this bench can be used for other things other than just as a workbench a

woodworking bench or a repair bench here you can see a rendition a version of the

bench that is outfitted for use as a potting bench and I guess the big thing

that makes it a potting bench is that you've got this basin here the tap you

see is not plumbed into a house as such it's just sitting there but there is

some quick-release fittings underneath they're easy to put on and you see here

is a garden hose so you can kind of position this bench wherever it makes

sense in your yard during the potting season and connect a garden hose to it

quick-release fitting will allow you to have running water here so you can wash

your hands you can you can water plants it's just kind of nice to have running

water there the bucket underneath catches the water the wastewater and there's room for a watering can and other tools here too and I recommend

that you save the piece of wood that you cut out to fit the sink if that's

what you're doing and that's what you can see on the right-hand side here so

you can replace that when you want a completely solid bench because you don't

always need or want the sink in place but bottom line simple project it'll

last a long time and it's a very versatile design as well