$50 Butcherblock Workbench Made From 2x4 Lumber

[Music] you [Music] welcome back friends to the shop so this is part three of the carpet I keep saying carpenters bin so the mechanics or machinist bents a heavy duty bench that we're gonna build once it will last us the rest of our life so off-camera I went ahead and I ripped the rest of the two by fours and it looks like twenty-one is gonna work out pretty good what we have behind us here are just just standard two by fours that I hand selected at Home Depot we ripped the edges off there the rip down to three inches and I've kind of hand selected I hand selected them and we're gonna orient them so that there's it can be as strong as possible so the first thing we need to do is to start making a template because we have to have a whole bunch of holes to drill we've got seven holes in each board and there's twenty-one so rather than measuring each one out which would be really tedious and time-consuming we'll make a template that we can repeat and get some consistency so let's so we'll do that together here as we're starting to see here or getting a really nice countertop a heavy-duty top it's gonna be three inches thick now ultimately it's gonna finish a little bit less than that because we're gonna want a hand plane this smooth but that's okay we'll still have plenty of material some folks were asking in the comments why rip both sides why not just rip the top if we want just one flat side there's a couple reasons for that well one primarily is aesthetics I think it looks crummy when you look at the edge of it and you see that it's not finished the same as the top I like to have a clean square edge the other is is that over time you know maybe after many years or you had a lot of damage on the top we could flip it we've already done the work so we don't have to go in and plane everything so if you don't want to do that and you want to keep that quarter inch you're more than welcome to to do that but you can see we're gonna have a very heavy strong top okay so what you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to pick out your two of your best boards or at least one of them the one that's going to be on the face meaning the cleanest one the one that is free of knots that has nice square edges as good as possible because that's the one that we're going to be looking at you know for the rest of our life so we want to have something that's not like super ratty or ugly or a bunch of Wayne and then we're gonna countersink these and we'll do this together here I just did this first one to kind of show you now one thing that I did in my last video last video my last bench was I didn't countersink these all threads or threaded rod and that's always been kind of a nuisance it sticks out far enough where it catches on things if you were using a chisel it you run the risk of damaging something that is just you know softer metal or it has a nice edge on it there's just no reason for it so we're gonna make those countersink those so that they're set inside of the wood so it'll look nicer and it'll just be less things to be a bother to us and here's a close up where you can see that countersink now when we do when we put this all together we'll have room for our flat washer and our nut and that we can see that that's going to when you countersink this make sure that nothing sticks sticks above that so that it sits nice and clean you have a flat surface across there and that's going to look very nice looks substantial and give it a lot of strength and unlike that other bench to do these countersink so there's there's lots of different ways you can do it of course the cleanest way to do it is to use a Forstner bit which is right here this is a little bit bigger than I probably needed but it was the only one that I had because I don't have a complete set that would fit that washer and that's okay if it's a little bit bigger I don't think that's a problem if you don't have a Forstner bit you can use a spade bit which is be a little bit more ragged it's not gonna be as clean I would recommend you know maybe talk to someone that you know and ask if you can borrow one a lot of guys that do woodworking will have these they're pretty common you can even buy a cheap one it might be worth buying it for seven eight bucks on Amazon to do this because this is the portion of your bench it you're gonna be looking at forever and to have a raggedy hole here or something that doesn't look nice that would bother me so it might be worth the 10 bucks to to buy a Forstner bit you're gonna use it in the future for other things so just something to consider you could even do that square and chisel that out square if you wanted to with the chisel and that wouldn't be as bad either so let's go ahead and make our template together here our next step is going to be making the ends the front which is going to be the face of the bench and the backside which is all both of those are gonna have to be hunc why countersink the backside well there's a good chance that you're gonna push this bench up against a wall and if you don't countersink Anthon and you're gonna have a gap in the back of the bench and you don't want that so you might as well just go ahead and do it plus it would it'll be universal you could flip it either way and it'll be built the same so the one I've done here now these particular studs that I picked out for mine as I said I got the 92 and 5/8 so those are pre-cut studs so that you can put them with a top plate in a bottom plate then they'll be 8-foot whatever you're choosing what I would do is go ahead and just find the center of your stud if that's an 8-foot or if you're using the pre cuts like I did that's what we're gonna come out just having seven pieces of the all-thread in here how it worked out for me from the centerline was 14 and a half 29 and 43 and a half was the spacing that I used I didn't want to get too close to the end there because we are going to be trimming it we're not gonna trim this yet we're gonna wait and trim that when when the lamination is all done so leave that alone don't do not cut those there's a couple other reasons for that as well and then of course I just scribed this across here and then we'll use our combination square at an inch and a half and make these marks then we'll go ahead and drill these together use your combination square and find Center I preset this so I don't have to