Build journal: Flexible workbench for small spaces

I’ve been doing woodworking — and disgracing the term — for the better part of a year now. I got the itch to do something creative and learn how to build things a couple years ago, but didn’t really get started until we moved into our current house last December.

Like anyone starting out, I had a pretty rough setup for the past year. This is my original miter saw setup, no joke:

Why yes, I am using a chest freezer for lumber overhang. And no, it’s not level to the saw.

Experienced woodworkers reading this are cringing right now — and flashing back to their first setup.

After completing a handful of projects (and watching my future projects list grow), this just wasn’t tenable any more. There are a lot of problems with this setup:

1. Because I can’t keep a board level across the saw easily, it’s nearly impossible to get a clean zero-degree cut. Almost every cut has a slight bevel. One board like that isn’t always a big deal, but it’s a problem if they all have an accidental bevel.
2. There’s nowhere for cutoffs to go except crashing to the floor.
3. There’s nowhere to work while I have my saw out. If I have multiple things going at once, I have to move the saw off the table and back on constantly.
4. Because the top of this folding table is so thick, using smallish (6") clamps is almost impossible with any materials thicker than about 1/2".
5. Because it’s a portable (folding) table, there’s no built-in permanent storage. Cleanup takes forever, and none of my tools are ever close at hand.

A few weeks ago, I set out to design a custom solution that would save me from this monstrosity and solve all my workshop woes.

In addition to solving the problems above, I had some constraints to work with. Namely, I could only use a space roughly 2 feet deep and 8 feet wide. This leaves just enough room for my wife to park her large car in front of the bench and still get the garage closed.

After a few hours of research (okay, searching Pinterest), I decided the best option was a bench on casters with a level top that goes across both my table saw and miter saw.

Halfway through the build, it also occurred to me that I’d have a huge pile of dust under the table saw if I didn’t do something proactive about that. So I added a dust collection port at the last minute, after I was well into construction. More on that in a bit.

This is what a workbench looks like before you build it. Just a big pile of crap on your garage floor. My wife REALLY loved this phase of the project.

This piece is by far the largest thing I’ve built to-date, and I learned a tremendous amount building it. Mostly by making mistakes.

It’s extremely gratifying taking a pile of boards laying on your garage floor and turning it into something that makes your life better, even if that just means making it easier to enjoy your hobbies.

Project Components and Tools

All told, this is the shopping list for the bench:

• 2x4x96–13, kiln-dried whitewood — A little more expensive than the cheapest 2x4, but being kiln-dried means it’s already done the worst of its shrinking, which should save me some headaches in the future.
• 3/4" plywood, 2 full (48x96) sheets — If you’re going to build something like this, you don’t need to do anything fancy here. Workbenches don’t need to be pretty, so just buy the most basic plywood you can, at the dimensions you need. I went with 3/4" for extra rigidity and shelf strength. This comes at a pretty severe weight penalty.
• (10) 2" rubber casters — You can’t tell this from the photos, but the four casters on the corners are lockable, which helps with stability when the bench is set up for work. You don’t want it moving around while you’re sawing something.
• About 150 construction screws , 2" long— I picked this style of screw because it doesn’t require drilling pilot holes. Since I just have a single drill/driver, this saves me a tremendous amount of time.
• A Shop Vac universal tool adapter. This thing was costlier than it seems like it should be ($11), but it’s the heart of my table saw dust collection. Definitely a worthy last-minute addition.

I haven’t added it all up, but I believe I spent something in the neighborhood of $120 on the project. You could make it cheaper by skipping the casters, using thinner plywood, using basic screws, or using cheaper 2x4s. All of those things come with trade-offs, but you could live with them. Don’t skip the dust collection.

For construction, I used my miter saw, jigsaw, and drill. Pretty basic stuff, all told.

The Build Process

Each of the two 8-foot shelves looks like this underneath. This is the middle shelf, so I was checking the fit for the top of my shop vac here.

The two long shelves are pretty basic affairs — basically a very short wall flipped on its side. You’ve got a long plate (an uncut 96" 2x4) and some 18" supports going between them, spread 16" apart. Slap a sheet of plywood on the top, and you’re done with them.

That is, unless you forgot the plywood measurements when you had the big box store cut them. Like I did.

Cameo by a scrap 2x4. I accidentally had the plywood cut 3" too wide (24" instead of 21"), so I had to trim a bit off the side of each shelf. Screwing down a 2x4 as a fence made this an easy cut with my circular saw.

Lesson learned: Double-check your measurements before you have the store cut your stock.

If you’re going to mess up, though, it’s better to have too much material than too little. You can’t un-saw mistakes.

The long boards weren’t quite level on my floor, but I made sure the feet were flat on the floor. Since the wheels were attached to the feet, they needed to be level with each other. (Of course, my floor isn’t level in my garage, so they’re still not quite right. Close enough, though.)

