Table Saw Workbench

hi i'm anthony and this is bob barker and today we're going to show you how to make this table saw workbench let's get started [Music] so this is the setup that i was using for my table saw in a portable workbench and it's time to fix that problem so after getting my plants drawn up i got a stack of four by fours and two by fours and now i'm ready to cut them down to size and my miter station isn't ideal either so i need to use shims and blocks to get it nice and level uh and make it easier to cut the lumber down to the proper length i would always say that it's super important to wear your eye and ear protection because chopping down this much wood always kind of puts a strain on both since i don't have a stop block to give me good repeatable cuts i got to do a little extra finessing there to get my cuts accurate and repeatable pro tip the dust collection system works a lot better if you turn the vacuum on and of course don't be shy about rechecking your cut list to make sure you're not wasting wood by cutting it down to the wrong size now we got all the two by fours to cut down the size it's time to get to the four by fours and my miter saw is only a 10 inch blade but if you put a little shim on the back of it it actually will cut through the whole thing in just one cut and the guy you see there is my friend howie who wanted to come and help out alright so that gets all the wood chopped up i really need to make a miter station moving on with all our lumber cut down to size now it's time to get some dadoes and rabbits in there so here we're setting up the table saw we're going to be putting on my dado stack for this you got to remove the riving knife and then you have to have a different insert because the blade is much thicker than your standard blade now this isn't mandatory to be able to do this project but since i have this i might as well use it for this project we're still using the stock miter gauge which is sub-optimal because it's got a lot of play in it that's something that we will address and fix in a future video here we're setting the blade height now we're not going to be cutting the full dados and rabbits in one pass because it's a little bit too much it's going to really strain my my saw so we're going to do this in a couple cuts and of course using a dado stack is not the only way to get these kind of cuts you can use a circular saw and just set the depth on it and just do multiple passes and you can clean it up with a chisel and also if you're going to use a table saw you can just have a single blade and you just have to do a whole bunch more cuts and still also you can clean it up with a with a chisel and you'll still get the exact same type of cuts using the dado stack it just makes it a little bit faster here you can see how we're doing the second pass which is getting it down to the right depth for these cuts with all the dados and rabbits cut into the four by fours we did a dry fit here and now we're getting ready to glue and screw all the frame together like always clamps are your friend they will really help when you're doing this kind of stuff and throughout the process i'm always checking to make sure that everything is square before i fully screw it into place we're pre-drilling the holes here make sure the wood doesn't split before we put the bigger screws into the studs and there goes bob barker the shop mascot and he is our chief morale officer always there to give us a smile and here we're adding the 2x4 supports since this is a workbench we're not too worried about having some exposed screws so we're just going to be screwing these straight in being careful to keep that top level that way the plywood will sit nice and flush on it so here i did make a bit of a mistake initially my plan was just to screw the the plywood uh straight into the two by fours here but once i saw it sitting on there it looked a little too nice so i ended up deciding to use pocket holes to keep it in place which would have been really nice if before i screwed all this in place if i would have did the pocket holes these legs here are the ones that are marking the back end of where the table saw is going to sit inside the workbench that finishes up the bottom of the frame so now we're moving on to the top frame and again always check to make sure everything is square after this we move on to cutting the top now i don't have a track saw so i have to make do here with just a large leveler clamped down and i use that as an edge to run my circular saw to make the cut what is here is that you can see my measurements were not right so i woke up in the middle of night and realized it was something was off so i came in and cut a little strip here to fix that part and it works out kind of decent because the part that was uneven is going to be underneath a drawer on the edge so you're never even going to see it and honestly i didn't even have to do this but it just would have bothered me if i didn't some edge clamps would have been really nice here but i don't happen to have any of those at this time so painters tape works out really nice i just put a whole bunch of painter's tape across this strip here and it bonded really well and once it was dried up and sanded back down it's really not a noticeable repair and honestly nobody's ever going to see it because like i said before it's going to be underneath the drawer anyways now we need to rip down the edge of the top and unfortunately my leveler isn't quite long enough to get me all the way there so i get a little creative here we go clamp down both the edges with the extra piece of lumber i go as far as i can safely and then we stop the cut go ahead and unclamp the level and switch it to the other side so we'll be able to continue