Construction Lumber Workbench

This is my third workbench design. It’s super sturdy, costs under $200, and I avoided all the mistakes I made when making my first workbench, including why you shouldn’t use 2x4s.

I do have a beautiful ash workbench I made last year, and that’s still the bench of my dreams. But that build is not for the faint of heart. So this is a workbench that’s easier to make for those who haven’t yet abandoned their social lives for woodworking.

Bench Top Lamination 1

I used 2x8s for almost this entire build. My parts didn’t need to be that wide though, so I ripped them right down the middle.

Yep, I bought 2x8s just to cut them into 2x4s. Strange? Yes. But it’s not strange that I cut them down the middle, because I want the top to stay as flat as possible over time. This was one of the biggest issues I had with my first workbench–the top cupped about a quarter inch.

Cupped old workbench top I used a cheap dollar store paint roller to spread glue on the faces of the boards that make up the top, and that allowed me to spread glue out super quickly so it doesn’t start drying too fast and cause me to go into the hissy fit of the century.

I grabbed some extra two by material that was nice and straight, and used them as clamping cauls by cinching them across the top as I squeezed the boards together. This will take out any misalignment, but it’s still not exactly a smooth surface. So I sent the result through the planer, which is why I glued the top up in sections no wider than it could handle.

Shopping for Wood

Nothing is more accessible than your local Home Repo, but you need to know what to look out for when buying the lumber for your workbench.

You might see the 2x4s first and think, woah those are a good deal. But I always avoid them. All of these have this bullseye-looking thing in the endgrain called the pith. Why is that a bad thing?

The pith is the centre of the tree, and because of the way that wood expands and contracts as moisture in the air changes, the pith is the least stable. It can really mess any project up if you include it.

Inexperienced me used all 2x4s, mostly with the pith in them, for the top of my first workbench. There are all kinds of delaminations happening because the wood is unstable, and is warping as it takes in and releases moisture throughout the year.

2x4s with the pith for my workbench top So if you see the pith in a board, avoid it. But even without the pith, 2x4s also tend to be a little wetter because they’re produced and sold a lot faster than larger dimensional lumber.

So the beauty of something larger like a 2x8 is that you can more easily find ones without the pith, rip them in half, and end up with two pieces of wood that are much more stable and dry, which will result in a flatter workbench top over time. And flatter is gooder.

Bench Top Lamination 2

Now that the two halves of the workbench were cleaned up via the planer, it was time to glue them both together. This time, although I was only dealing with one glue joint, the stakes were a little higher because there’s no way I could fit it through the planer after it was dry, so it needed to be perfectly lined up.

I drilled a few holes for dowels, which will ensure that the two halves are aligned, but I still added cauls again to make sure the entire top ended up flat when the glue dried.

Legs

The height of the legs determines the height of the workbench top. I’m six foot and I prefer a 36” high workbench. If you don’t know what height you prefer, add or subtract a half inch for the workbench height for every inch higher or lower than you are compared to me. So if you’re five foot eight, make a thirty-four inch high bench. Then just subtract the thickness of the top, which is three inches in my case, and that’s your leg height.

Now that we’ve figured out the leg height, the joinery that we’ll be using to connect the legs to the aprons are half laps, and if you’ve seen my joinery test video, you’ll know that the half lap is actually stronger than a mortise and tenon in the scenario that I tested it in, and it’s a super easy joint to make too. Half lap joint for workbench legs You could glue up the legs in a way that you naturally leave the half laps in place, but in my experience, this method doesn’t turn out as accurate as doing it on the table saw. Besides, that would only work for the joints on the sides of the bench, and we still have to do more of these to connect the sides together.

Racking and Diagonal Brace

Like many children from a broken household, one big issue my first workbench experienced was a lack of stability. If I leaned on it, it racked pretty heavily. I thought I did the right thing by adding a big 2x10 stretcher, but it clearly wasn’t enough, so for my new workbench, I’m going to lap in a diagonal brace.

Why diagonal? Because when you squish or pull a square from opposite corners, the distance between those opposite corners gets closer or farther apart. By diagonally bracing it, it prevents the square from becoming a diamond because you can’t squish or stretch that diagonal brace.

The more bourgeois woodworker could use a track saw for this, but we can use a circular saw in the same way. The exact angle doesn’t matter, the diagonal brace just needs to lay so that it goes from corner to corner without intersecting with the top and bottom stretchers. I marked it, and clamped a straight edge down so I could cut to the inside of the bottom line.

Now the seemingly smart thing to do would be to offset our straight edge by the width of our brace piece. But, this doesn’t account for the width of the circular saw blade, because if you did this, you would have too loose of a fit. We need to offset it by the width of the blade.

