2. Workshop

Work Bench for the Home

A longer term project to build a work bench and tool storage combo that will look good enough to reside in our kitchen.
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The finished bench stop, prior to applying a coat of boiled linseed oil.
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The finished bench stop, prior to applying a coat of boiled linseed oil.

  • To get a bit of spacing between my drawer faces I used a few quarters to fill the gaps while putting things together. Quarters on the bottoms and credit cards on the sides seemed to do the trick.
  • This piece will hopefully come into play later. While brainstorming for a lifting mechanism that will not only work, but also be artful, I checked out a few sources for gears that will turn a rotational force 90 degrees, but the ones I had been able to find were too expensive to be practical. Then I stumbled across this Dewalt 90 degree tool, which claims to be up for the forces of impact wrenches, so I pulled it apart to check out the guts and I'm hoping to give it a go at making this thing work for me. This will probably be the last step of this project.
  • I've proven to be not very good at using a router in the proper orientation, so I adapted one of my scraps and turned it into a router table, which has so far proven very handy. Shown here just after making a dado for one of my drawer bottoms.
  • To attach my drawer faces I'm simply drilling the drawer wall and then screwing the face on from the inside. This allows me to remove them repeatedly during my construction process, which will be necessary for all the things I intend to do to them.
  • My power supply's wire turned out to be too thick to fit around my drawers, so I trimmed it down a bit and routed a few less bundled wires around the sharp corners at the base, and tied them neatly to the plywood. From there, with some help from someone with a little more electrical knowledge than myself, we installed a power box at the back of the shelf and routed the power through that to the power strip previously installed on the side of the bench.
  • Once all the drawers were installed I was able to cut out the notches in my trim pieces to fit them around the drawer sliders, and then stain them in preparation for installing.
  • The trim pieces went in neatly along either side of the drawers, secured delicately with thin trim nails through pre-drilled holes.
  • Even with straight trim to back against, my drawer faces weren't quite flush on the front, so I marked them and pulled them off for a bit of trimming with the planes. In addition to flushing the faces, I also adjusted the gaps on the ends to be a little more uniform.
  • Making more curls! This photo shows the faces all neatly flush (or good enough) and ready for a few final touches.
  • I had scoped out a few lighting options for the shelf without finding anything small enough, until a buddy conveniently had this small LED strip light which I wired to a power supply and plugged into my newly installed power box. I'll be wiring in a small switch for this light later as well, but for now at least it works.
  • Since my plan for the drawer faces calls for no handles, I used a dovetail bit on the router and made some graspable edges to all the faces. These will serve for handles for the time being, and I plan on adding some art to the faces in the same manner that should enhance and diversify the ability to grab the drawer faces and pull.
  • The functionality of a woodworking bench is expanded, as horrifying as it sounds, by drilling holes in it for dogs to hold your wood. Having never done this before I scoped out a few benches online, and drilled my holes by hand using a square and eyeballing to keep things perpendicular.
  • Not wanting to make another trip to the hardware store for some dowel rod, I made my own from some 3/4in scraps, which I have plenty of after building my drawers. I just cut a strip, planed the corners until it was roughly round, and then sanded it smooth by running a screw into the end and clamping that in my drill and running it through some sandpaper for a while.
  • My first finished bench dog. I'm not a hundred percent certain of the forces this thing will be able to handle, but I'll give it a shot anyway. I beveled the edges for some nice detail, and then coated the whole thing in some boiled linseed oil.
  • With my bench dogs completed my next accessory to build was a bench stop. This is pretty simple, it's just a long rod that rests against my dogs, with one end that can clamp in the vise. Here again I beveled the edges for some finer detailing.
  • The finished bench stop, prior to applying a coat of boiled linseed oil.
  • Another quick accessory for the bench is this bench hook, which went together pretty quickly and easily, and got a coat of boiled linseed oil and some detailed corner beveling as well.
  • Adding to the collection of accessories, this one is a bench stop made for skinnier stock which would move laterally too much when pushed against the stop. I used some leftover 1/2in plywood for the base and added strips of oak for the stops, mitering the corner joint where the strips meet.
  • Once the parts went together I did a bit of sanding on the edges and planed some bevels into the corners as well. My screws here are deeply countersunk to avoid accidentally hitting them with a plane.
  • The finished bench stop for skinnier stock, shown clamped in the vise and ready to go, with a coat of boiled linseed oil for the finish.
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