The Ultimate Functional Workbench

for the past forever i've pretty much built everything on the floor of a garage floor with a workshop floor of wherever however those days are over i'm finally building a workbench this thing will be the size of a full 4x8 sheet of plywood but have a cut out so i can be surrounded by work surface it'll be jam-packed with functionality so much that i can't even cover everything in this video i've spent a lot of time thinking of how i wanted this to work i have to consider my workflow the space i'm in how to be able to film the work i'm doing and how to make it as functional as possible i'm making this workbench heavy duty so i purchased 12 eight foot four by fours and three sheets of three quarter inch plywood and got to work i'm starting with the frame and cut the four by fours outside to keep the dust away this is just the first round of cuts i have four pieces at 28.5 inches to be the four legs two pieces at 41 inches two pieces at 48 inches and four pieces at 89 inches [Music] first i'm going to build the four foot ends of the workbench again the 28 and a half inch pieces are the legs the 48 inch piece sits right on top to give that four foot dimension then a 41 inch piece spans the bottom sitting one and three quarter inches off the ground i built two of these with identical dimensions all of the joints are connected with six inch lag screws the threads are only near the end so it really cinches the pieces together these things do a great job of self-drilling but in order to make sure the head of the screw is recessed i used a forstner bit to make a small indentation for each screw the short sides are ready so now i need to connect them with the four long pieces the indentation for the seat will be 18 inches deep so one beam will sit 18 inches from that left side i used a few variations of clamps to hold the beam in the right spot as i drove in the screws the other top piece went from corner to corner [Music] [Music] even with just a bare bone skeleton this thing was already solid and the only official way to test it is by climbing on it the bottom beams sit exactly below the top ones [Music] okay round two of four by four cuts i have two pieces at 48 inches two pieces at 30 inches well i was gonna use four but changed my mind after making the cuts two pieces at 23 and a quarter inches and two pieces at 14 and a half inches this will complete the main framework of the workbench i made two large l's with the 48 and 23 and a quarter inch pieces [Music] now i've already established that the cutout is 18 inches deep it'll also be 22 inches wide so the center most edge of the elves are at 37 inches from the short sides i drove lag screws straight down into the bottom beams [Music] you can see here that everything lines up really nicely this will give good support to the corners around the cutout but now i need to connect everything i was going to add an extra span at the bottom but it was purely cosmetic so i nixed it in favor of having more area for functional storage [Music] this cutout will function in a few different ways this will be the main place i sit to work it'll also double as a miter saw station so the cutout had to be big enough to comfortably fit the miter saw i'll revisit this in the next video about the extra features but before putting the plywood top on i added four carriage bolts recessed in the frame that will be used for holding the miter saw in place more on that later i'm not going to attach the worktop quite yet but i can use it as intended while i work on the next few things you know so i'm not building on the ground a little while ago i built two storage bin carts for a bunch of small part storage it's helped me be super organized some bins are much more frequently used than others so it'd be nice if those ones can be integrated in the workbench i figured that i have enough vertical room for seven small bins and one large bin so i put together two identical boxes one for the left side and one for the right side i use the same techniques that are explained in the video on the carts [Music] this left me with 11 and a half inches on either side for more storage things i have yet to create a functional solution for sandpaper something that is very frequently used and important to have handy for the last few years it's just been collected in a box i laid it all out and came up with a plan to store it functionally for the other side i decided to add some drawers i'm not a big fan of drawers because that's where things get lost and forgotten but some things are just best stored in drawers tailor v all this was built using high quality half inch plywood left over from the workshop walls the sandpaper storage has 10 one-inch slots for 10 different grits of sandpaper this will fit full sheets then there's a drawer on the top and bottom the bottom one will fit large things like sanding belts drywall sandpaper and stuff like that and the top one will have smaller things like cut pieces of sandpaper and sanding blocks once everything was built it was time to install all of these things attached directly to the frame and they are all recessed two inches from the outside edge to leave room for clamping things to the edge of the workbench i've decided that this left side will be primarily used to hold things for the project that i'm working on at the moment so it'll end up holding a bunch of art things paint marble machine stuff etc etc eventually i'll get or make some drawer pulls for all the drawers on the workbench this right side will be more tool and small part oriented so it'll have drill bits screws nails blades bolts stuff like that once the sandpaper thing was mounted i filled it up with all the sandpaper materials and finally got rid of the box that's been holding all this stuff [Music] about a third of the underside is now claimed for storage i may utilize the rest of the underside in some unique way in the future but for now i just put some plywood down to store the larger tools the center section will be used for a slide out chair in the future so i left it open in the meantime this workbench is already looking really good i'm stoked to have finally gotten around to building this now it's time to add the top this is going to be two layers of three quarter inch plywood this first layer will be the permanent layer i screwed it directly into the frame i then roughly cut the cut out with a jigsaw and then used a flush trim bit on the router to clean it up [Music] the top layer is an identical sheet of plywood this will be the sacrificial layer something that i can beat up spill paint on not worry about destroying because when it's time to switch it out it'll be easy to do so i screwed this layer in mostly from the underside to hide as many screws as i could now this brings the final workbench height to 33 and a half inches i chose this specifically because saw stop table saws are 34 inches high so this would act great as an outfit table and while i do not have a saw stop it would be really cool to own one this is my old kind of a workbench if you can even call it that it's very compact and super functional it worked great when i had limited space in a two-car garage but now it's time for it to retire i pulled out all the tools and features and scrapped it for parts any of the wood worth saving went straight into my wood storage cart even though i spent hours upon hours building things with this cart i was very happy to see it go because it means i'm moving on to bigger and better things all right this workbench is now up and running stay tuned for the next video because that's where i'll make all the fancy upgrades that'll turn this workbench from a honda civic into a top of the line tesla just a few other things i'd like to mention i chose this location in the workshop because it's backed up by my grab and go french cleat tool wall it's centered underneath the ceiling lights for optimal lighting and it's directly across from the office where the tv is mounted it also leaves enough room between it and the office so i can pull out the storage cards entirely so there's just a lot of extra thought that went into this workbench and its location and it looks great okay that's it for now see ya shhh oh you're good good drop it drop it so ah

Channel: Ben Tardif

Views: 1,123,587

Rating: 4.9198184 out of 5

Keywords: sawstop, isotunes, rockler, woodworking, tesla

Id: UXnEzwJpbBg

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020