measure every time I can just go along and Mark all seven at one time now be sure don't do not drill the hole which is gonna be a half inch hole now remember there's all thread that we're using is 3/8 of an inch so we want to use a drill bit that's an eighth inch bigger then the all thread that gives us the ability to have a little bit of adjustment for all the imperfections so use a 1/2 inch bit with your three inch all thread what I have been doing to help find that Center is just use an awl or an icepick and then start a little hole right there right there on my line and then carefully line it up if you want you could use a pilot bit but I found that this seems to be close enough and we're gonna make sure real bit straight have something underneath so you don't drill through you're up you're good wood I just did what I told you guys not to do I was supposed to use my Forstner bit first all right let me turn off the camera redo all the layout and start it over again all right so we're gonna use our all again make sure you find that Center and though you know the wood is forgiving that's what's nice working about it and if you put it in the wrong spot you know you can kind of manipulate things around and get it where you want it now here's what we're gonna do now this particular Forester bit is the perfect depth if I just go to the top of it so I'll put that in there and we'll do this first now that gives us insight there's a little dimple in there we can take our our drill bit make sure you're straight both ways the best you can and then drill through good grief this is amateur hour big time here well what do you expect from a homeowner [Music] here's a potential problem that could really bite us when putting everything together I was not paying attention when I was drilling here the the half-inch hole in there I'm on a knot and the drill bit slipped off and then started drilling off-center our all-thread will never go through there so what I'm gonna try to do and if you run into that I think this would probably work is use this as a guide we can use our face board here as it's kind of a template and sandwich these together make sure you flush the ends from the edge you laid out and we should be able to use this as a guide and hopefully this will guide our drill bit for careful through the hole that in the right place on second thought let's just leave that alone we're not that's not gonna be the only problem we have when we have so many holes to drill they're not all gonna be perfect but the reason why we're gonna leave those ends wild is that so if we do get those deviations these boards can move a little bit once we get everything bolted and clamped down then we'll take a skill saw or whatever saw we have and we'll cut those ends flush so I'm not worried about it and having this hole 1/8 inch bigger than our all-thread this being 3/8 this being 1/2 is gonna give us some wiggle room so let's just let's just go with it and then if we come up crust and or come up to another problem then we'll we'll just deal with it then before we drill any holes we want to make sure that we have the board's oriented the way that we want them what we're looking for here is we want to put our best foot forward use the best side that we have you see if you have little divots like this here maybe that's something you want to flip over and see if the other side is better or even move it to the back where it's not so noticeable another thing we're gonna watch out for is these knots you know these knots here are going to once the wood cures and dries and we beat on this and use it for a while these are all gonna break out so that's something else to consider now it's not the end of the world you know so one thing that you know what my granddad did on his bench is that he did something similar to this but then he covered it he skinned it with a piece of sixteenth inch sheet metal and then bent the end over so that he could weld on it you know so if that's something you want to do you can do that this will this will be perfect for that if you're just gonna leave it would and you you mean if you are gonna weld on something like this just get yourself a piece of you know like a three-foot long four-foot long piece of sheet metal that you can throw up on there when you're doing that but it's nicer to work on wood than it is on metal if you're not a you know hardcore fabricator there is also a school of thought on this that when you're choosing when you're looking at the grains here that you want to alternate these what that means is that when you see these radial lines in the tree like this here if you you don't necessarily want them all running the same way if you can alternate them so have one going this way have one going this way and then back and forth if it's possible so you'll just have to kind of play around with it and look and the reason for this is that they'll kind of fight against each other if you orient these all the same way and and they they will tend to all want to kind of twist and help each other pull this thing out of alignment whereas if you alternate them it's kind of the principle behind like a like a p38 Lightning right where the counter-rotating props where the yaw of one prop overrides the yaw of the other one and stay clear from if you have a choice when you're picking this out don't buy wood that has the center the heart so you see right there that's a little heart right there when you're buying wood you'll you can ask them I want it to be free of heart when you're doing like really high-end stuff because that will move in a much different direction than something that's cut to the outside of it so just something to consider just go through your boards and flip them and alternate them so that they're gonna be as good as possible [Music] you

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 224,869

Keywords: Wranglerstar, youtube, how to, butcher block, do it yourself, work bench, 2x4 workbench, laminated workbench, woodworking bench, home improvement (interest), how-to (website category), how to make a workbench, butcher block counter top, 2x4 projects, workbench build, how to basic, butcher block countertop, butcher block countertop diy, butcher block table, butcher block desk, butcher block countertop finish, butcher block countertop installation, do it yourself projects

Id: BFRqM6LquIE

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019