[ Saw whirring ] ♪♪ Hi, I'm Phil.

It's time for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

We have this wall here that could use a little bit more storage and an extra work surface, so on today's episode, we're building a wall-mounted workbench.

It's an easy construction featuring low-cost lumber, and it's a great way to upgrade even your workshop.

It's time to build.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, let's talk a little bit about this workbench before we get started on the construction process.

Now, obviously a workbench needs to be a large flat surface, but I didn't want to get involved in a very complicated build.

So what we have is a plank-style workbench.

It's two layers thick.

And I want to show you a little bit later on the technique for gluing it up that lets the whole process move along pretty quickly.

Now, another thing that a workbench needs is stability and strength.

You don't want it moving around when you're trying to build a project on it.

For this one, the bench is actually mounted to the wall so that we're borrowing the strength of the wall in order to create our benchtop that's gonna be strong and sturdy for whatever we're gonna do with it here.

So, I know it's kind of dangerous to add another flat surface to our shop, because, frankly, sometimes they just kind of get cluttered up with things.

But having a bonus space gives us a place for assembly or adding a few other tools in the midst of another project.

So whether this is your first bench or a bonus one, you'll find plenty of use for it.

If you're ready to build along with us, you'll want to check out the plans, because this bench is actually one part of three.

There's a tool rack and a storage shelf that will basically transform a wall of your shop or garage or basement into a workbench area -- basically a shop in a wall, perfect for small spaces.

There's also a technique article that goes into depth on how to glue up our workbench surface.

Now, in order for this all to work, it's what's underneath the benchtop that's really important here.

Alright, let's take a little look underneath the hood here, so to speak, to see how this benchtop gets supported.

Now, we have two thick supports that act like a shelf that are gonna hold up the bench, and these are held in place by another set of thick, angled brackets.

Now, all that does is to help transfer the weight of the bench and whatever's on it back into the wall.

For that to happen, we want to be able to get this installed on the wall relatively easy without having to move a bunch of weight around.

You'll see on the back are a pair of ledgers that get screwed to the wall studs.

This provides a really solid anchor point so that we can start to connect those brackets and supports to those ledgers before even having to talk about or make the benchtop.

While we're at it, we had some extra space going on here.

So by adding a dado to the inside of the angle brackets, we now have a place to tuck in a shelf to keep some necessary items, but also have them out of the way.

The other thing you'll notice here is there's a lot of open space going on underneath the bench, so it's really clear to be able to sweep up after a project or if you want to store some other items on the floor but tucked back out of your way.

There's a lot going on here.

Logan's gonna get started now on building this support structure.

♪♪ So one of the things I really like about this workbench design is that it's built using construction-grade lumber, so that means you can make it with minimal tools in your shop.

So, let's talk about the base.

The base is attached to the wall with a couple of ledger boards and then a couple of brackets go from those ledger boards up to a top support.

Now, I've already glued these together so they're double thick, and now we have to tackle these.

We'll deal with the ledger boards in a little bit when we're ready to attach them to these brackets, but the first thing we need to do is head to the miter saw, and we're gonna miter the two ends.

That's gonna allow this to sit at a 45-degree angle.

Now that I have these braces cut to 45 degrees, what we need to do is create a notch.

Now, this notch is gonna fit over the ledger board that we attach to the wall.

And there's a couple of ways we could do this.

I could do it at the table saw, but that would require a tall fence and some creative clamping.

Instead, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this out with the bandsaw, and then we'll take a look and see how clean a cut it is.

And if it needs any additional cleanup, we'll do that at the bench with a router and a straight edge guide.

But I think this will be alright.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set the fence to create this long cut.

And then after I do that on both pieces, I'll remove the fence and I'll make this small cut to remove that waste.

I will also nip this lower corner here, just gonna square it off and it'll look a little bit cleaner once everything's installed.

Now, depending on how good your blade is on your bandsaw, that can leave a pretty smooth notch.

But if it is a little rough and needs a little cleaning up, no worries.

You can clean it up with a chisel or a block plane, but I find a rasp is the perfect tool for this.

You just kind of lay it flat... ...and you can remove any high spots or saw marks that are there.

Now, the final thing we have to do on these braces is to cut an angled dado in here, and the dado is angled so that when it's sitting on the ledger board, it creates a dado that we can slide a shelf in.

The shelf is gonna sit below the benchtop and just add a little bit of storage, which is always welcome at the workbench.

Now once again, I could cut this at the table saw, but this is an instance where I like to bring in a couple of fences... just scrap pieces of plywood, and I'll hold those in place with some double-sided tape, and then I'll use an off-cut from the shelf itself to set the width, and, bringing a router in, I can run this bearing on this dado cleanout bit along both sides of the fences to create an exact-width dado.

I could also nibble away that waste in the center with the same bit if we wanted.

But once I define the two edges, I'll honestly probably just remove those fences and then chisel away the waste with a chisel.

It'll take it out in some big chunks and it will work perfectly well.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, that brace is a good fit, and that kind of wraps these up till we're ready to attach them to the ledger board.

So, now we can concentrate on this top support.

