The "No Skill" DIY Workbench Build - Start Woodworking Series Launch (Class One)

welcome back to work here for woodworking in our first sophomore level series i'm calling this the get started woodworking course because we're actually going to get to start making messes now if you haven't seen my prerequisite course i do suggest you at least peruse that one before you come on here for the simple reason there's a lot of foundation level knowledge that you need from that course before you start butchering trees with steel weapons and nuclear powered fiber shredding devices now for those of you that are new to the channel my name is sean graham and for lack of a better term i am the educator here i specifically do not reference myself as a teacher because teaching is a two-way street and youtube is not a means of two-way communication a good teacher does more listening and understanding and drawing information out of the student then they do just regurgitating facts i have no means of checking for understanding or adjusting the curriculum to suit your needs the best you can say about this kind of material is i'm an animated textbook and i'm just the puppet host so i hope you understand that comprehension is kind of on you the student on the other side of the screen having said that i always like starting out semesters with an easy win so today let's build the biggest project we're going to do the entire semester and make you a really solid workbench something that you could use for the rest of your life if you want to in fact i'm using the one i built this the same way 20 years ago today in the shop i call it my no skills required workbench build plus it's cheap and only requires the use of three tools [Music] at the end of this video i'll kind of discuss the overall scope of this start woodworking course the required room's going to be i will tell you this right now though it's going to be very skills based with a limited set of tools i would rather you learn a new skill than have to buy a new tool and but one of the main tools you need when you start woodworking especially if you're just the average person out in their shop is a good solid workbench something that can hold work on its edge on its face on its side and when you're hammering on it moving on it pushing on it it's going to be rock solid the workbench is your biggest clamp and i really cannot see being able to make something with a subpar workbench if one's sitting there and rattling around or if you're constantly chasing it as you're planning or working or leaning into it it's no good and in fact it's somewhat dangerous so in a kind of a chicken and egg situation how do you build a workbench if you don't have a workbench well with that in mind for this build which even a slow person would be able to finish in probably a couple hours i'm gonna push my workbench out of the way and we ain't gonna use it now i haven't been some still athletic 20 30 something year old model for quite a long time so unlike a lot of other youtubers i'm not going to be working on the ground if you want to i'm sure you can find some chairs or park bench or something like that that you can actually build this workbench on i'm just going to be using some stools i happen to have around the shop in addition here are the other tools we're going to be using we are going to need something to cut you know construction lumber and plywood and just a stainless sharp tooth these are have a hardened teeth on them they'll last you a good five six years if you're using it like i do i keep one of these in the back of my truck this is a small one it's 20 inches uh would fit in a small toolbox that we might be making in the future i think they're a little under 20 bucks not a big investment you're also going to need something to drive uh screws with a simple screwdriver is nice but if you're like me and not in the fittest condition and don't want to be screwing 100 screws in by hand go get yourself a drill and fyi if you're just starting out look for the little ones with the little tails on them these are dirt cheap nowadays because everybody's wanting cordless uh i am willing to bet if you have a local woodworker or something like that and you just ask them hey i'm starting a little woodworking course an online woodworking course and the guy recommended that i get a drill do you happen to have any old corded drills that you aren't using anymore that maybe i could buy off you chances are they'll probably give them to you because most of us have one of these sitting around and strangely these are better than a lot of the cordless ones out there because they just have a lot more consistent torque and power this is the one i'll use for this build and finally you're going to need a tape measure i would include sandpaper but i don't really consider that much of a tool i mean you're going to use that anywhere cheap you find something like that maybe a clamp i haven't decided but there you go the rest of it is just going to be the materials we're putting into the bench which are three four by eight sheet goods now i'm using osb because it's just dirt cheap and i don't have much money for this project but i did invest in one piece of sanded pine plywood that's a three-quarters of an inch these are half inch thick this was about 30 bucks and these were about 10 bucks each two 4x4 uh eight foot long douglas fir fur uh post i guess you call them they were less than ten dollars i want to say they were like eight dollars each then i bought ten random species two by four stud pines not going to use them all i just picked got 10 so that i could pick and choose different parts of them no big deal so these were two three dollars each 10 so let's say 30 bucks 40 50 60 70 plus a 30 sheet of plywood we're at about a hundred bucks let's say you go to pawn shop and go ahead and grab you a quarter drill 10 15 dollars that saw for 20 