Workbench

My shop is reeeeally small, and because space is a premium, I needed to build a workbench that would serve multiple duties.

Milling

After milling and filling three garbage bags of sawdust, I laminated the boards that make up my legs, aprons, and rails, to make them a little chonkier. I went back to milling to take those parts down to final dimension.

This design has panels that enclose the sides and back. Milling the panel stock filled eleven more bags of sawdust, and then I glued up the panels using biscuits for alignment.

Wood Selection

I know I have all these big milling machines, but if you have a more rational small shop than I, you may just have a lunchbox planer, and therefore you’re going to want to go to a proper hardwood dealer or a local sawmill and ask for lumber that’s already milled flat and square.

I designed my workbench to be made out of pre-milled, ¾” by 5-½” hardwood, which will make it super easy for you to build it–when you buy my plans that I put a LOT of effort into! I would also ask the folks at the hardwood dealer what inexpensive hardwoods they have in stock. The species will vary depending on where you live, but a workbench just needs to be made out of something durable. I found some White Ash super cheap off Marketplace, but more important than the species of wood is the type of joinery used for putting your bench together.

Joinery

I used dowels to join the aprons and rails to the legs of my bench. Dowels don’t seem to get a lot of lovin’ in the YouTube space, because we’ve all put together something from Ikea with dowels in it and had it fall apart. But that’s not the fault of the dowels, but the particle board and the fact that they never tell you to glue anything together! No wonder people don’t think dowels are strong. Dowelmax in use The jig I’m using is the Dowelmax, which I was sent a while back after the trouble I had with two other dowel jigs I owned. This jig, hands down, is the best. It’s super precise, extremely well made, versatile, and a fraction of the price of a domino. Sure a domino might be a little faster, but it only took me an afternoon to drill something like 180 holes.

I almost got through everything without making a mistake, but at the very end, I had the jig flipped around and drilled where I shouldn’t’ve. It was no biggie, I just plugged the holes, flush trimmed them, and re-drilled correctly.

The panels get a ½” rabbet on all four sides using a dado stack in the table saw. Then I needed grooves in the aprons and rails and legs to accept the panels.

I set up a ¼” slot cutter bit so I could make stopped grooves on the legs since I didn’t want to see the grooves go all the way down to the floor where they’re not needed. I cut the same groove in the side rails, but realized I wouldn’t be able to fit the long rails on my router table without it hitting the wall, so I setup my dado stack in my table saw, and opened up the door to the storage room behind my shop so I could cut these.

Outfeed

My original bench was never built to be an outfeed table, so it was always a bit lower than my table saw. I never liked that because the workpiece is unsupported as it exits the cut. And these rails are super long so the groove I was cutting didn’t get cut to full depth because the workpiece wasn’t flat on the table saw top because of this. Misaligned table saw and outfeed table To combat this, I sent the board back through and proceeded to put an exorbitant amount of pressure to keep it from tipping again. It’s not the safest thing, the most accurate thing, or the most pleasant thing to have to deal with. Installing levelling feet on your outfeed table is a great idea to get it in the same plane as your table saw. Remember that for a small shop, the bench wearing many hats is key, so don’t skimp on these. I installed hefty, machined, aluminum ones with threaded inserts on the bottom of my legs, with a jam nut to ensure they stay put at the correct height.

It’s interesting seeing many people’s outfeed tables that are lower than their table saws posted on YouTube and other social media sites. It makes no sense to me and defeats the purpose of an outfeed table.

“But Scott, now my miter gauge doesn’t work”... To that I say, extend your table saw’s miter slots by routing into your outfeed table top. I made a quick template that hooked on the back of my top, and used a spiral bit and a collar to guide me. NBD.

So we have 1-levelling feet, and 2-miter slots. But there’s a third thing that needs to be considered if you want your workbench to double as an outfeed table, and that’s a place to clear off your top for when you need to use your table saw. Small shops don’t have extra room for spare work surfaces, so this is one reason why I built my drawer cabinet shorter with a shelf on top: so I can quickly shove everything I’m working on underneath so I don’t get into a pickle mid-rip.

Finishing and Glue-Up

I’m a big fan of pre-finishing. The way the rails and aprons and panels of this design are all offset allows you to pre-finish without having to worry about flush sanding mating surfaces in the same plane.

I sanded everything, then finished everything individually with Osmo Polyx. No getting on your hands and knees trying to get every nook and cranny, while fighting drips and build ups in corners and all that nonsense. Pre-finishing is so much simpler.

The glue up was a little tricky. There were a lot of parts, so trying to glue it all up at once would be next to impossible. So sub-assemblies are the ticket here. I started by gluing the back together, then I glued up the front, and that was easier since there were no panels to deal with.

This was already pushing the limits of the space I had to glue up on top of my bench, so there was no chance I’d be able to glue up the rest of the carcass if my old bench was still there. So now was the time to say goodbye to Ol’ Faithful, the bench that I had so many fond–actually no, that thing was garbage.

