ONE Workbench to do it ALL.

by the end of this video you will have watched me build the perfect hybrid workbench why now well for the last 3 or 4 years I’ve made do with this this this and this and yes that was a ladder it worked for a while and when I say hybrid I mean this table has to have my table sore in it it has to be an outfeed table it has to be an assembly table it has to be sturdy movable cleanable and have storage it’s not much to ask oh yeah I don’t want it to be the perfect size by perfect I mean as big as possible so those are my wishes but they are held back by my constraints which are simple space budget skill space is a really easy one to test all you need to do clear your Workshop throw a piece of plywood down on a couple of saw horses and see if you can still walk around it if you can great if you can’t you’re going to have to go smaller I’m heading in for a mid-range budget I’ve got some leftovers from building the workshop and I’m going to order in some 2x4s some CLS Timber and some plywood sheeting for the top on top of that there’s a few accessories that need to go in but that’s pretty much it we’ll talk a bit about skill level as we go I’m going to go through it all in this one video from start to finish with no planning the problem with using cheaper materials and you might even get this with some of the more expensive especially if you’re going down the box door route is they’re not all perfectly straight use the straighter ones for the long pieces and then cut the ones with a curve into the short pieces and to keep this a complete beginner build I’m going to be cutting everything everything with the circular saw help of a speed square and some straight edges hooking it all together well for the frame that’s just going to be using 100 Mil screws and then everything else pretty much was covered with 50 mil build something that’s going to suit your purposes for right now and for a little bit in the future for me it’s the table saw that’s the biggest addition to this because I haven’t had one before and that’s the future for me all we’re really doing at this stage is is framing basically and if any of your Timbers are a little bit bent when you get to doing the second end of them easy tip clip a clamp on straighten it up manually stick the second screw in to hold it in place as I was trying to keep this simple and really if you’re going to go for legs and you’re going to go down a route of half laps or mortis in tendon that’s absolutely fine and will probably be more stable than what I’m doing but for me I found it far easier just to put two 2x4s together make them into a corner piece and then attach that directly to the bottom frame and you’ll see I’ve got my speed square out here it doesn’t give you a huge reference point for 90° however I think for a workbench you don’t need to get this absolutely perfect I’ve done a bit of shimming down the line but to be honest with you going for absolute perfection is only going to drive you crazy throughout the whole of this build and it’s going to ensure that it takes a lot longer right from the beginning I’ve been really conscious about the weight of this table it’s going to be a lump it’s going to be a beast and the table saw is no lightweight piece of equipment so for the dividers in the shelves I decided to go down the route of half inch P instead of the probably better for the job 3/4 inch P but it was all with weight in mind some of the camera angles throughout this entire build are really difficult because it you won’t see it on the film but it was absolutely hammering down with rain and I’m working with a bog outside because well I spread the mud that I dug out across the entire Garden when I made the workshop which may not prove to be the smartest idea until I actually get grass down some of the angles aren’t perfect but I’m going to show you every single bit of the process and then afterwards if if you guys need more details from watching this I’m going to write a blog about it it’s going to be on my website with all my other blogs my toour recommendations and a step-by-step guide it’s going to take time though so watch the video and let me know in the comments if there are recommendations or questions that you have and I’ll work my way through them I’m not breaking any ground here by putting the table saw within the workbench you can put it at the long end like I have or you could actually put it sideways into the table you’ve got a much shorter out feed table but you have a different angle of usage within your Workshop now for me I want it lengthways I want it at the one end and a lot of that is based around filming I’m going to prop it up just with these struts and with some cross pieces out of the same tuba fours that I’ve been using for everything and then just a thin sheet of ply on top now for this I’ve busted out the pocket hole screws and I I wish I’d not used them in this scenario because to be honest they didn’t do the best of jobs and I could have just screwed through from the outside with those 100 Mil screws sometimes over thinking a job is probably due in part for me to the lack of planning I left the stretches off the top of the table while I was putting the shelf and the table saw in purely because I didn’t want them getting in the way while dropping all the other pieces in it doesn’t need to necessarily be perfectly flat at the top cuz I’m going to show you how I flattened the top down the line so just get it as close as you can and you’ll see me with this long spirit level I’m not actually trying to get them flat with the Earth with the bubble I’m just trying to get them flat with each other to start with as a reference point for whatever reason I decided the top pieces joining the stretches together would work better if they were flat I don’t know why and then this is where we had to do a little bit of tweaking for the fence the reason I chose this table saw is because of the rack and pinion fence in order for the rack and pinion