dollars so about 135 dollars so far now the key to making this bench a lifetime bench is that i'm not going to glue it together it is going to be completely screwed together so that i can disassemble it resize the parts and reassemble it my first bench for fine woodworking i was working a long time before i started making furniture stuff like that was in an efficiency apartment and i didn't have a lot of skill or tools so i bit built this style of bench using a solid core door as the table top after i use that for a few years i built myself a very nice bench out of some wood they took out of the high school after a hurricane they were thrown away it was some hard maple and my dad is still using that bench i used my first bench to build the second bit but after that second bench i basically disassembled it and then reassembled it as my sharpening station in my apartment later on when i got a nice full-size work uh shop that became a tool stand for some of my power tools and right now it is in my shop in my office as a little printer stand i'm keeping stuff up so even though i spent money on it way back when 20 years ago i'm still using the components and what made it interchangeable the corner pieces i use simpsons uh stronghold strong type whatever i don't know they sell a little kit a box it consists of eight parts like this plus the screws to hold it together 20 years ago it was like 24 dollars and i remember that price because it was a stretch for me but it was so flexible because i didn't have the skills to cut joinery and stuff like that nowadays i just went on amazon you can buy the same exact kit i used 20 years ago and it's a little over it's right around forty five dollars i thought i think he has 48 after some taxes and shipping to get to me that used strictly two by fours made an incredibly strong workbench because if you bolt two by fours together well even if you stagger the screws you only have that much distance to handle the torque the advantage of these kind of situations is you're putting screws farther apart so that they don't have to deal as much force and can be a lot more solid instead of doing the two by fours this time i wanted to use these four by fours for the legs so they sell the same exact cart for a four by four post it's just it doesn't come in the kit you have to buy eight of these in a small box of screws and those added up to fifty dollars i believe a little over fifty dollars getting it to me so you paid a little bit more to use a four by four versus a foot two by four and you had to assemble the kit yourself but still it's just buying eight of these and a box of screws now my design is going to be really really simple i want the top of my bench that distance right there to be 34 inches for no other reason then that's the size of my current workbench and that's the height of my table saw so if i ever want to stretch pieces across multiple tables or tools they're all the same 34 inches is a very standard size for tables in the united states next up it's going to be two feet across this way for no other reason then cutting a four by eight sheet in half yields you two feet i'm also going to just do it six feet lengthwise because that's more than enough to have a couple students on there and plus some tools sitting on the workbench my current workbench is right around seven feet in length and just under two feet in width so this is going to be pretty much the same dimensions of the bench i'm currently using now we are building the legs out of four by fours so they're going to be fairly thick and meaty i want the front edge that i'm working on to be flush with the table top i'm going to overhang the back about two inches plus or minus two inches that's going to be where a lot of the slop for our nose skill and accuracy are going to show up and won't really matter back back there i also want to have roughly about a six inch overhang on one end and then on the other hand we'll have that two inches of slop that way i can hammer hard on one of the corners and it's going to be transferred straight to another leg but on the other side i'll also have some space to put clamps and stuff to make it easier to secure stuff and having a leg maybe eight inches on the inside to hammer in will allow us to do more stuff with like mortise and tenon jewelry and stuff like that when we're hammering on with a chisel you're never really going to be hammering in the center you're always going to be hammering over a leg so having the option of that leg being both on the edge and inside a little bit will be a nicety also years of experiences told me that i want about a foot underneath my first stretcher that will allow for easier cleanup of shavings and stuff like that plus you have a lot of things like boxes and stuff like that a lot of them are 12 inches high that you buy little plastic boxes for storing stuff so you can actually slide it on the ground underneath your workbench and that the next stretcher is going to be right underneath my table to add some thickness and strength there so you can do the math on your dimensions but i do suggest you stick to less than two feet or two feet for the width of your the depth of your table and about six inches six feet for the for the length six or seven feet that extra two feet off of that four by eight sheet we're going to use to strengthen up the stability of racking for this workbench so the first thing we're going to do is make the legs we already know they're going to be 34 inches height minus whatever thickness we have on the workbench so if we go ahead and cut them 34 inches after we assemble everything and before we put the the top down we can cut it down to that perfect height plus the fact that by having the bases right here if we don't have much skill well it is a safe assumption that when you buy the four by fours the bottom of both ends are going to be cut perfectly square