Folding Sawhorses | STEP BY STEP with limited tools

so I shot this video almost a year ago but I shoved it because I had second thoughts about posting such a long video but I know now that there is a small but highly motivated core group of you that really want to learn from highly detailed step-by-step videos plus I really enjoy making this kind of video so hey sorry YouTube's algorithm I'm going to post a long educational video and hey if you enjoy this approach to learning please consider checking out my online course the weekend woodworker where I'll take you in-depth step-by-step through the process of creating beautiful furniture for your home there's no experience necessary in fact you could build your very first woodworking project this weekend just like thousands of other people have already done to see all the tools you'll need for the course head over to my to list calm and download my free guide to setting up a woodworking shop for under $1000 anyways I hope you enjoyed this lost project the folding sawhorse project all you need are just a few handheld power tools to make it and you can download free plans down in the description I'll start the sawhorses by cutting out four legs for each sawhorse using two-by-four lumber a word on two by fours when you go to the Home Center to find two by fours make sure you get the driest boards you can find they're labeled they'll be labeled the kiln dried or just Kady don't get the ones labeled green those are going to be still really wet it's like working with a tree you'll know by the weight of those they're much heavier and when they dry they're gonna start to warp and change position and it just brings on a whole world of problems that you don't want to deal with you can see this board is labeled Kady kiln dried and HT for heat treated it's not a race at the Home Center don't be in a rush to just pick out any 2x4 you can't take the time to site down the edges to ones that aren't twisted or warped or bent in one direction or another get the straightest boards that you can all of the cuts for the 2x4 legs are going to be beveled at 22 and 1/2 degrees of course that's half of 45 degrees it's a very common bevel to make most circular saws will have a positive stop at 22 and 1/2 degrees and it's usually marked and all saws will have a scale of some sort if your saw it doesn't have that positive stop just try to set it as close to 22 and 1/2 degrees as you can these don't have to be exact I'll make my first cut by chopping off a little bit of the end of this board first I need to set the depth of my saw I want it to cut just slightly deeper than the thickness of the 2x4 once you've got the bevel and the depth of your saw set don't forget to wear your safety glasses and hearing protection I'm going to use my speed square to help me get a straight cut you might need to manually retract your blade guard before starting the cuts [Music] [Music] [Applause] now I can measure over the length of the legs in my case I'm going 29 and 3/8 of an inch those are the links that are in the plans but if you want your sawhorses to be a little bit higher by all means change the lengths of the legs these two notches on the circular saw give me a guide to follow along a line this one is for making 90 degrees straight cross cuts and this one is what I follow for 45 degree angles and since this is halfway between that I need to move the saw over so where it's cutting down the center of this to get an accurate cut [Applause] I can use that first piece as a measuring stick for the rest of the cut just flip it around this way and line up the two ends then I can make a mark on this side if their consistency I want to use this same board to measure each piece so I'll just mark it when you're using a speed square as a guide for your saw use this little cleat on one end and just hold it tightly against the board [Applause] [Applause] so when you get near the end of the board there probably won't be enough space for you to work like this so you need to work on the other side but I can still use my same measuring stick just flip it around and use that inside bevel now I can flip it around over this way and have plenty of room to support this off [Music] [Music] with those all cut if you want line this up and make sure that you got them all to the same length you might be a little bit off you know if you're a sixteenth or an eighth of an inch longer on some of these it doesn't really matter don't try to even them up at this point if you find out that it's a problem once they're assembled you can easily just remove a little bit off of the bottoms of the legs but really they're sawhorses you don't have to be that exact before I hinge these legs together I need to snip off a little wedge on one end of each leg so that the hinge will work properly and not interfere with the top of the sawhorse I'm gonna draw a line about an eighth of an inch that would be about three millimeters from the end of the board like that doesn't have to be exact I'm not even measuring it I'm just kind of eyeballing about how much that