The rest of the glue up, albeit a little intimidating, went without a hitch. There was enough wiggle and bend to be able to glue up one side at a time. It was a struggle to glue up in my tiny shop, and an assembly table would’ve been really nice to have.

Assembly Table

What is this thing called an assembly table, and why do you need one? Why do bigger shops have a separate one? For me, a workbench needs to be strong and stout for the hundreds of mortises I chop by hand, an outfeed table is an extension of my table saw, and an assembly table is…a glorified table. That’s it, just an extra surface that can be used to put together your project so you can leave both your workbench and your outfeed table clear for using them as they should be. But this is a small shop, so we don’t have that luxury–it needs to be all-in-one.

A great assembly table should be flat. But what is flat enough? If you ask five woodworkers, you’ll probably get five different answers, ranging from half a tenth of a thou to slightly better than a urinal trough. My old bench, which I used for six years, happened to have a dish that was a quarter of an inch deep. Although kind of a pain, it didn’t really affect the outcome of my projects. Workbench top with dish in it Many woodworkers preach the advantages of a torsion box top for your assembly table or even workbench and from what I gather, there’s one main benefit: because a torsion box is a webbed frame that has a sheet glued and screwed to the top and bottom, it’s very rigid.

But I’m not sure why I’ve heard it preached that you can only achieve a dead flat surface with a torsion box, when you can apply the same flattening methods with a strong support structure and achieve a top that’s flat enough for woodworking.

Why might you not want a torsion box in your small shop? They’re thicker and take up more room that I’d rather use for more drawer storage. You could have a super thick torsion box à la Ron Paulk, that allows you to have more temporary storage, but it still takes up room that a small shop needs for more permanent storage.

The surface of an assembly table might be prone to collecting dried glue, and little drops of glue in your assembly table can cause dents in your workpieces if you’re not careful. Also, if you’re someone who’s very particular about your perfectly flat reference surface, the thickness of dried glue will surely negate any positive effects a flat surface will have. Laminating a product like Formica on a top is a great way to be able to easily pop off dried glue.

Top

I wanted the top of my workbench to be strong, so I started by making a support frame out of stock that I had already milled down. I screwed in the long parts into the front and back aprons, and then I marked each cross-piece’s length with a knife and cut to size. I proceeded to drill a bunch of holes for dowels, which I then glued together, and screwed back in place. Workbench top assembly To make the top even beefier, I laminated two sheets of ¾” MDF together using contact cement. Not my favourite product in the world, but it got the job done. One sheet was cut to the correct size, and the other was cut a wee bit oversized, so I used my flush trim bit in my router to make them perfect.

I glue on some hardwood edge banding using biscuits. I mitered the corners because, well, I’m extra. I left the edge banding a little wider than the top is thick so I could take my trusty flush trim bit in my router and make it perfect.

I applied more contact cement and laminate down this sheet of graphite gray formica. The formica was oversized, so I used the flush trim bit to make it perfect. I broke the edge using a chamfer bit because formica gets really sharp.

Work Holding

How you secure the wood you’re using to your bench, so you can work on it without it moving, is very important for a workbench, and usually involves the top in some fashion.

There’s a rule of thumb about how a workbench needs to be able to hold a piece of wood in three different orientations: with a face pointing up, with an edge pointing up, and with an end pointing up. I would argue that this advice is not always the best, but I guess it depends. I just know that I very rarely need to hold a board up on end, because I don’t hand cut dovetails or get freaky with hand tools often. But if you do, you can pick up a fancy twin-screw vice for a hefty chunk of change. The lesser expensive option is a simple cast-iron front vice, which can still hold a board in any direction reasonably well. Some people even go without a vice, and hold their workpieces using integrated t-track, or dog holes in their bench top. But I enjoy having both a traditional front vice and additional workpiece holding integrated into my bench top. Hold down clamps in dog holes There are tons of accessories to be had for using t-track in your bench top. You’ve got your side clamps, hold downs clamps, stops…Actually, I think that’s it really. But there are way more accessories for dog holes, which are quicker and simpler to use. There are track clamps, hold down clamps, plane stops, bench dogs which can be used with a vice, super tall bench dogs, side clamps, dog hole bench cookies, and on and on.

It’s super common in North America to use ¾” dog holes spaced 4” apart, but I ultimately went with 20mm diameter holes, spaced 96mm apart, which is Festool’s MFT (multi-function table) hole spacing. There are other cool accessories that I don’t have yet for this setup that will pump up the capabilities of this bench, so this setup gets the bench ready for when I do.

Dog Holes

There’s something called a Parf Guide which is a jig used for perfectly aligning dig holes on your bench top, but I don’t own one because they’re about two hundred bucks and I can’t justify that cost for something I might use once. If I had a big CNC, I’d plop the bench top right on it and command it to cut my dog holes. If I had a small CNC, I’d make a small template to use with a router. But what I do have are friends with CNCs. So I called one up, and a few days later a template arrived in the mail.