it's really important to be extra careful uh and make sure you're as price precise as possible so you continue to get a straight cut along this edge now you can also just use the edge of another plywood sheet as your guide or like i did after this video make a guide that turns your circular saw into a track saw so keep an eye out for that video in the future with the plywood cut down to size for the bottom we can go ahead and use a jigsaw to cut out the the slots for all of the legs now this is a three-quarters piece of baltic birch and that's going to be going on the bottom part of the platform for the workbench and let's go ahead and wiggle that bad boy into place like a glove next on the list is to set up some levelers now i'm doing this because the floor in my garage is anything but level i'll be putting these on all six legs so no matter where i move this in my workshop i can just get to the bottom use an allen wrench to go ahead and adjust the the levelers and we'll get a nice level bench top for whatever my project needs are going to be now here we're putting on the casters after a quick nap and these casters since i do have limited space they're going to keep my workbench mobile so i'll be able to move it around to wherever i feel like working at the time and then once that's done i'll be able to get out of the way and i keep on coming back to this piece because that little piece of wood for some reason it just did not want to take the drill straight but it did in the end and i found it was much easier to disassemble these casters uh while i was mounting them and then go ahead and re-assemble them afterwards otherwise it just gets in the way and it just makes it super frustrating to try it believe me because i did that first once they're assembled we can go ahead and give it a try and you can see how it moves really well flip them up and it's nice and stable now this is the extra work that i was talking about earlier where it would have been really nice if i would have did these pocket holes before but no big deal i'll just go ahead and use this craig jig and put a whole bunch of pocket holes underneath there and then go ahead and screw that plywood securely into place next up on the list is securing the platform for the table saw since howard wasn't available to come help out on this day i'm using clamps to keep these in place while i screw them in and the reason why i'm assembling this on the actual table is because with this type of wood you could always get some twisting or boeing so it's easier just to not deal with measurements and just put it in place so you can butt it against the wood that it's going to be next to and then secure it that way so having learned my lesson and measuring multiple times this time we get a nice straight line on this cut for the baltic birch on the table top so my plan for the table top is to laminate two pieces of the three quarter inch baltic birch together so it's going to be about an inch and a half thick and here we're just rolling on a ton of glue and we're lining it up the best we can now if you don't have it perfect you could always just use a flush trim bit on a router to get it nice and even but here we were able to get it nice and nice and even so since we didn't have nearly enough clamps to be able to to properly laminate this surface without screws we just went ahead and put a whole bunch of screws through the bottom end so you'll never be able to see these at all and it ended up working out really well so then we went ahead and flipped it right side up and placed it back down into its place on the surface and measured carefully to make sure it has a proper overhang on each side and then after that we went ahead and secured it with a bunch of pocket hole screws from underneath the next step is the trim so i'm using a 45 degree cut on the miter saw to get some good miter joints on the top of this surface now i've found that it's easier just to do one miter cut set it on the edge like this and then run it the length and you can mark the other edge where the cut needs to be i tend to get much more precise joints this way as opposed to just measuring out the length after we have them cut we can go ahead and glue them up and since again i am working by myself here i have those clamps there that way i can kind of roughly hold them in place before i use the brad nailer to fully secure them now as you're doing this it's important to account for that often this type of lumber is not straight so there can be subtle bows in it so if it is bowing you want it to go over the top that way you can stand it back down flush because you can't really do that if it's going underneath the surface of the plywood and if your miter joints have a little bit of a gap you can just use like a metal edge from a screwdriver to kind of roll them together so before we secure the table saw we got to make sure we cut out these notches so this fence can slide now this one i did with my circular saw which is making multiple passes down to the right depth then chiseling out but unfortunately that didn't work on this side because my circular saw didn't have enough room it was hitting the table top so i had to get break out the hand saw and make those same cuts down to depth and then after that grab the chisel and clean it all up and for this width of a bench you do need to cut out the notches on both sides because even though the fence mainly goes out to the right once you get it back down against the blade it does stick out on the left side for a few inches so you'll limit its ability to do some of the narrow cuts if you don't do that after that was done i went ahead and filled in the brad holes and some of the small gaps with some wood filler this is not absolutely necessary