so if we use those for the bottoms of our workbench we know they will sit pretty flat on the ground so all we really need to do is measure up 34 or 36 inches i'm going to do 36 from both ends the actual measurement doesn't matter that much and then cut them off at those spots if you don't cut these perfectly square trust me it's not going to matter you don't have to have developed that skill yet well it doesn't matter at all if you cut this square or not i am going to introduce a a new tool let's call it a fourth tool it's just a little speed square plastic speed square there are a couple bucks at just about any big box store and this will just allow us to draw straighter lines and maybe make them a little bit square just so we can get some practice on our sawings then just saw it down now the easiest way to start a saw is not up here but up towards the tip because you can't put that much force in it and pressure is what makes these teeth bite so if you don't want to just use your thumb as kind of a guide place it on there and that's going to control the direction this way in that way then pull it back a few times kind of nibble it until you get it started you get a nice curve and then the idea is not to use a lot of downward pressure just to move the saw back and forth and take long strokes and not have to you don't need to draw a big sweat or anything like that all you want to do is make long smooth strokes and let the saw do the work if you find that the board is moving on you just kind of put it up against your hip but away from it so that you can keep your shoulders at about 45 degrees and just your eyeball right on top of the cut and you just take it nice and slow and easy we're in no rush we're going to change this project in a couple hours anyway so it's not that big repeat that three times and you'll be done with the legs so next up we're going to put the corner brackets on these legs right here and if you remember basically what it was is we have a spot right here where the 4x4 is gonna go and the two by fours are going to rest in these channels can you see that okay so the idea originally was that we're going to take the bottom of this leg right here and we want to come up at least 12 inches so that we can slide boxes and stuff underneath so i'm just going to slide this on be careful with splinters especially with douglas fir and this is unprocessed wood so we haven't sand it so there's going to be splinters everywhere so i'm just going to slide this down remember this came with the board this is the cut in so this is the one we know is going to be square so i'm making that the foot slide it up then come over grab your tape measure and at least 12 inches but i want you to notice i'm not going to be too precious about this and right there somewhere around 12 and a half so once i got that i'm going to take a pencil and on one of the flats that's where i'm going to make the mark make it pretty deep okay then i'm going to slide this all the way up to the top now if we remember we want our workbench to be 34 inches high i'm going to be using two three quarter inch exactly a little bit less because it is a cheap stuff uh plywood so that two layers of that one equals an inch and a half so 34 minus an inch and a half is 32 and a half so i want to come down and measure 32 and a half inches off the ground onto my leg once again notice i'm not being overly precious about that measurement i'm probably within a 16th of that right there the problem we have is that uh the two by fours actually sit proud of these mechanisms when you drop them in there you rest them down they are a little bit proud so i cut off a little piece of one of those two by fours i'm going to drop it in there and then i'm going to raise this up until that one leg down is even with that 32 and a half inches so that right there will be where the table top rest add an inch and a half to that there's my 34 i'm then going to make a line so what do i end up with a board with one line for the top of that and another line underneath it this now becomes my master i'm just going to darken up these lines for us here is the foot of the leg the factory cut one there's the edge we cut so from here on out all i need to do just grab another one of the legs make sure that they're flush on bottom right here and then transfer that line over [Music] so now they will all be identical and i also like to transfer it around just makes things a little bit easier if you want to make it make the braces level then it's just going to be a simple matter of lining up whatever part you marked off remember i kind of marked the base of it so i'm going to make sure that those are lined up here get the right screws i'm just using the simpson ones because it comes that's what they sold with the kit so i bought the same box when i was buying the individual parts and what makes them nice is that they're actually designed to go into this galvanized steel so they can be left outdoors pretty well they got a nice wide flat head on them and i just found that they work pretty well i've taken these in and out of all the benches i've never bought a new box for that old bench i built so one box will handle pretty much one table it's a hundred screws now the key thing is you do not want to put any screws on the inside we're just going to screw the outside for right now so chuck up a phillips bit number two i believe have at it as much as you can you won't get any gap on this outside corner right here let's see if i can zoom in a little bit more see that gap right there so what i would do is i'll take that screw i'm not going to put it in the center i'm going to put it on the outside that way as it goes down it's going to squeeze it that way a little bit so come in just screw it down [Music] [Applause] do the same thing to the other side see i'm this time i'm putting it on the bottom so it'll drag it in that