Monday, July 5, 2010

Workbench Improvements

After seeing Christopher Schwarz's post about his latest workbench, I was inspired to make a tool rack on the back of my bench. It's made of poplar with a 3/4" gap. I also added a shelf to my bench which was on my list for a long time. It's made of 1"x 10" pine that I bought at Lowes for about $9. The shelf sits on two pieces that are screwed into the front legs (for the front one) and to the side stretchers (for the back one). Now why didn't I just screw both of them to the legs? Well since I still want my bench to be knockdown, in order to take out the shelf first when breaking down the bench, the shelf will have to rotate and then slide out the side of the bench, so the shelf stretchers cannot be the same size as the interior dimension of the legs. If they were I would have no clearance to rotate the entire shelf. If this sounds confusing to you, don't be worried because it's really not that big of a deal. The individual shelf pieces have a 1/2" wide rabbet so they can be ship lapped. Each shelf piece is nailed in the center with an about 1/16" gap in between each board (use pennies as spacers).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice job on the benc!