fence to work you’ve got to clear out some of the side pieces and you’ve got to make sure you go down to the right depth to get that fence to slide nice and evenly through without catching on anything including the little brackets for taking the fence off it self time to bust out some of the more brutal tools that I have in the workshop that just are there to clear out wood oh yeah and to look like a woodworker by tidying it up with a bit of chisel pairing rough chisel pairing you don’t need to spend all your time making this bench look perfect beautiful the work of art that is the centerpiece for your Workshop but equally it is something that all going well that you’re going to use for many years to come so softening up some of the edges rounding off some of the corners giving it a bit of a sand in places that you might not think that is going to be an issue might just save you a cut Splinter or a bit of aggravation down the line and then I had a brain wave I figured one side of my bench might take a little bit more abuse than the other maybe that’s where I do my hand tool work maybe that’s where I hammer things so I put in a few extra braces and then another one down the middle to hold the center divide of the workbench did I measure any of the tools that I want to put in that workbench no I just put in a random Spot somewhere near Center but we did learn an important lesson here halfin ply and pocket hole screws don’t really go together I knew this but I still carried on with it and that I’ve decided that this video due to its length is going to be the entire construction of the table plus a few of the extras and then I’m going to finish the internals and I’m going to show you the finished product as it is in a second video where I show you all the accessories that go with the table that I’ve chosen CU that way you get to see the entire build and you can have a go for yourself and then a second video will come out to show you how I’ve tweaked it to make it more suitable for what I want to use it for did I leave a gap in the middle of the table purposefully no will it help with wires and blowing dust out the table Yeah the next bit is what I think is probably one of the most important parts of this and that’s taking what you’ve got and making it as flat as possible in all honesty you can put whatever worktop you want on this you could go with MDF you could go with ply you could go with a laminate work toop of some description for me I’m going for two sheets of 3/4 inch ply with another layer on top to give me the finish that I want I want the worktop to actually pull the whole bench together and keep it tight but if you want the work toop to be flat you got to do a little bit of work on the 2×4 frame the first thing I’ve done is I’ve chosen a reference and that is going to be my long spirit level and then I’m just pulling it across the tops and wherever it snagged which was around the pocket holes I’m just taking a chisel and clearing up any of the waist so so it doesn’t get trapped between the two four and the P if any of the posts are sticking up a little bit too much playing them down so now the posts are your reference point to each other I found that my table was actually a little bit low in the middle and that’s really good but before we go to the next stage I realized that I actually needed to move this table around while I was working on it the easiest way to move a table around obviously is having it on casters but you don’t want them to be permanent because the table’s moving around underneath you and also it’s some really small pressure points to put onto the floor where the wheels are casters that are attached to the side that stay there the whole time my worry with that in a small Workshop is tripping over them so I spent a bit more on this than I really wanted to but I don’t regret it because these casters come with a bracket that you attach to the leg of the bench and then you slide the Caster in pin it in and take it back out and the biggest selling points in the manual heavy they are for a heavy workbench Ben you can just lift the workbench from the four corners and slide it around to do things well like cleaning again before we flatten I haven’t addressed the height of the workbench this is something that is going to be so individual to each woodworker out there so my first build of it is purposefully a couple of inches low so then what I did was pile a selection of plywood sheets on top all all of different thicknesses so that then I could get a feel for exactly the height I wanted the bench once I was happy mainly from testing by dangling my arms next to it and seeing what felt comfortable I then I took the plywood pieces that were the right thickness cut them down to make feet for underneath each of the legs of the table I made the feet larger than the actual table legs because that again would just spread the weight across the floor a little bit better and then we played cards well not quite then we got to the flattening process I’ve seen this done before it’s not my idea I’m not going for absolute perfection cuz this is one of those areas you could probably drive yourself completely crazy trying to to get it perfect all I’m doing is taking the spirit level to the high points and then padding Out Underneath It with as many cards as it takes for it to be nicely tightly wedged under and then sticking them down and going across in every direction and diagonally as well again this is where skill constraint comes into it I don’t believe I’ve got the skills to get it any further than this and equally I don’t think I’ve got the skills in building to need anything flatter than this once I was happy with it I screwed the first layer of ply directly to the carcass and then really you’re looking at what is your margin of error for me it’s two playing cards maybe half a mil in thickness and then with the plywood sheet on top CU not all plywood sheets are perfect I just went about testing to see if I could slide it