way a little bit there we go so just fill up all the holes and then move on now remember on the top one we mark the top of the leg not the bottom of it you also want to make sure you get the stretchers coming out going the right way that would be wrong and you would soon recognize that when you started trying to put the table together lookie there begin to look like a table isn't it now we want to work on the long and short stretchers the long ones going the length of it the short ones going the width of it i'm going to start on the short ones and do them as the example and let y'all extrapolate what you're going to do with the long ones for your dimensions now a 4x4 is actually three and a half by three and a half after they dimension it all up there's a long story why they do that in america but it's three and a half by three and a half so if i have one of those here and one of those here that's seven inches okay two feet is 24 inches and i'm taking off plus or minus two inches so add two here that's 9 24 minus 9 we are looking at 15 inches to add up to the total that we want so this stretcher right here needs to be 15 inches so i need to cut four of those now i am going to show you a trick to compensate for the fact that we don't quite have the skill yet to precisely split a knife line i mean i'm working with markers markers are you know a good eighth of an inch wide so in order to compensate for that and to get something that's pretty close to perfectly square even though we might have our boards ever so slightly differently there is a trick but before that we do that one we need to decide what boards we want to use i will tell you for the short stretchers you pick your worst boards the ones that over eight feet might have a curve or a bow because when you only cut out 15 inches of that one it ends up being pretty straight but this six foot long board we want our best boards there the absolute straightest ones so go through your whatever pile of 2x4 you picked get the absolute two best ones and they are going to go up top the two the third and fourth ones are going to go down here and the rest you can use for the stretchers going across so real quickly i'm going to grab a 2x4 once again i'm going to trust that one end of it is fairly square from the factory come over measure off 15 inches now remember we have about two inches of play room so if you're an eighth of an inch off or something like that don't sweat it so i got my line i'm going to mark it straight across i like to have a mark going down but for this level of accuracy not really that big a deal grab your saw use your thumb and our as we practice we want to practice taking the line i want to saw that line off as best i can without removing any of the wood that's not inked so just come back drag it to start it out create a curve as little pressure as possible going down all you're trying to do is move the saw back and forth follow that line i find it easier to just focus on this line right here so you're going to see me straighten it out and then ride it back up [Music] and once you've got it going across the established just now from here on out what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring that over and i'm going to rotate this one on top so that way it's going to mirror itself picking this picking this corner right here because i know i started it right on that line you can still see that line right there that's going to make be wherever i start over here so i make my mark line there and then grab this right here to finish up the line that's going to give me the most accurate measurement because if this became an angle at least i knew i started at the right spot so if i move this over and i'm flushing up this side and measuring it over here these two are going to be identical so this now becomes my master and that's the edge i want to measure off of or if you trust your measuring skills just measure 15 inches off each time no big deal remember if you're you know an 8 16 off it's not going to make that big a difference i just do this one because i assume my measurements were off in air but if all four pieces are exactly the same error it won't matter if you have one that's a half inch one-way one that's it it gets harder to deal with those errors [Applause] now that we've got the short sides decide which which of these are going to be the short side i don't really think it matters too much and then you can just drop them in now whenever you screw these in do not screw the insides just screw the outsides first until we get the entire table assembled and then we'll use a the inside to cinch it square but as you can see it's going to be pretty good if you do have a clamp though using a clamp while you're screw screwing down will make your life a little bit easier but i'm not going to use one [Applause] that's the last screw for me on the outside so now just kind of check it make sure it's somewhat square if it's a little bit out you can kind of bang on the opposite corners when i say by square just measure from corner to corner and it's going to be pretty close don't stress about it if i could show you you know i got gaps on some of these corners and not again it's just a workbench it's your very first workbench you're gonna beat it up and later on you're gonna repurpose it but it's going to be sturdy strong not rack all that other kind of stuff that on all the store-bought workbenches everybody curses about you're building something that's going to be rock solid so now just put in all the screws on the inside and then we'll brace it up even farther and when you get the last screw in go ahead pick up one to side wiggle it around feel no rack in here but let's make it even better now next up i want to add some sub structure for the table top so that if you're pressing in the middle i mean we are sheet goods we don't want a lot of flex in it we want to be