Jeez, that one really made me upset. I had just finished cutting half a dozen sheets of OSB to size for a new shop cabinet carcass and then I noticed that nothung fit together

OK, I lost it a little bit.

For a solution, I tried to figure out what went wrong to rectify it. Pretty soon I realized that I had cut everything the wrong size. All the pieces where either too short or too long. On one piece, I even managed to cut one side too short and the other one too long.

Hm.

Some more searching and I found out that I had cut into my circular saw guide rail when I build the workbenches. That was basically when my inner nerd told me to pimp up the next guide rail a little bit… Shortly after that I was the proud new owner of some plywood and a rubber mat from a local aldi supermarket.

First, I cut all the pieces on the tablesaw. The length of all pieces is 1400mm, the width of the bottom part of the guide rail is 250mm, the upper part is 100mm.

Next, I cut a rabbet into the underside of the bottom piece. For that, I pushed the bottom piece through the table saw vertically and cut away very thin strips until I had a perfect match for the 4mm plywood that would later form the cutting edge.

Nect I attached th cutting edge to the bottom piece using some small 10mm screws. This way, I can change that piece out when its beaten up and I won’t need to rebuild the whole guide rail then. 

The rubber mat was tehn attached using spray adhesive and for the top part, I found some leftover epoxy to glue it on.

With a little time and some weights, I got a pretty decent guide rail. If you want to see some impressions of it, just click on the youtube video below. Happy building!

I’ll keep it short this time…

In part 1 I already wrote down what this is all about. Today, I put part 2 on youtube. This time, I’m building and installing the drawers for the workbenches, put my tools in and for the drawer fronts, I have a little speciality:

After living in our house for over a year now, it became time to do something about the mess in my basement workshop. I mean, it looked liked this:

Lovely, uh? I didn’t think so, too, but there were just to many projects to get done before I could start workshop projects. But now that I have finally started, it’s ‘go big or go home’.

The plan:

• I’m going to build a workbench. I mean, three of them. I’ll come to that in a minute
• Additionally, I want to build a desk in the workshop for electronics projects and all the tiny little things that would just get lost on the big workbench.
• All the chemical stuff (like glue, paint etc.) will be locked away in a cabinet. And that should happen before my son starts gluing his tongue to the desk or his sister’s ears to the… you get the point.
• Last but not least, some not shop-related stuff has to go down the river of life. Or into the room where the heating system is installed. Or into our future garage. Or the future shed. Or…

I watched a lot of youtube videos for inspiration and ideas about workbenches. Want to try it yourselve? Get a week or two off of work and start here. Or here. Or here. Or…

Additionally, I tested out, which size would be good for my little 20m² workshop. It should be capable of handling big projects like cabinets, but still small enough that I could move around it.

This was the first idea that I came up with:

OK, this would have taken me weeks to build and would have been far to expensive. So, the second “optimized” version now looks like this:

• The workbench consists of three individual workbenches, each in the size of 120cm x 60cm
• All three together build a huge work surface of 120cm x 180cm.
• All three workbenches are on wheels. That way, I can move them out of the way easily, if necessary.
• Beneath the tabletops, I’m going to build drawers that will hold all my supplies and tools.
• The whole construction is made out of sheets of OSB and rough sawn construction lumber that you can buy in any given big box store.

And of course, I did a build video for youtube:

Next, I’m going to build the drawers. Stay tuned!