Showing posts with label bench. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bench. Show all posts

Saturday, August 15, 2009

A New Workbench!

I managed to finally finish a bench I've been building for over a year. I couldn't find anything to make the top out of, at least not in my price range (free). We rearranged a few things in the house recently and needed to downsize the computer desk. I had made it out of an old table and some doors long ago. The table top is made from 1.5" strips of pine...now I have my bench top! The drawers were salvaged from Drake University when they rehabed some dorms and were giving away built in desks. The rest is just 2X material that I found at building sites. My dad gave me the vice, he found 3 of them when packing up his shop in KS! It's 46" wide, 28" deep and 38" tall (I like tall benches)

Monday, January 19, 2009

A Shop/Studio In Progress....



Over the past few weeks, I've been cleaning out the garage to enable my wife to park her car in it. Still not there, but I just finished a new workspace along the wall of the shop area. The bench is attached to the studs of the wall on the back edge and then a simple 2X4 frame and legs. The compound miter saw (CMS) is built into a dip near the center and has worked quite well. I have about 5' to the left and almost 7' to the right of the saw. The top is just 1/2" plywood as it won't see much abuse.

Under the CMS is where my air compressor will go. There will be air lines to the right for the lathe and upward to the 50' of hose on a hand crank roll up. To the left of the CMS is a salvaged 2 drawer set from work that stores my skil saw and other power tools. It is on wheels too just in case I might clean behind it. To the right is a mobile assembly/finish table that is 46" wide and 23" deep. It tucks away very nicely and hold hardware, old mags and other assorted junk and such. The top is still a work in progress but will be 2 layers of MDF and 2X2 fir edging. Above the bench are two cabinets (also salvaged from work) that I cut down to 10" deep from 18". They house finishes and paint.

This picture shows what I had on the wall prior to building the bench. Basically all the salvaged stuff mentioned above, just all crammed together. I think this is an improvement! Once again thanks to my frugality, I managed to make all these improvements with out spending much at all. About $5 for some of the 1/2" ply material from the cutoff bin at the local HD...they have pieces marked from 50cents to $2 all the time and it's hard to pass it up.

I have more updates to do soon in the lathe area, but now I need to get back to the lathe, I haven't turned it on in almost 3 weeks!