Today, we're gonna make a heavy duty
workbench. Cost less than a hundred bucks, and it's made completely
out of two by fours, and we're gonna do it off the grid.
Today's video is sponsored by ecoflow. This project takes 14 two by
fours, which is just under $90. First thing I need to do is cut my four
32 inch legs out of four different 2x4 to maximize my yield. So now we're cutting the four cross
reports out of two different two by fours. We're working out of
the back of the truck. We're in the middle of the park
today, so I don't have stops. So I'm gonna try to cut right on the line. And this one is 37 and a half inches long. This is one of those projects where you
could cut every single piece at the very beginning before assembling. And
that would save you a ton of time. I'm going to cut as I go, just
to help explain what I'm doing. I have my legs here and they're
basically gonna get doubled up. We've got the long support.
That's gonna go up here. We've got another long support.
That's gonna go down here. And then we got these two front pieces
that are going to go in here like this. And then after we get
that glued and nailed, we'll cut two more pieces down here. And then we will repeat for
the other side of the bench, I'm gonna take the top cross
support and glue it into place. So then I'm gonna use a two inch brad
nail to nail it into place and we won't have to wait for glue to dry and
we can move on to the next step and why not use a lot of glue? There we go. Now do the
same with the other side. So now we'll take this front leg support and we're just gonna glue
and nail it into place. And then same thing with the other side. So now we can take another cross support, go on the bottom here and glue that in the place and then secure it with a brad. So now I'm gonna cut two smaller pieces
and glue and nail them into place. All right, that is one assembly. And now we're gonna do the exact
same thing for the other side. I cut all seven bottom shelf pieces,
which is going to act as support. Now I'm gonna cut the two top supports
and I'm using the ecoflow as my stop here so I can cut two equal lengths. Cool. Now we can assemble everything.
I'm really used to working in my shop, where we have decent dust
collection, uh, cover your coffee. That was not on purpose. I'm using a piece of melamine as a flat
surface on the back of my truck here, and that's going to work as my bench. And I got these two supports right here
are gonna go inside here. Like this. I'm gonna get attached like this, and then I'm gonna glue and
screw this into place. All right, I'm gonna add a whole bunch of glue here, and I'm only gonna put one screw
in for now so I can square it up with the bottom shelf.
Then once I do that, I can put more screws in here. So now I can flip this over and I can
start putting in the bottom shelf support to square this up. Square that up and square this side up. Now I can add more screws
in to the top here. That is our base. That is nice
and sturdy. So for the bottom, I have these seven pieces for the
shelf that also doubles as the support. If you wanted it solid, you would need a table saw to rip a
couple of them to the perfect width. You can also save yourself a two by
four. If you have a sheet of plywood, you could put on there, and
that will also sturdy this up. So I'm just going to space
them out, evenly, eyeball it, and then glue and nail it down. That is the base. We didn't use any
clamps. We didn't have a work bench. You could do this in your driveway. You
could do this with the circular saw, cuz it was just nothing but cross cuts. You could use plywood or
even better MDF for the top, but I would double or triple that up
to at least an inch and a half to two inches thick. And that is gonna
give you a perfectly flat surface. And then that thickness is gonna allow
you to use dog holes for different hold down methods and joinery. I am gonna continue using two by fours
cuz this is nothing but a two by four bent 1 8, 2 by four cut in half
will be the length of this bench. So let's start cutting them down. So I have all the pieces cut for the top. I'm gonna do this in two halves so I
can run each section through the planer. If you don't have a planer,
you can do it all at one time. You're just not gonna be able to get it
perfectly flat top unless you hand plan it. Like we mentioned before, you can
also use plywood or MDF as your top. So I'm just going to take one piece.
I'm gonna add a bunch of glue. I'm gonna take another piece and then
nail those two together and I'm gonna put the nails right in the middle.
So it doesn't hit the planter. And then I'm just gonna add each piece, nail it on and just keep
doing that for each section. There's one. Now we'll do the other one. This is awesome. Somewhat
flat because we had the, the melamine base that we're
using to reference off of. But now I'm gonna run
this through the planer. This is gonna be an outdoor work bench
so we can do more projects outdoors. So I'm not super concerned
about it being perfectly flat, but I do run and run this through the
planer just to kind of even it out a little bit, just running this through the planer
is not going to make it perfectly flat because if your boards are cupped this
way and you run it through the planer, it's gonna come out. Cupped. The
planter just reduces the thickness. You would actually have to run the bottom
edge through a joiner first and then run it through the planter. But this is
an outdoor work bench for the outdoors. I'm not super concerned about
it being perfectly flat. And if I wanna get it perfectly flat, I can take a hand plane to it at a
later point. So now I'm gonna, Ugh, these are heavy. I'm just gonna
run these guys through the planer. Hopefully can handle. So I cleaned up the edges on the
miter saw. So it looks nice and clean. And now I have to glue
these two halves together. This is the only part of the entire
project where I have to use clamps, which is pretty darn cool.
This top is solid pine. So it's gonna wanna expand
and contract this way. So we have to account for that
when we attach it to the base. So before we glue this up
and attach it to the base, I wanna talk about this guy right here. This has powered the
entire projects so far. We started this at 10:00
AM. It is currently 2:15. We started with a hundred percent
power. We still have 70% left. Everything that we have used
today has been plugged into this. This is the ecoflow Delta
max portable power station. This is a big old battery and
it's got lots of plugs in there. We've been powering the plainer, the air compressor and the miter
saw since 10:00 AM this morning, it is now almost 2:30
and we are at 70%. We, we could work all day and
tomorrow without recharging this and this has solar panels, but we haven't had to use them
today because this thing is a beast. It has been powering our
portable workshop all day. I've been using the EcoFlow portable
power stations for about two years. Now. I have the smaller version of this that
I keep in my go-kart track and it powers the lights. When I run night races, it powers my air compressor and my
tools when I'm out at the races. So when they contacted me and said they
wanted to sponsor a video, I was like, I've been using your product for
years. And it's been amazing. I've been abusing that one like crazy. It's covered in oil and
grease and go-kart dirt. And it's just served me well
for the past couple years. So I was really excited when
they contacted me and said
they wanted to sponsor a video. On the front here. We have a nice display that says how
many hours and percentage of battery we have left. And then down here we have four
USB-A ports and then two USB C ports. So you can charge your
devices on the, go on the back. We have six outlets. This
is where you charge it. I will have a link to this
down in the description. I really cannot recommend this enough. The solar panels are gonna come in really
handy when we go camping and we're off the grid for a couple days. Thank you,
eco flow for sponsoring today's video. Now let's get back to this top and uh, glue it together and attach it
to the work bench. I love this. I really do love this
thing. This is awesome. Getting ready to glue
this up out of 14 pieces. This is all the scrap that I have. So
very efficient use out of 14 pieces. So now cool. I'm just let that sit and dry for
a little bit before we attach it, I have these expansion brackets here
that I'm gonna use to attach the top. They are slotted along here, so the top can move and
expand and contract this way. And so if it didn't have that, eventually
it would bind and something would, something would have to give. So I'm
just going to screw these in here. I'm gonna put one here, one
here, one here, and one here. I'm just taping them into
place to free up a hand. And then I'll just screw through
that tape. Uh, makes life easier. Sand in the place where you live. I've robbed the vice from my other bench
because I got a brand new Andrew Klein vice for that one. And so this one has a new home. I'm going to apply a Marine varnish
on here because this is an outdoor work bench for me to do outdoor projects.
