Double Flip Top Workbench (Part 1 of 3)

hi everyone I'm mark and today we're going to start working on a new replacement for this old workbench this simple rolling workbench is one of the first things that I built when I moved into this shot the bench is almost entirely made out of old junk wood that was left over from a previous owner one of the things I don't like about it is all of the wasted space underneath there's just a whole bunch of open air that that does nothing for me and in my small shop I need to utilize my space better than this I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want my new workbench to be it's going to take up the same footprint as my current bench does but about half of it is going to be a butcher block style top and the other half is going to be two different flipping stations for stationary tools so I started out by focusing my attention on the top first I had to sort through all of the two by fours that I bought for this build and figure out which ones would fit the job the best after cutting them to length I just ran all the board's through the planer to try to clean up the surfaces a little bit to make it a little bit better for the glue up the glue up was done in two different stages in the first stage I glued together three different panels so that once they were dry they would still fit through my planer then after the fact I would glue those three panels to each other to have one massive top well the top was in the clamps I switched my attention over to the two by sixes that would make up the legs first I cut these two rough flank and then I ran them through the table saw to get them closer to their final dimensions once all the two by sixes were milled up they had to sort them to figure out which three would go together to make the best leg and my process here was just to find the ugliest piece and sandwich them in between the two better-looking pieces and I had to do this for a total of six legs i milled up the remaining two by fours while I was working on the legs because I needed those to become the framework for the bench so I had them all cut to length and labeled out and glued together as well once the glue is dry on the first glue up of the top I was able to take those big sections and run them through my planer to get the top and the bottom flat and parallel to each other then I ran each one of those blocks over the jointer to get one edge perpendicular to the faces and then from the jointer I ran it through the table saw in two passes to get both of those edges perpendicular to each other and to get all three of them to add up to the final width that the whole top was going to end up being then it was time to finally remove the planer snipe from a big top pieces and cut them down to their final lengths I had to do this in small bites because the thickness of the top was actually too high for the height of my radial arm saw so I had to sneak up on my line to finally get to my overall length here you can see that I actually had to put a straightedge between the fence and my bench top because the bench top was actually too tall and would run into the saw blade before I could set it back against the fence mence time to do the final glue up for the big sections of the workbench top I used some calls over the seams to make sure that the three different large segments stayed perfectly flat and in line with each other then while the bench top was drying again I went to work on flattening and squaring up the legs and the frame pieces I did that by running everything over the jointer and then checking that edge against the flat top of my table saw once I had two flat and perpendicular edges on most pieces then I switched over to the planer to get everything to final thickness and completely square all the way around now it's time to start cutting all of the joinery that's required for the Assembly of this bench once I had the saw height set perfectly then I worked on finding the exact length of the tenon once I had that set up just right I set up a stop block so that I could make sure all of the legs had a consistent shoulder on them with one saw kerf cut into all of my leg pieces I then lined them up and put a straight edge in that soccer so I could check the bottoms of the legs to see if they all lined up perfectly once I knew I had everything lined up perfectly then I could just start hogging out material it would have been really nice to have a dado blade for this but since I didn't I just made a bunch of little passes I tried two different ways for this one was just to take 100% of the material out with a move of the saw which was very tedious and time-consuming so secondly I tried skipping a chunk at a time and hammering out the remaining material and then going back and smoothing out the jagged teeth in the wood that were left behind and the finish between the two was identical so I went with a faster way for the remaining joints then it's just pretty much the same story for the bottom of the legs for the four corner post and once all of the meat was hog out then I was able to fit the frame together and fit the legs in place and make sure that everything lined up the way it was supposed to so at this point you can kind of see the whole bench starting to take shape the joinery all came together just right I check for squareness on the legs on the frame it's all nice and square part of the reason for assembling it at this point was I wanted to check the real world measurements against what I came up with as a computer I wanted to make sure that it was accurate so I mapped out on this runner where the middle legs are supposed to be the support legs that are going to hold up the outside the middle edge of the butcher blocks type top and so mess it out on here get these legs lined up and then I measured across the top to see if they actually match the dimensions of the top that I built for this and they come to within about a sixteenth of an inch so that means that I'm coming along just fine so now the top is back out of the clamps again and it's time to cut the mortises for the legs I started out by measuring exactly where I thought the mortises needed to be the outside corners was the most crucial point once I had the measurements in I put the legs down on top of it and traced those over the top to get the real-world size which was darn close to the measured size and then it was just a matter of hogging out the material and this was a real nail-biter for me because if I screwed this up I'm not exactly sure how to fix it short of cutting off a chunk of top and gluing a new chunk back to it so I took my time and was very careful about it so I went just as deep as my router