as secure as the frame is so to speak so the easiest way i know to do that one is just simply screw in some two by fours in between them but we've got to make sure that they are dead flush here we can't have any variation along that top otherwise we're going to have to grab another get another tool to plane it down and obviously we only have the three or four tools plus a few clamps now i brought the clamps out here because that's the way i'm going to do it but if you don't have clamps yet i'm first going to show you how to do it without clamps the first thing you want to do is go ahead and grab a board right like this make sure it is as flat as absolutely possible now having some having a pair of clamps would make this a lot easier for holding this in here but if you don't have it don't stress about it uh it is something that you're going to want to get in this course just some clamps to do stuff but if you can just grab a screw and screw it in from underneath that'll hold it for this time uh fyi i'm gonna be switching to a little impact driver i have for no other reason than uh the screws i'm now using use a torx bit and i only have the short kind of bits and this one works with that one it doesn't really work very well with the other drill i have it it likes a longer bit so i'm just switching that one because i don't have the right fit the key thing is you want to make sure it's up tight so that when we put our board here to rest on it we know it will be dead even on top now at this point in time you've cut over a dozen boards from the four by fours to the two by fours and you started out cutting the four by fours which were much harder i did that on purpose because i wanted you to get a feel for that motion of just letting it glide through there is basically four times you got to practice cutting it two by four which i almost guarantee the last two by four you cut went like a breeze so at this point in time i want you to focus a little bit more on getting nice straight cuts on the lines you put with that little square because they are going to be we don't want these to twist as we screw them down to the boards we also kind of want to uh take away any both that might didn't be in here you know a curving like that so the first thing we want to do is get one measurement that's going to be consistent for every single board you put in here what we don't want to do is take this measurement and cut it perfectly because this right here is 19 and a quarter this right here is 19 so there's a quarter of a difference of flex in these boards in the middle on my setup it's going to be probably different for you what we want is a good consistent number and this number on this side and this number on that side are identical so i basically want to make them all this length so that it will squeeze this this and this to be parallel so mark your distance very very carefully make sure you get a nice square line hopefully this little plastic thing of yours is square they aren't always they can be like a half a degree off but for this purposes it's okay and we are using a pencil line here which is fairly thick so it gives you a lot of room but when you're sawing this time i want you to take your time i don't want you to rush it wait the end with your knee bring your thumb up and i want you to focus this time on leaving the line but not any white on the other side so that if you do it perfectly you will still be able to see the lead so draw it back if you don't get started perfectly that's fine you can adjust it one way or the other it's entirely up to you roll it back a few times and then very easily saw through it nice long strokes use your breath to blow away the sawdust and just follow that line as best you can now if it isn't perfect don't worry about it this is just the workbench it's not going to be your last workbench but it is going to be a great workbench take your time saw to the line smooth even strokes if you did it okay not perfect but a little bit of lead is still there and just like last time i'm going to use this as a master because i don't want to do all that measuring again bump up the end as best i can and then just mark it across that way all of them will be the same and if i can get two out of one of the scrap pieces i'll do it just make sure you mark away the waist side of that line so you don't saw on the other side once you got either the clamp or the screw with that base it's just a simple matter of kind of lining up the center of the cross piece right on those lines for you dropping it down checking that's going to be dead flush and then putting a couple screws into it and when you do this definitely sink these do not leave them flush i want you to sink them because if you don't if you ever clamp anything to this it could like leave a little circular dent in them we want it below the surface so there's no chance of that look at that pretty solid and stiff you feel unaccomplished yet well you should be because there are woodworkers out there that haven't built anything as rigid as this in their career and the workbenches they have just frustrate them out because they rack on them this thing ain't moving and we aren't even done yet next up we just need to flush up these uh leg posts with this top rail and here's a trick to do that by leaving these long and flushing them up after the fact you in effect have made a jig to hold your saw to do the sawing just lay it on top and have at it do that four times and your legs will be perfectly parallel with your sides at this point in time you go on grab a scrap piece of plywood and a piece of sandpaper just kind of wrap it around and go ahead and hit anything that you want sand on your frame so far now we're going to move on to making the top and i need to warn you don't be stupid like me don't buy your sheet goods like this buy them like this you see most big box stores will cut sheets