Technique for racking and diagonal brace

Take a drill bit that’s the same size as the thickness of the blade, and clamp another piece of wood using the drill bit to space it away from the first straight edge. Butt the diagonal brace against the new piece of wood, and clamp another piece down to the other side of the brace piece.

Kind of weird, yes. But when I made a second pass with the circular saw, it fit the width of the brace piece perfectly.

Long Stretchers

Now that both sides were done, I could join them together in holy matrimony. And you guessed it, more half laps. Now I’m going to glue them together so they’ll never be able to separate, but if you’re looking to be able to break the bench down easily, you may consider just screwing the half laps together without glue.

Top Final Clean

Construction lumber is softer than a pillow made of duck plumage. While this can depend on where you’re located, the stuff that’s available to me is soft enough that I can dent it with my finger nail.

This doesn’t exactly sound ideal for a workbench, because you want a bench with a stout top and a sturdy base that’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson solid, right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If I’m working on a project, it’ll usually be made with hardwood. As I’m doing my thing on a workpiece, I might drop it on my bench. Here’s where a softwood top can save your butt–wouldn’t you rather your bench take a dent, rather than your workpiece? If it’s something small, yeah I might be able to repair it, but it could also mean that I need to remake a whole part if it’s bad enough. And I’m not about that.

Finish

One big thing that’ll help you out is applying finish to your bench top. When you get drips of glue on it, you’re going to want to remove it easily, and if you put a couple of coats of oil-based poly on top, the glue will just pop off. Be sure to apply finish to both sides of the top.

Attaching Base to Top

One more reason why my old bench top warped so much is that I didn’t leave any room for the wood to expand and contract as it took in and released moisture throughout the year. Even worse, I think the wood was very wet when I made the top, which I lag bolted to the base. As the top dried, it tried to shrink, but the bolts were partially preventing it from shrinking. So the wood did the only thing it could do and unintentionally turned into Tony Hawk’s backyard half pipe. 1/4" lag screw in an oversized half inch hole To prevent this from happening again in my new bench, I drilled oversized half inch holes through the top stretchers. I only used ¼” lag screws, so there will be plenty of room for the top to expand and contract. I used both ¼” and ½” washers to make sure the bolt didn’t get any funny ideas.

Back Diagonal Stretcher

I still hadn’t fully solved the racking issue, so I added one more diagonal brace across the whole back to really stiffen it up.

The great thing about this bench is that it doesn’t cost a whole lot to make. I used nine 12ft 2x8s that were $15.28 each. I used three 8ft 1x6s that were $11.98 each. The lag screws and glue brought the total just shy of $200, and that’s all it takes to get you up and running. But there are a few things you might want to add to make this bench work smarter for you.

Workholding

A traditional front vice is still a great idea, even if you don’t plan on doing traditional woodworking. It’s very versatile and can hold a workpiece in basically any orientation. These styles of cast iron front vices are easy to install with 4 lag screws. However, I made a big mistake when installing it on my old workbench.

Even though I had a vice on my old bench, I forgot about one of its best features–I couldn’t hold a board flat on the workbench. It was such an easy fix, but I never did anything about it. I found myself resorting to using clamps to hold workpieces to the bench, which can be time consuming and get in the way.

By drilling a row of holes in front of the vice, I can use a pop-up dog in the vice, and one more dog in any of the holes to securely hold a piece of wood flat on the bench top without it moving around. Such an easy thing to do, and now I don’t have to use clamps to hold it down flat. Pop up dog used with front vice to hold workpiece I didn’t buy a new vice to use on this bench, but I’ll leave some links below to different vices that I like for a couple different price points.

A lot of people use T-track on their workbenches, but I’m not a big fan of them because I find that the accessories for them are more limited, they’re more time consuming to install, and they always get filled with gunk. But most importantly, there’s one big issue with them being installed on a solid wood top.

When the top wants to expand and contract as it changes in moisture content throughout the year, the T-track that’s screwed down across the top is not going to want to move, which, like I said before, is going to make the top cup, and that alone is a huge reason to avoid it.

Storage

There’s always a big opportunity for lots of storage underneath a workbench, and for this one, you have a few options. To get you up and running fastest, you can screw down some slats across the bottom stretchers. Workbench storage shelves To take it up a notch, you could make a simple cabinet out of plywood with some shelving to expand the space a bit more. To make it even better, instead of shelves, you could outfit it with some drawers. Both of these options would be sweet, but are a bit more involved and outside the scope of this build. If you go back and watch my last workbench build, you can see how I made the cabinet.

Level Ups

Another couple of things you can do to make this bench work even better is to install these sturdy leveling feet. You can install some flip down casters on your bench to make moving it around easier. I installed them on my current bench, but I’ve only used them when I moved, otherwise I like my bench where it is. If you’re not able to keep your bench in the same spot, they’d be a good idea for you.