And I have one of them ready here.

You can kind of see what this is.

We have the same two-layer thickness material, and there is a rabbet along the back edge.

This is to attach to the top ledger board.

There's also a chamfer on the front.

And everything will get attached to these supports just like so, but we'll do that once we're installing it on the wall.

To create this rabbet and this chamfer, I'm gonna bring in some hand tools.

I'm gonna kind of do this the same way that we did the dadoes, except instead of using a router to define it, I'm gonna use a handsaw, and I'll simply saw down this shoulder line down to the final depth... and then I'll chisel away the waste.

Then I will bring in the router with the fence to clean everything up.

Once I have that done, then I would go ahead and cut the chamfer.

I'll do that with a handsaw, marking out the chamfer, then sawing that away... and then I'll bring a block plane in just to kind of clean up that facet.

Now that we have those top supports done, we can go ahead and start assembling some of the base of this bench.

What I have here are these diagonal brackets attached to the bench with a couple of hand screws and clamps, just to hold them in place.

I've also clamped the shelf in place to space out these, and I've laid the ledger board in those notches.

What we have to do now is attach this ledger board, and I'm gonna do that using these cabinet-hanging screws -- they have a big head and they're fairly long.

And I'll pre-drill through this ledger board before I drive this screw in place.

That's gonna ensure that we don't have a trapped thread in between these two parts.

Then we'll just drive these in place, and I'm gonna drive them pretty deep so that the head recesses.

Alright.

Now that the ledger boards are in place, I'm gonna go ahead and get this workbench out of the way, and we'll look at installing this onto the wall.

Alright, so what I have done is we went ahead and did a little math to figure out exactly how tall we want this workbench.

And we decided to cut some spacers here to lift up this bottom ledger board on this trim.

Now it's just a simple matter of attaching it, and I attached it using these same kind of construction structural screws that have a large head on them so they're gonna have some good holding power.

But you do want to make sure that you get them into the studs.

So what I like to do is use rare earth magnets, kind of slide them around on the wall until I find one of those drywall screws that is attaching that drywall to the stud, and that has become my screw line.

Now, I also went ahead and attached this top ledger board.

So now at this point, with those two ledger boards attached... ...we can go ahead and start applying everything else.

That's gonna be these top supports here.

And then to add a little bit of support to the back edge... these fillers get placed between those guys and then little fillers on the ends.

There we go.

With those final screws in the top and the shelf in place, this is completely attached to the wall and it's ready for our workbench top.

But for that, I'm gonna turn it over to Phil.

♪♪ Now that we've gotten a good start on the project, I want to talk a little bit about the materials that we're working with.

We have just regular construction lumber that we picked up from the local lumber yard, home center.

And for these pieces, we wanted relatively wide parts because that's gonna be a better quality board.

It also means that around here in the Midwest, it's gonna be Douglas fir, which is a stronger, better-looking material.

As I'm working on the top, I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about how we prepare this material.

Step one is get it into your shop and then let it acclimate for a couple of weeks, because it's usually a lot wetter than the hardwood lumber that you'll find.

So you'll want to let it dry out a little bit and do any, uh, shrinking or distorting on its own before you get started on the project.

Next up, we wanted to evaluate how flat all the pieces are, so you can just use a small ruler across the boards like this.

You'll also see for these pieces which are gonna be on the top, we chose stuff that's pretty quartersawn, so the growth rings are nearly vertical all the way through here.

That's gonna be a more stable board.

It also has really straight grain on the surface.

So step one is to create a flat face if there isn't one, and that's why I'm here at the jointer.

I'm gonna make a pass or two to establish a smooth, clean edge along one of the faces.

From there, I'm gonna turn the piece up on its edge and then create a square edge to that flat face.

The next step is to convert this into its planar mode, and then run all of my pieces for the top through the planer so they're all a uniform thickness.

The final stage in our milling process with our construction lumber is to clean up the opposite side.

Now, you'll remember we jointed one edge over at the jointer, oddly enough.

Now to get it to final width, we'll cut the opposite edge here at the table saw.

Jointed edge goes against the rip fence.

I've set it to match the final dimension that I'm looking for.

And then you're just kind of plowing through all the cuts.

The last thing that I'll do is for the bottom layer, I need two narrow strips.

So I've set aside a wider board to cut those pieces from, and that'll be the last step before we get to assembly.

Using construction lumber for shop projects is a great way to save money and create rugged pieces.

Now, we took this time to make construction lumber look a lot less like construction lumber and look more like the boards that you'd use for furniture projects.

So what you see here are the pieces that I'm gonna use for the benchtop of our project -- all ready to go, and they look great.

And what I want to do now is spend a little bit of time in making sure that the appearance of our top matches its function.

So for example, the technique that I'm gonna use to create our benchtop is a lesser known yet still traditional technique that we want to pull out of the storehouse and dust off and use again here.

It's made up of two layers of material, so it's nice and thick and robust.

In order to do it, I'm gonna glue this benchtop up upside down.

So I have the boards for my top layer here face down on a set of sawhorses.

What I want is for the top to look great, so I took some time to look at all of the boards.