down for you i believe you get one cup per sheet for free so we bought three sheets and we're only going to ask for two cuts just cut you know i wanted a six foot table top these are eight foot so i asked i stacked two sheets up and i asked them to cut two feet across the top there's one cut then they laid them on the side and i asked them to split it in half so i get two feet on either side so i end up with four two foot by six foot sections they're top off cuts and one big sheet left over we're almost done now i'm going to laminate these two plywood pieces for my top as i mentioned earlier before and i'm going to use one of the osb pieces as a shelf on bottom which gives me these two pieces that i can use to reinforce the entire structure even stiffer but whenever you're doing getting the big box store to cut it down sometimes you know they have very old blades and those cutters and sometimes the guy doing it is a complete idiot so give yourself some room you know we had two inches on one side six inches on the other so if he he got the total length a little bit off it's not going to be that big a deal if he didn't cut it dead perfect in half we have some about two inches out there so hopefully he's not going to get too far off but you can somewhat measure and check it for him if you want with a pencil but the thing is more than likely the cut they do on their machine is going to be straighter or cleaner than the cut that came from the factory you just decide which is cleaner and that's going to be the face on the good side of your bench the ones that's going to be flush up so the first thing we need to do is decide what side of our bench we want to do most of our work on make that the better side then on that front side either clamp or screw some 2x4 scraps so that they will be flush up you know give you something to bump that plywood tabletop up against do a quick test fit with one of the boards remember on one side you're you only have i'm only doing a small you know two inch overhang the rest is going to be on the other side so get it somewhat lined up the way you like it and then come over here and make sure that this side is spinning flush this will tell you just in case the guys at the store maybe cut a curve or something like that since we have an overhang on back that curve can be on the outside you can use a factory edge on the front if you need to after that grab some blue and i'm going to be putting glue on all the long grain sections but not here we have maybe four dollars in two by fours all the way across this top so i view these as sacrificial so if i ever rebuild this using the hardware the expensive hardware i like to be able to use a leg so i'm not going to glue the legs to the top but if i were to ever unscrew it and remove the top you know these will come with it and i can just make more of these so the glue will just solidify everything [Applause] then screw the top down starting with this front section it's really really important that that side two by four and the the plywood are flush that's what we gotta lock in now i want you to notice two things the wood screws i am using they have a smooth shank that is almost exactly the size of my plywood so that way it's not going to grip the plywood except for the head and these will cinch it down they'll actually pull this down so if there's any wave neediness in the tabletop it's not going to match my substructure also i'm going to be driving them down so that they are recessed underneath the level of my top so now you can see a little bit glue squeeze out just perfect but it's nice and flush that's a key port now to anchor it into these center beams basically i just found the screw holes on either side right there drew a line and then connected them and i knew i would be hitting that thing that you could hear nice and solid but we can't have any schmutz from where any fibers that came out so go ahead and sand all your screw holes nice and smooth so that the other piece of plywood will have a nice place to anchor down into next i'm going to put a bead of glue about an inch from the edge all the way around then on the interior i just dump it don't be bashful with the glue glue's cheap give it a good spreading this doesn't have to be perfect you're just getting okay so it's not going to goop up anywhere more than enough heat adhesion for what we're doing it's just a matter of repeating what you did earlier bopping it down now if you are concerned with the cosmetics of the top of your bench do the same screwing that i did earlier but screw it from underneath and then remove those screws after the glue is set we're just using the screw screws as clamps if you kind of trust that this is very flat you can buy get a bunch of weights and just wait on the front and the glue will set there me i'm not concerned with the top in fact because i don't want y'all to have to spend a lot of money on clamps and stuff like that we're going to be screwing into this this to me is disposable if you keep this workbench for your entire life and you have to replace the top every five ten years well that piece of plywood was 30 bucks and again maybe 10 bucks worth of uh two by fours unscrew it all throw this white put a new one on that seems like a reasonable trade for not having to buy hundreds of clams so i'm just gonna put a bunch of screws through the top and then i'm gonna remove them so that i don't have any metal in this top other than along those lines for future work walk around make sure you don't have any gaps and after that we can use this bench to make the shelf go underneath so we've got the back side side of our workbench so i'm going to take that off cut from the top of that 4x8 sheet i'm just going to drop it up on lift it up here secure it underneath and then take a pencil and draw a line right where that two by four is i'm also going to measure between these two two