Since I work by myself, installing the middle shelf seemed really daunting. How was I going to suspend it above the bottom shelf while I secured it? Then I remembered that things can lay on their side, and I wedged that thing in there. If you’re looking closely, you might see that it’s not level. I didn’t notice. Not yet.

After standing the bench back up, it was quick & easy to secure the cross-supports for the upper shelves. And they’re level! At this point, I really should have seen that the middle shelf wasn’t. But I still didn’t.

Everyone needs a good assistant. Luckily, my kids (almost) always want to help. This time, it was my son’s turn to be my apprentice.

While he helped me drive the screws into the top shelves, my son kept yelling “Let’s build this bad boy!” at the top of his lungs. I have no idea where he got that expression, but it was wonderful.

Between the two upper shelves, there’s a third, slightly lower shelf that houses my miter saw. This was carefully placed so that the deck of the saw would be level with the top of the bench, making straight, zero-bevel cuts pain-free. The deck height on my saw is 3" right on the nose, so it was easy to measure out.

In order to get the 3" drop from the top shelf, I had to cut a notch in the end of each of the shelf’s supports. My jigsaw made this quick and easy.

Since I cut a little extra off the notches (to give myself some wiggle room), it was tricky to get the top of the support lined up with my marks. Definitely use clamps and get the board level before securing it, if you attempt a similar design.

Before securing the top shelf on the right side of the bench, I checked to see if my shop vac would fit underneath the middle shelf cleanly. As I suspected, it did not.

Luckily, I had already prepared for this possibility by making sure there was enough room to cut out a passthrough. Because the shelf heights were dictated by the height of the table saw, I couldn’t just raise the bottom shelf.

I cut a quick hole on that side of the middle shelf, just a bit bigger than the part of the shop vac that would stick through. After testing again for fit, I was ready to finish attaching the top shelves.

Oops. Looks like the miter saw shelf area might be slightly out of square. Since this is a utilitarian piece, I didn’t 100% care. I just shaved off this corner of the plywood with my jigsaw and moved on with my life.

After installing the lowered shelf, I was ready to dry-fit the miter. It fit perfectly, and the top really was level like I wanted. Ecstatic, I took a couple pictures and stopped working for the night.

Checking the miter saw fit. Looks good! Oh wait. Oh no.

Not five minutes later, I took my first good look at the pictures and noticed the middle shelf seemed to be angled up. That’s not good. I did get a good suggestion for how to deal with it from a friend on Twitter, however:

As much as I love the idea, having a crooked shelf really would have been a problem when it came time to install the table saw.

Did I mention yet that the shelf has 46 screws attaching it to the legs? I ended up having to remove all of them and adjust the shelf. Twice. (It was still crooked front-to-back after fixing it left-to-right.)

Finally, it was time to install my table saw and dust collection.

I did a dry-fit of the table saw and found that the height was a little low. The saw would work fine where it was, but the miter gauge would smack into the top of the bench. I needed it to slide all the way through and over the top of the table, so I added another piece of 3/4" plywood on top of the table saw shelf. This gave me just enough clearance to work with.

Installing the multi-tool adapter for dust collection

Luckily, adding the second sheet of plywood also gave me just enough thickness on the shelf that I could just directly attach the Shop Vac adapter through the bottom.

Since I don’t have a 2.5" hole saw, I used my jigsaw to cut out the opening. After finding the center of the plywood shelf, I traced the outside of the portion that would be coming up through the bench.

Install was a little trickier. Since I was working by myself, I used some duct tape to hold it in place while I drove it in from below using pocket hole screws.

You don’t need to use those expensive screws, but I already had some on hand and appreciate that they’re self-tapping. No pilot holes needed, just like the long construction screws I used everywhere else.

With the dust port installed, I was finally ready to install the table saw on the bench. My saw has holes on its corners for attaching it to the stand it came with, so I drove screws (paired with washers) through the holes and into the top of the bench. It’s not going anywhere.

As a finishing touch, I also drove a couple screws into the front of the bench, which I’ll use to hang my push stick.

Seeing my bench that I’ve planned and worked on for several weeks fully loaded with all the clamps and hand tools I like to keep close by was really satisfying. It’ll be more satisfying, though, when I finally build something with it.

The next project on the docket is a balance beam for the kids’ play room, with a little sidetrack to build a crosscut sled for the table saw. I’ll be writing up both of those projects too, and I hope you’ll follow along.

I’ve made building plans for this workbench available in PDF and Sketchup format, if you’re interested in using or mocking my design. Please note that I don’t have the extra sheet of plywood under the table saw or the dust collection in the plans, since they were added after the fact. I’m always interested in hearing feedback.