So for example, this one, there's a bunch of knots on this surface, but if I flip it over... they're very few and they're really small.

They're not gonna be as noticeable, so that face is gonna go down.

The other thing that I want to do is make sure that the front of the bench looks good too.

So, for example, on this piece, you'll notice that the -- on the end grain, the grain lines kind of start to veer off at 45 degrees or so.

The result is that I have straight edges on both the front edge and what will be the face of this board.

Again, maximizing and making sure that it looks its best, 'cause what I don't want is something like this board where we have like a flat sawn surface that creates kind of a really distracting visual appearance to it.

When it comes to gluing on the second layer, rather than having these all line up, uh, kind of like you would like a really old-style workbench, I want the second layer to glue on, but overlap the seam of the top layer.

That creates a narrow gap up at the front.

So I've cut a narrow piece that will fit in there, fit that space.

And, again, I took the time to find a grain pattern where I'm gonna have straight grain along the front edge here, so that this is gonna have a really appealing, not distracting, look to it.

Is it a lot to go through for a benchtop?

Maybe, but we do want this to look as good as possible.

My first step in the assembly process then is to apply some glue to that front edge.

Then I'll glue on that narrow strip, clamp it in place.

To keep the whole process moving along, I'm gonna drill and drive in some screws to secure the joint.

From there, I can clamp the first two strips of the top layer... apply some glue to the top surface... and glue on that overlapping piece.

You can see where I'm going here -- glue, clamps, and screws.

And then I can just keep working my way back along the whole process to get the whole top glued up.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, we got the workbench attached to the support structure here.

In order to get there, though, what we ended up doing after cutting it to final size is using a hand plane and a router with a flush trim bit, cleaned up the front and the back edges.

I also put a chamfer on all the exposed edges, just to keep them from splintering and to be something a little bit softer as you brush up against it.

We also wiped down a couple of coats of some tung oil in order to be able to give it a little bit of protection and to warm up the color of the Douglas fir that we have here.

Now we're ready to dress this up a little bit with some added features.

One thing that we've been lacking here in the Woodsmith Shop is easy access to a machinist vise.

Now, we've used one before with our other benches and just clamped it on as we needed, but we use metal enough around here that I wanted something ready to go all the time.

So we're mounting it over here on the right corner of this.

I'm setting it up so that the vise can be positioned to access it from the front or swiveling, being able to get at it from the end as well.

To lock it in place, I have some stout lag screws that I'm gonna drive in here.

These are big enough that you're gonna want to do a pilot hole first, so I'm gonna drill those out and then drive these in with a ratchet.

Another accessory that we want to add to the bench and is common on a lot of workbenches is some dog holes.

Usually those are used in conjunction with a face vise or an end vise.

We don't have those here, so I'm just gonna add a few dog holes in order to be able to use some hold downs and stops and other things like that.

Now, when you're drilling those, an important thing is to keep it, the hole, as perpendicular as possible.

So I'm going to use a drill guide.

And the other thing I want to talk about is the bit that you plan on using.

I'm starting off with a Forstner bit in here because they're usually a little bit more precision-ground, so it's more accurate to be exactly 3/4 of an inch.

Sometimes they work well in drilling holes through a benchtop.

Other times they can kind of bog down.

And with this drill guide, I'm gonna kind of bottom out on here.

So to finish the job, I'm gonna switch out to a spade bit.

These are those paddle-shaped bits that are pretty inexpensive.

You can find them pretty much anywhere.

Then because I'm that kind of woodworker and enjoy using hand tools, I'm also gonna drill a few of the dog holes with my brace and an auger bit.

They're pretty fun to use, and working with soft wood like this, the drilling process goes pretty quickly.

Again, with such a long bit and with the brace, it's really easy to be able to eyeball whether you're straight and square as you're drilling the hole through the benchtop.

Be careful as you get to the bottom side.

You can clamp a backer board.

Otherwise kind of be mindful of where the depth is so that when the bit comes through, you're not gonna get a huge amount of tear out.

It's on the underside of the workbench, but you don't want to get a splinter when you're wiping excess glue off your fingers.

♪♪ Just to clean things up on the bench dog holes, I used a countersink bit in my brace to put a little bit of a chamfer on the edge of all the bench dog holes.

Again, just to keep splintering when you're adding and removing accessories to the benchtop.

That's one of the best things about building a workbench like this one is that you have the freedom to modify it as you see fit.

We use soft wood for exactly that purpose.

In the Woodsmith Shop, we're gonna use this kind of as a backbench, a staging ground, a place for benchtop tools and other accessories that we need to use in the middle of all of our other projects.

How you use your workbench is entirely up to you, and feel free to modify it however you need to make it work for your shop.

Could this be a main bench or an auxiliary work surface is all up in the air and ready for you to explore.

If you're ready to build along with us, the plans for this workbench and the other two projects are at our website, woodsmithshop.com.

Don't forget, it's the place to find all kinds of inspiration for new projects, shop upgrades, shop-built tools and accessories to help you become a better woodworker.

And then we'll gather right back here to build another great project in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Announcer: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

♪♪ And by... Kreg, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