by fours so that is 30 so i'm going to go 32 inches so 32 inches from each side grab a straight edge mark a line remove it ever so slightly off the edge one clamp here one clamp there grab your saw and have at it [Music] break your edges clamp it up make sure it's very tight along the top for added strength and then just screw it on we are not gluing this because i want to be able to remove this at some point in time when i build a new bench but whenever you are screwing these in don't just put the screws in a row uh kind of zigzag them so that you'll get maximum strength do that for the top and bottom [Applause] [Music] so my shelf needs to be 63 inches long and remember we cut the top off at the uh the big box store or you had it cut off so that's going to be a clean edge and on osb the edges are always crappy and they split it so that's going to be a clean edge so i'm just going to take off the yucky edge on this side draw a line it's slightly off the edge clamp it down saw a line you're going to hear a recurring theme when you work at a workbench [Music] now the interior if you remember we made this smaller than 24 inches so we could have that overhang so i'm just going to measure right now right at 22 inches so i just need to do the same exact thing come from the edge mark out 22 inches clamp it down solder the line now the big thing with working at a workbench is just a big huge clamp and if you don't have a lot of fancy clamps the reason one reason why i like having a disposable top is well i know i'm going to cut this corner out to fit around the leg i'm just going to screw it down to my workbench that's the cheapest clamp i can think of and grab your saw and get to work and saw on that line [Music] [Music] uh [Music] time [Music] [Music] voila break those edges because osb is sharp and splintering when you're done just take the screw out all that's left is a tiny hole no big deal now obviously the edge i cut with a hand saw is not going to be as smooth as the one cut by the machine or from the factory so we'll just put that in the back so we got to fix if we still had the legs and to mark out the easiest way i do that no to do that one is just to grab one of the off cuts when we did over to level out the top and by holding my pencil flat like this i'm going to get that a little bit over from the side so i'm going to make it a little bit bigger than there actually is and once again as you will hear time and time again from a hand to a woodworker first you mark the line then you saw the line so i've marked it move it slightly over the edge of my workbench clamp it down saw it off ah okay maybe i'm just stupid but i can't figure out how to fit this thing in here so i'm just going to split it in half along one of these two by fours i've got as a support it'll make it a lot easier well lookie there 34 being such a common uh dimension and tables that's what height the back of this chair is just enough for me to get it slightly offside my bench and solder the line [Music] wow now they fit and you do want to screw these down because they will enhance the stability of the entire bench well look you look at what i ended up with nice solid workbench not too big not too heavy pretty good definitely doesn't rack we've proven that before but let's see does it meet other requirements we have of like my old workbench can i cross cut on it well a couple bench hooks cross-cut saw something to saw sure can i lean into it sure i mean my 300-pound butt is pushing hard how about can we cut upright like cutting dovetails well because i have this flush now i can always just come over here i'm just using a normal bar clamp clamp it to the workbench close to its edge that might be cumbersome to put two of them on there so if i know i'm doing a lot of dovetailing there's a reason why everyone likes twin screws so much and i now have a nice little twin screw i can always also put that moxen vise that i'm always using on my old workbench right on the end just as i do right with it and i could even screw that down and just leave it permanently on but this will work i can work all day all along like that swap out a board loosen it up go grab another if i need to do something like playing a long board well once again because we have a flush front use the same twin screw as a crochet or i can actually install crochet permanent right here and then just put a clamp on this side for this board to rest on and what do i have an easy way to plane stuff and heaven forbid you just screw one of those to your workbench and have a permanent crochet or bird's mouth right in the corner to playing into in fact young y'all watch my channel you know me i'm never going to do this kind of setup all right generally put up a dog hole right up front and just push into it you know a little bit of experience and you don't have to worry about it slopping around so how can you do that just clap aboard going straight across reach over grab your hand plane bump it up and plane away oops it's going against grain but right here we might find one error with this workbench when i start putting all my weight and effort into going one direction can you see it every stroke it moves maybe a couple millimeters i'm walking across my shoulder floor granted i could always put some rubber floor mats underneath the legs that's how i took care of it with my uh my big bench because that's made out of poplar and it's not that much heavier than this thing right here but there's a much more permanent solution to having your workbench creep on you as you're planning or pushing against it have you all forgotten about that third sheep good that less than 10 dollar osb board hmm [Music] um by connecting the workbench to a platform that i am now part of this thing can't walk away from me if it wants to move away from me it has to take me with it my body weight is actually part of the equation now and it