would go from the bottom side first because if I was going to make an error I wanted it to be on the bottom and once I had all those cut out then I flipped the bench over and made the same holes from the top and was able to get the holes to line up almost perfectly once I had the bulk of the material taken away then I slapped on a straightedge so I could get perfect square sides in my mortises this router brace and straightedge is actually a design from Jay Bates and I'll leave a link in the description to his plans for how to make one just like it then all that was left was to square off the corners of the mortises with a chisel then I flipped the bench top back over and put my new bench vise in place on it so that I could mark out the hole locations it's a lot easier to do this now then when the bench is glued together and you have to work from underneath it over the top of your head trying to figure out where you want it to sit one last interesting thing to note before I start doing this together is this is as far as I need to disassemble it for this first glue up this half is the side that's going to get to have the heavy massive top on it and the other half is going to end up having to flip top to it later on and just in case I don't think I'm going to need to but just in case they do I'm not willing the back legs into the frame just yet on the off-chance they need to be able to take it back apart to do the mechanism that I have in mind so this is a farm is going to be taking apart to glue together so I'm going to start slicing some glue on it and tighten there and and call this part 1 now it's just a matter of smearing some glue in all the right places and then fitting all of the different joinery together and screwing it down permanently the screws are just acting as clamps at this point to hold the pieces together well things dry later on I plan to come back and remove the screws and drill out those screw holes so I can drive dowels into place [Music] with the frame all glued and screwed together who is sent to put some glue on the mortises and Tenon's for the top set the top in place and hammer it down into position well those joints are really tight and I am a little bit winded swinging that little hammer trying to get them locked down we're just about there but I don't want to waste any more time like my dad always said with a big enough hammer you can fix anything [Applause] here we go looks good me well they got a little bit sporting towards the end there it took just a little bit longer to glue the whole thing up and to pound the top down than I expected it to so I ended up resorting to a bigger hammer because I was afraid the glue was going to set up too fast on me anyway you can see I added a couple of pipe clamps because these aren't completely through Tenon's they're set in from the outside I've gotten clamped against the far side to pull them tight and hold them there I tried running some screws into it and it didn't pull it quite as tight as I wanted it to but the pipe clamps are doing the trick it will just let the glue dry all of us Tenon's are a little bit proud of the surface so I'll come back through later trim those off but that will be a project for tomorrow like I said right now the glues got to dry we'll come back and trim these off we'll flip it back over to put the wheels on the bottom and at least it'll be mobile and I can maybe get back to some other projects I'm winded and tired it's time for bed these are some large 4-inch diameter wheels that I found on Amazon what's interesting about these wheels that I didn't know is that the last not only keeps your wheels from turning but it also keeps the wheel from pivoting as well so once I have the bench set up on its wheels locks two of the wheels and tried to push it just to see how well the brakes work and with two wheels lock it provided plenty of resistance if I lock all four wheels I should be in great shape now it's time to trim the tenon flush with the top of my workbench because I know that my flush trim saw tends to dig in too deep I use a couple layers of painters tape to buy myself a little bit of leeway and keep my work top nice then I use my belt sander to smooth out the tops of those Tenon's and take out any other rough spots and pencil marks off the top of the workbench then I put a couple of pocket holes into the end of the piece that I'm calling the backbone of this workbench this piece gets wedged in between the solid top and the floating outside edge of the workbench that will end up supporting the pivot mechanism this piece just gets hammered down into place then I run some screws in it to lock it down this piece is crucial to keeping the spacing even between the solid top and that floating back end well I think that's what we're going to call it quits for part one of this thing that's going to be an awful lot of footage to get together and try to narrow down most of it is this cutting joints and gluing stuff together which may not be all that interesting but there was an awful lot of it so that's going to be part one I'm going to leave it with the solid top is done and the frame and the structure is all set up and ready to go so that's going to be the next one if put the clifftops in on both sides and put the bench mics in on the other side where I drilled the holes for and maybe I'll put a bottom in it I'm not sure just yet further down the road I'm going to build some storage drawers that go underneath this butt but that's not a very high priority at this point I just need to get the flip tops done and the plain or specifically moment to it so I can kind of wrap this thing up and get on the other pressing projects and then come back to fine-tuning this thing a little bit later so if you enjoyed this please give me a thumbs up and go ahead and subscribe if this is something you would do if you haven't seen my channel before like I said we're going to finish this out a little bit later and this should be a pretty pretty darn useful tool by the time it's all done thanks guys

Channel: Gunflint Designs

Views: 1,480,948

Rating: 4.8928552 out of 5

Keywords: Wood, woodworking, flip top, flipping, double, dual, twin, workbench, planer, router, table saw, radial arm saw, jointer, jay bates, router base, router jig, dimensional lumber, 2x4, 2x6, mortise, tenon, joinery, glue up, titebond, bosch, dewalt, craftsman, clamps, planning, plans, hammer, locking casters, wheels, woodworker, diy, handmade, home made, spiral down cut bit, built in, convenience, convenient, storage, design, ultimate, features, delta, tools, hardware, fixthisbuildthat, fliping, DIY Tyler

Id: b3-R06qlhjg

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2017