underneath the spirit level at any stage once you’re happy with it well then you can work on the second sheet the second sheet is the same size as the first plunked it on top and screwed up from the underneath making sure none of the screws came through out of the top put a heavy weight on the middle so it doesn’t bow and start one end and work your way across you’re going to notice at the end of this by the time the actual final layer of the tabletop is on that it’s going to be seriously difficult to replace because it’s screwed down and up and then sealed in place I do have an idea to combat this and it is based around the fact that I use multi-layers underneath my legs if this top gets destroyed by something over time I’m going to put another layer of Pon and I will take a layer out of the feet underneath so the bench will stay exactly the same height testing it again with the cards and this time I tested it with a light I trimmed out the rest in exactly the same manner checking it was flat I wanted to have extra pieces next to the side of the table saw as extra support to put things on as well but here you have to be a little bit careful as you do with the whole table I had to ensure that the table saw is raised just above the level of the worktop itself so when you’re sliding plywood boards across it or whatever you’re cutting they’re not going to get snagged on the actual outfeed table before coming off the table and that’s going to make the job a whole lot safer I boxed in the table store as well using off cuts of half in plywood cuz not only does that create an area that is going to hopefully hold a lot of the dust that this thing creates it’s also going to give me little areas of storage on the outside and make the whole thing look a lot neater I locked down the table saw just using some offcuts of ply to surround a couple of the legs and I shimmed it to make sure that it was sturdy and stable this is something I should have mentioned when putting the table s in when you’re making the platform for the table saw on the low side of caution rather than high because you can always shim the table saw up it’s really hard to actually bring the level of the workbench top up to make sure that it’s at the right height oh yeah and test the fence still slides just before you fully lock it down you could leave your bench where it is right now if you’re happy with it me I like to have extras on anything that I build I like to try and push myself and to be honest with you that’s the fun of the build for me we talked about the fact that I wanted a full PL W sheet in size and I couldn’t have it so this is my solution now 99% of the time these wings are just going to be attached to the side of the workbench and I’m going to use them for clamping things too and they’re going to be really handy because I don’t actually have a vice on this table and this is going to be my solution for it the first Wing next the outfeed table I haven’t worried about counter syncing the screws that hold it into place whereas the one on the full length of the more assembly table side of it those have been counter sunk and there’s a reason for that that I’m going to come to later but these side pieces will actually serve an extension purpose on the table as well which I’ll show you shortly now before I show you the wings I want to show you what I’m going to cover the table with and this was a really tough choice because in all honesty you could have a plywood tabletop you could varnish it and most of what you want to achieve will happen on it as I film on this table and this is going to be the centerpiece of where I film and talk to you guys I need to have it a slightly different way to what a normal woodworker would so the things I need to consider as I mentioned before it needs to be Hardy so it has to survive a couple of knife Cuts fairly well nothing is perfect but I don’t want a Stanley knife going through it in one swipe secondly glue’s got to come off easily the two glues I use CA glue and wood glue they’ve got to come off it in some capacity and then thirdly and this is something you guys probably won’t need to consider for me I can’t have any Reflections coming up off it or I want to minimize them anyway so I got some test pieces from a laminate company and they sent them through and I and I performed the tests on them there was two satins and an Ultram mat that I ordered and I have to the ultramat performed flawlessly on the reflection test so that’s what we went with I’m no expert with applying this to the wood all I knew was I had to clean it first I had to apply contact adhesive to the laminate and the ply and then when it was dry put them together I gave myself a lot of margin I made sure I’d already cut the pieces a bit big and once they contacted I put pressure on with a piece of wood rolled in a towel because I didn’t have a roller this stuff is easy to cut you just score it four maybe five times and then snap it it’s far easier than trying to cut all the way through it I didn’t try it with any power tools the larger area was the one I was the most cautious on because it wasn’t one that I could actually easily replace so I started with the smaller sides and then I got the roller out and I did the whole table a tip I saw on Scott Walsh’s Channel and also I think John from Lincoln Street did it so that’s two people so it’s got to be the best way of doing it when they came to apply the laminate they put dowels or strips of wood down between the two pieces so they could lay them on top of each other shuffle them to the right position and then take one piece of wood out at a time starting with the middle and gradually flatten the laminate down onto their tables so that’s what I did I have to say if you’re considering this it’s really not a hard way of putting an extra layer on top of your workbench and I’m going to do it across a few other areas within my workshop because this stuff is phenomenal I left it for a little while just to fully cure and then