would be I've set the base of my saw back to a zero degree bevel and I'll just cut straight across so here's what you're looking for you've got that original bevel we made there and then this additional flat side yeah I want to show you why snipping off those ends a little bit is important for this to swing open so here's two boards where I haven't cut those little end off and if I put them down flat like this I'll just hold this hinge in different ways so that you can see how this would work the problem is is that these go beyond 90 degrees which would kind of be what a normal hinge would be used for but in this case if I hold this together and go all the way down like this the hinge sticks up a little bit above the tops again you only have to do this on one end of each leg it's gonna be a lot easier to use your pocket hole jig if you attach it to any kind of scrap piece of wood just to give it to some stability I'm using a piece of 3/4 inch plywood 2 inch and quarter screws will be plenty to hold this in place [Applause] I'll adjust this depth guide to one and a half inches that's the thickness of a 2x4 when using two and a half inch pocket screws you'll need to use that little set-up guide to adjust the collar on the drill bit once I got it set I like to have back it off a little bit more this will prevent the screw from driving all the way through the 2x4 to drill these holes I'll drop the end with the two bevels down this way so that the large bevel is going towards the back and I'll drill two holes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] after drilling all those pocket holes I realized that I only need the pocket holes on two of the legs for each of the saw forces so I've just got an extra pair on these doesn't really matter I just won't use them now to attach these hinges I'm gonna butt the two ends with those multiple bevels up together then I'll line up this knuckle of my strap hinge right down the center of that connection I'm just going to hold it in place while I drill the holes you might want to tape it down so that it doesn't move around drive a couple of inch to quarter screws into those holes I like to use these self-centering drill bits they've got a little spring-loaded part here the sinners into those holes of hinges you don't have to use one of these you could use an awl to kind of eyeball the center and get yourself a little starting point or even a nail or you could just wing it and drive the screw directly in there [Applause] [Music] having both a drill and an impact driver makes this process a lot faster this is gonna feel real loosey goosey but don't worry about it we'll put in the cross braces will help stabilize these I'll cut out two cross braces one for each sawhorse out of this 1 by 2 board [Music] now I'll use my pocket hole jig again to drill two holes on the ends of each of these braces I'll adjust this depth gauge down to 3/4 inch this time that's the thickness of the 1x2 and I've adjusted the collar on this drill bit down so that the tip almost touches the base but not quite this time I'll line up the board so I'm using these two holes that are real close together I'll attach that to one of the legs the leg that has the pocket holes in it in my case I get them all in both legs but just make sure that you do it on the side with the pocket holes in other words one of your legs should have the holes here not on this one I did them on both so you could do them on both legs it won't really matter these just that these we're not gonna use so ideally this cross brace will be tipped so that's aligned with the top of that bevel there's no real good way to clamp this and hold it in place so I'm just going to try to hold it even with that bevel as best as I can while I Drive quarter inch screws when you're using pocket screws to attach boards that are different sizes like these always use the size screw that goes into the smaller board that's usually the one that goes into the bigger board so that's why I'm using the smaller screws on this so a pretty good job there you can see the reason why I wanted that flat with the tops of these was just to get more support for the 2x4 that'll sit on the top I also want to point out that this screw caused a little bit of this 2x4 to split right there if I wanted to fix that I could just drop some glue in there and clamp this together but again it doesn't really matter because this is a sawhorse and it's still gonna be sturdy enough especially once I put the top on I'll cut two tops out of this 2x4 they can be whatever length you want I'm gonna make mine 42 inches long having a helper for this part would be very helpful but you can't do this alone you just have to grab all these legs try not to let one leg fall or it might split that top then drop it down try to Center it as best as you can [Music] you'll feel it once it starts to grab it'll hold a lot better and I'll quickly do this side before it all falls apart [Music] [Applause] I'm gonna give this a little bit of added support by drilling a screw into the center of this pasta so it's pretty sturdy