makes this kind of sense so much more stable this is a very time honored way of making lightweight workbenches not walk it's physics now granted i probably would not leave that platform there for my personal use for the rest of the series for the simple reason i'm doing a lot of other stuff in the shop i'm going to need to you know move the workbench around to get out of the way for that kind of stuff so to solve that problem i'm probably going to do the same exact thing i did to my main workbench is go buy a rubber door mat and then cut out the little squares and glue them bottom of the legs that little extra traction seems to be all i really need to make these things not walk and if it walks a little bit it happens well i hope you recognize what we have accomplished here we now have a workbench that a lot of professional woodworkers would be envious of compared to what they started out with and what all the hiccups they had with it workbenches the ones you buy even for you know four or five six hundred dollars they aren't going to be as solid as something we built for a little over a hundred bucks if you take away the tools add in the tools and you're probably right around two hundred dollars two hundred dollars plus the tools you know we used a little twenty dollar twenty inch saw uh i started out using the that drill but because of the bit i ended up with this one but you can find drills like this all over the place buying used new borrow them whatever tape measure i added in a square and i started using clamps but i did give you an alternative that you could use screws with them so the clamps aren't necessary and a little sandpaper very limited amount of tools and look at what you cut you could accomplish now i call this the no skill workbench but by the time we finished it you have a lot of experience sawing i'm willing to bet you're capable of sawing a straight line just like i did for the entire six foot length you know how awesome that is and that's kind of where we will be going in this get started woodworking series this right here is the foundation this is where we will be working this is something you can build in a garage put it against the wall and still have plenty of room for your car we will be focusing on hand tools something you could be storing up underneath the bench in fact my idea is using the set of tools that i had when i started fine woodworking in the corner of an apartment on that kind of bench that i showed you earlier not too many a few chisels a few saws maybe one carcass saw a block plane maybe a jack plane very rudimentary amount of tools that you do not have to spend a lot of money on this really is going to be a skills based series not a tool acquisition based series but it's not going to be all hand tools i am we'll probably use drills so it'll probably be egg beaters also but there's one power tool that i've always told people that i don't want to work woodwork without and a lot of people don't believe that you could base an entire workshop around just this one power tool a small 10 inch bandsaw a bandsaw opens up so much opportunity for a new woodworker and it takes away quite a bit of the stress and the time it takes to develop a skill you can work on your hand soldering skills and still use the band saw plus it opens up material options we can buy rough wood we can use wood from trees there's a lot of different opportunities that a bandsaw opens up that other power tools don't in fact most other power tools in my mind are more built for repetitive work production work where the bandsaw by the nature of how it works is as close to a hand tool as i can think of and we will talk a lot more about the band song and one of the most fundamental tools in all of woodworking in the second episode of the series well i hope you're excited as i am about this series this is something i've wanted to do for quite a long time a very small set of tools to teach skills and bring in a lot of academia into this into the learning environment so that you can understand why we do things a certain way there is an explanation it's not just this is the way it's always been done and my real hope is that a lot of y'all the audience will use the lessons you find i do this workbench build i would love for you to do it with somebody else to teach somebody else to use this as the fuse to light a whole new hobby or a teaching avenue i know a lot of you are stuck at home nowadays and are looking for lessons you can teach your teens and older kids hey start with them at the same skill level and progress with us as we go through this get started woodworking series and please understand series like this made by me and many other people other we all kind of do this for on a value for value proposition this is the kind of stuff that takes money and time i mean this is not a workbench that i needed or really wanted but i kind of have to have it in order to teach the series after the series is gone i will probably give it to a local school or something like that but it's capital i had to invest it's time i had to invest so if you're getting good value out of this or maybe you understand that other people will maybe consider helping us out a little bit and looking down the description to see all the ways you can patronize the channel but the last thing i want you to remember is that it is always worth the effort to learn create and share with others y'all be safe and have fun you

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 111,833

Rating: 4.9020362 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, workbench, start woodworking, beginner, lesson, skill, diy, craft, shop, build, plan, hand tool, limited tool, start, woodworking, garage, cheap, inexpensive, school, course, series, sjobergs, roubo, slab, moxon, benchcrafted

Id: Kz0hCakh800

Length: 64min 1sec (3841 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020