given that it's a workbench but i figure might as well make it as nice as possible after the wood filler dried i went ahead and sanded down the extra chunks now this one i'm just doing a rough sanding smoothing out the wood filler over the bread nails and going over the top to smooth out to the little gaps i feel as well as taking down any of the trim that sticks over the surface of the plywood so that in the end will give you a nice flat surface with a good tight joint as you can see here here i'm checking to make sure that these little end pieces are nice straight and level and after that we'll go ahead and secure them with some pocket holes on both sides and after that we add this little wedge here for some extra support on the outside part now it's time to screw the platform into place now i'm checking to make sure that it's just proud of the surface of the tabletop that way when you're running this the wood across it it goes nice and smooth and doesn't catch with that in place we actually get to use the table saw so here we're cutting down for the drawer box and the surround around it and here you can see i'm using a piece of the half inch plywood as a spacer to set the fence a half inch from the dado stack and we ran all four pieces of the drawer around it so that gives a nice groove that the bottom will slide into once we fully assemble the drawer here we're putting together all this around for where the drawer is going to go underneath the table saw so we get all those pieces in place and put the bottom mount sliders in and of course you got to notch out the back for the slider but pro tip you might want to notch the right piece of wood because i sure didn't the first time around after that you go ahead and glue them up and then we brad nailed them together i did go later on and put some screws in there just because i'm a little crazy like that at times then we slide in the bottom and attach the top and the drawer is done and here i'm just going ahead and banging the drawer against the back of the sliders and that puts a little indent where there's a little protruding notch that's going to hold it in place and that puts a little dent in the wood that you can see here where we drilled out the holes and that'll keep it right where it needs to be then after that we just go ahead and put in the the bottom hardware and once you screw those into place you just slide it in and you can give it a nice test closes nice and smooth [Music] next up on the list is to make the drawer face i just used a spare piece of the three-quarter inch baltic birch that i had and i used as a spacer to set the fence to cut this one and a half inch piece of popular that i had and once that's done it's going to cut it pretty much in half and then you can use that as a trim around that baltic birch and just like we did with the other trim we're going to go ahead and glue this up then we'll go ahead and clamp it and we'll use the the brad nailer to secure it in place while that glue dries afterwards we'll come through with some wood filler and a sander and kind of get it all nice and smooth and then after measuring the center i go ahead and drill out the holes for the drawer pull and we did a quick test fit here before we attach it to the drawer itself now i used a spare piece of straight wood underneath that way i can set it at the right height and then i just drilled straight through those holes we made for the drawer pull to temporarily secure it onto the drawer then after that you can go ahead and secure it from the inside then you'll take out those other two screws and through that you can put the drawer pull back into place now i'm on to one final sanding just to make sure that all my edges are nice and smooth of course you have to be really careful not to get too overzealous with your sanding because you don't want to go through that veneer of the plywood one last touch as we went ahead and put some stops here for the feet of the table saw now my original idea was i was going to put some holes that way i can just bolt it straight into place and the table saw would never move however the latch to detach my riving knife is on the side and the tabletop gets in the way so to do that i have to have it mobile then i had to wait a little bit of time until i got my new router and then with that i put in these slots that are extensions for the miter slots to use with the crosscut sled on the table saw so we just lined up the slots using this straight edge and ran the router using a three-quarter inch straight bit and there is the finished table overall was a really fun project to build and i'm pretty pleased with how it came out and i know it's going to be of great use for my future projects and right now i don't have any finishing on the surface but i may decide to do that later depending on how much i spill on there but after all it is just a workbench so thanks for watching our video i hope it was really helpful for you guys and we will have some detailed plans available in case you are interested in making this particular bench we'll see you guys around for the next project stay tuned

Channel: Wood Pack DIY

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Keywords: build plans, diy workbench, how to build a workbench, table saw, table saw workbench with dust collection, woodworking, workbench, workbench build, how to, diy, woodworking project, woodworking plans, how to build a workbench for garage, build workbench garage, garage workbench ideas, garage workshop organization, garage workbench build, woodworking projects, woodworking bench, ultimate workbench, mobile workbench, table saw outfeed table, table saw workbench, workbench ideas

Id: DlwxgbX5d6c

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021