with a flush trim bit in my trim router whis around the edges and took took off all of the excess now it does leave a little bit of a sharp edge and I didn’t want to risk catching myself on the edge of the table or cutting myself so I decided a bit of a hardwood border would be the easiest way to solve that problem smaller pieces are just held on with wood glue and a bit of CA glue to act as a clamp while the wood glue is going off the rest of the longer boards I did as much tidy up on the hardwood as I could before then attaching it and using blue tape as a clamp I started with the wings in case I made any mistakes and then I finished up on the main sides of the workbench I tried to get the hardwood flush with the top so I didn’t have too much sanding to do I left myself a lip maybe half a millimeter just so that I didn’t leave it low oh yeah and I used some of the off cuts on some of the areas cuz I didn’t have enough to go all the way around and while the wood glue was curing I decided I was going to work on the wings the solution I came up with for making them into Wings is really simple it’s just two right angle brackets that screw into the same holes that hold the Shelf up and then the Shelf is held to them with the same hole holes that it was held to the workbench with for the wings I did flush up the underside of the hardwood so that it didn’t snag on the table but I didn’t bother with the main workbench the main workbench the top you have to be really careful cuz even though it’s still covered with the plastic sheet that it comes with the lamina is still in risk of being damaged and a trick that I like to use is using my finger as a guide that will run across the side of the table which will stop the card sander actually sanding past the edge of the hardwood I even got Brave with a hand plane for some of the higher spots and it found that if you do slip and take some of the plastic off the top you get one free swipe after that you are damaging the laminate now really you could leave the table and say it’s done once again but there is a big void underneath where the table saw sits underneath that platform that is just crying out for a drawer I am no expert of fitting drawers all I know is I’m rubbish with a tape measure so I use a story stick and the simplest way of describing this is put your two hinges in wedgees Stick between the hinges and that is the width your draw needs to be cut the base to it and then fit the size to that base and that is a fairly foolproof method of making drawers I made two and I have different hinges on them so one is a push draw one is a pull drawer one is for all my safety equipment for the table saw and the bigger one is for other larger objects that go with the table saw if I can keep my safety equipment close there’s a better chance I’m going to use it the main takeaways from this are pocket hole screws are fine clamp before you screw the pocket hole screws in keeping them square and then just screw the base to it the last of the finishing touches I’m going to show you going in is just the tea track that’s going to go on one of the Wings it’s a little bit of a tast of what’s to come in the next video oh yeah and the big reveal I’m really proud of the choices I’ve made for this table and I know aesthetically a lot of people watching will have zero interest in what a workbench looks like I totally understand that stick a Ply with cheet on when it gets damaged take it off stick another one on it’ll work just as well for me I wanted to make something that was going to be as versatile as possible and would look good on camera one extra bit that you gain with with making a table in this way with the 2×4 legs is a little bit of an alve on a few of the sides the one at the front end which is where I’m going to stand most of the time has just got a load of sanding pads in it some notepads it’s got my speed square they’re not deep shelves but they can be incredibly useful as for the bigger voids well at the moment one of them is open for dust extraction for the table saw another one has got my router table in it and actually I do want to show you this this is something I’m quite excited about I’m excited about it because I think there’s a fair few of you that will be watching this going where’s the power and bear in mind this is nothing more than a sneak peek because I’m quite proud of this there’s a lot of people when I built the workshop that said I should have a plug in the middle of the floor underneath any workbench that I’m going going to put in well in a way you’re right what I do have is a few options directly above this workbench there’s two double sockets I believed that they would come in really handy with whatever I was going to use on the workbench however I wanted to try a bit of an experiment and so when blue etti reached out to me and said can you test one of our power stations for what you do remembered back to my little shed with no electricity and I thought actually there are going to be Woodworkers out there who are in sheds like I was with zero power and who don’t want to keep constantly running an extension lead down and maybe one of these battery power stations would actually work for them so I decided to incorporate it in my workbench this is just a sneak peek video I intend to use this for to run the table saw the dust extraction and any hand tools batteries Etc that I’m going to have within this workbench the full review of that piece of Kit is going to come out in a couple of months time once I’ve given it a thorough testing I hope the video has been useful I hope you’ve enjoyed it and if the second video is already filmed and the accessories are on the table T I’ll pop it up here if not and you’re looking at kitting out your Workshop there are loads of other videos a great starting point have a look at that one thanks a lot for your time thanks for watching don’t forget to like And subscribe I’ll see you over there …

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