I clamped the template down, marked the center of each hole using the point of a forstner bit with the same diameter as the holes in the template (1-¼” in my case) and used a smaller forstner bit to hog out most of the waste. Then I used a 20mm router bit to plunge out the hole, using a brass bushing guide to get it exactly where it needs to be. This bit unfortunately only goes down about ¾”, which would be fine if my top was one sheet of MDF, but since it’s an inch and a half thick, I finish up with the 20mm forstner bit. Workbench with chamfer for track clamps I put a small chamfer around the top of the dog holes, and then flipped the top over and put a huge honking ¾” chamfer on the underside of each. I love using track clamps for holding down work pieces because I find them really secure, but they only work if they’re going through a ¾” top–otherwise they can’t make the turn. So the chamfer on the underside effectively reduces the top, allowing me to use them.

How Big Should Your Workbench Be?

Since we’re talking small shops, it seems logical to have a small workbench too, right? I know it may sound counter-intuitive, but you need to make your workbench as big as you possibly can, no matter the size of your shop. Think about how much time you spend at your workbench versus any other machine in your shop. I would rather sacrifice having a smaller machine or even eliminating one in order to have a bigger bench, if that’s what it takes.

In order to be able to shift the bench at times, I used flip-down casters that still allow me to rest the bench down on the beefy levelling feet I installed. I got plates so I could quickly remove the casters, so I don’t go flying when I inevitably trip over them.

If your small shop is in a basement like mine, then there are a couple other things to consider: making a bench that’s able to fit through doorways, get up stairs, and go around tight corners. I designed the bench to be able to take the top off, and remove the bottom cabinet to make it easier to move out of my small basement shop.

Cabinet

I designed the bottom cabinet to be simple to make because the bench is already super strong, so the cabinet just has to be somewhere to screw the drawer slides to.

The sides of the cabinet receive a couple of rabbets each, so I could screw it all together with the top and bottom. The two middle dividers were pocket screwed from the inside.

I milled up a 1” strip to trim out the top edge with, so it overhangs the drawer fronts. I used biscuits to help me line things up, then used the trusty flush-trim bit to make it smooth. I also milled up some thin ¼” strips to dress out the bottom, sides, and dividers, and I clamped it all down with painters tape while the glue dried. Flush trimming the edges of formica workbench top Then I got to work laminating the top with the left-over bits of formica. You won’t see the seams in the end because it’ll be out of sight. And I screwed some scrap blocks to the bottom rails of the carcass so I could screw the cabinet into place.

Drawers

It won’t come as a surprise that storage is a huge issue for small workshops. Drawers are a huge lifesaver when it comes to organizing your shop, and a workbench is a perfect place to put drawers full of all the tools you need close at hand when working. Drawers are a more efficient use of space, and give you better access than a shelf or cupboard, as long as you keep them well organized.

I intentionally figured out the contents of each drawer before I even built them, so I could make the drawers to the sizes that I truly needed. Even with the contents figured out, drawers are still wooden boxes with things laying loose inside, so the next step would be to have an organizational system within, like foam. I go into more detail in my Shop Organization video.

I cut down a whole bunch of ½” Baltic birch for all my parts, including the drawer bottoms, just so they’re a little beefier. I cut a ½” rabbet in the bottom of the fronts, backs, and sides for the drawer bottom to fit into. I then cut rabbets on the ends of the sides to join them to the front and back.

I glued and brad nailed these together for the sake of time, and then went back and sunk a bunch of 3/16” birch dowels to reinforce everything.I cut a scrap piece of ¼” MDF to the height of my top row of drawers, and used it to space all the drawer slides for this row. I cut the height of the spacer down to the next row and repeated, until all my drawer slides were evenly spaced.

To install the drawer boxes, I laid the bottom row on a piece of ¼” MDF, and slowly pulled out the box and the slides to sink the first screws. I then slid it out more to sink the middle screws. I could then take out the whole box and secure the last row of screws. Installing drawer slides The drawer fronts are a basic frame and panel you’ve probably seen a dozen times before. The rails and stiles all receive a ¼” by ½” deep dado to accept the panel. The end of the rails get a ½” tenon that fits snugly into the stiles.

The drawer face panels were all made from one big panel that I glued up, sanded, and pre-finished before cutting it up into smaller panels, after which I cut a ½” rabbet around all four sides of each. When gluing up, I made sure to not glue the panel, since this is solid wood, and not plywood or MDF, and it needs room to breathe.

I made sure the panel was centered before installing the drawer front to the box by tacking it down with a little CA glue in the center of the panel, so it can expand out in either direction. This is important, because the drawer pull goes through the panel, so it could potentially lock it into a position where expansion could be restricted.

Payoff

I am hugely relieved and so glad this is done! I’d been planning this build for about three years, and even started to make it a couple of years ago! I made a mistake early on in the milling process then, so I gave up and it took a lot longer than expected to build it.

Small shop workbench level with table saw

This bench solves so many issues for me and my small shop: I’ve got tons of new storage for everything that used to be stuffed under my old bench, I have so much more surface area than before, the top height is now level with my table saw, all these dog holes are gonna make it so much better to work with, I can wheel the bench around, and it’s so rigid that I couldn’t rack this thing even if I tried. And I love how it looks.