just like this but I would still be careful with these front folding legs until you get that shelf installed because that's gonna give it a lot more support well good morning it looks like it's gonna be a beautiful day out I had to wrap it up a little bit early yesterday because it was starting to rain and so I pulled the sawhorses inside and I thought you know I'll just wait until tomorrow today to finish these up rather than try to rush through those and work inside of my garage and it really kind of brings home a point I wanted to make about woodworking in general and this is I think one of the most important things to always keep in mind on your woodworking journey is that it should be fun you should always keep that in mind that you're here just to enjoy the process and to build really cool things and never push yourself beyond what feels fun and comfortable just because you want to get the project done if you do that you're gonna start making mistakes you could actually lead to injuries it's best just to step back and leave the project loan and come back the next day now let's finish these things up I'm cutting out two leg braces for each of the sawhorse is using this 1 by 2 lumber [Applause] and you'll need to cut those to a custom length depending on your sawhorse they're all gonna be a little bit different the best way to do this is to just open it up as wide as it'll go and then take a measurement from the bottom of the leg and make a mark halfway up then with that Center point marked measure the distance between the edge of this leg and the edge of this leg once you have that distance and you've cut the board down you can kind of test it by imagining the pivot spot here and holding it in place and then just see how much clearance you have make sure that your boards not so long that it's gonna hit the top or hit the ground yeah I can actually use the sawhorse now I want to cut out a little rounded area on the end of each of these boards it's mostly decorative I think it just looks a little nicer without those sharp edges ideally you can just find something that has the same diameter as the width of your board this is the little vacuum attachment that goes to my pocket hole jig so I'll use that I'll use my jigsaw to cut out those curves [Applause] and if you really wanted to make it nice and that jagged-edged bothers you sand it down nice and smooth I'm using 120 grit sandpaper in my random orbit sander for this other sawhorse I could just use these as a template and trace out the pattern cut it with my jigsaw I don't even have to worry about the circular saw make sure you find the good sections of a board this board here has a knot right here and this will just fall out and become a weak spot so this will all be just waste here and so I'll make the next cuts over here and I didn't use this end because it's kind of icky too I want to measure over three quarters of an inch from the end of these cross pieces and make a mark and drill a quarter inch hole I'll drill both pairs at the same time by lining them up and well to get in place mostly you want to make sure that you're drilling straight as you can through there make sure that the drill isn't tipped one way or the other I'll drill a hole into the midpoint of these legs where I marked them before and I'll do that on all four legs I need to cut out a notch on one end of each of these boards so I'll just draw a line from the edge of that hole down like that and I'll cut it out with my jigsaw so it should be big enough that the quarter-inch bolt will drop down into looks like I need to make it a little wider that'll work I'll attach one side width of lag screw and a washer the only thing to keep in mind here is which legs those go on this side here is the attached side the side that's attached to the top so you want the side with the hinge part to go on the hinge to play I'll drag these in using my impact driver and a hex driver bit you could also use a wrench I just want to make sure you don't drive it in so tight that it won't swing that feels good this side gets the lag screw only no washer and just make sure that you don't drive it all the way in needs to stick out so that this will swing down and it went too far drop into place you'll instantly notice how much more stability that gives ease I'm using a half inch thick plywood for the shelves I'll just cut those down beside [Music] I'll use this piece of plywood to draw a straight line [Music] and I'll just screw this onto those braces I'll drill pilot holes first a [Music] little bit of a tight squeeze but you could put these in at an angle if you need to [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Steve Ramsey - Woodworking for Mere Mortals

Views: 691,155

Keywords: woodworking, woodworking project, how-to, DIY, easy woodworking, steve ramsey, WWMM, Mere Mortals, The Weekend Woodworker, woodworking plans, Free plans, wood, making, building, makers, hobby, weekend projects, Weekend Woodworker, sawhorse, limited budget, power tools

Id: q_M8wEk4D2c

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018