%!$ Easy Diy Woodworking Bench Plans For You #!@

diy-woodworking-bench-top-66 The ultimate L-shaped woodworking bench is easier to build than you realize. Find out how by reading our guide.  The excellent thing about making your own woodworking bench is that you can determine the height. For most benches, the rest somewhere in between 28” to 38” tall. You want the bench to measure along your lower abdomen, so if you have another set of hands to help you, measure from the top of your head to about your belt.  We built ours with a 2” thick board of oak on top of wooden boards to account for cost, while still making it sturdy. If costs are tight right now, use an inexpensive wood like pine or plywood to make a 1” thick bench, and you can always sand it down and apply another 1” layer of wood at a later date. DIY 6 ft Woodworking Bench. From Ricky, Firstly thank you for providing such good plans.  Sanded rough edges & gave a couple coats of stain to the top and top frame. Took about my old broken workbench and fixed to the end of the bench to use as a vice. I am so pleased and my wife and sons can’t believe the result. Many many thanks. Top Quick & Cool Woodworking Projects for Beginners. Many people get too cocky when it comes to DIYs—they take on huge projects too early and they end up failing or hiring a professional to do it instead. Non-reliable sources may be at fault when they provide “beginner projects” that are actually not beginner-friendly.  Upholstered X-Bench isntructions. Bamboo Wind Chime. Teapot/Hotpot Stand.  A DIY woodworking project may be pretty intimidating, especially for people who don’t have a clue when to use a chainsaw, table saw, or which wood to use. Woodworking skills and power tools are sometimes really complicated, especially when used to build a project in your backyard. Since I did have a jig saw, I used it. Finally a nice sanding to make sure everything was nice and smooth. Lesson learned? The "Getting Started in Woodworking" video diy woodworking bench top 66 has an episode on dyi oil-and-wax finishes, that includes steps such as wetting the wood, and then sanding down the raised grain. We are rear This was the job I was simultaneously excited about and also dreading! Gazarino fillnflash Reply 2 years ago.

To get the rigidity and weight of a hard wood without having to be overly concerned with damaging an expensive worktop, you might consider attaching an MDF or plywood layer to the top of a hard wood base. This layer can be sanded down or replaced as required. For a flat surface it is recommended to attach the plywood layer from underneath the bench rather than drilling down from the top.

An alternative to using a hard wood for the base layer in this set up is to use a hollow wood door. These can be picked up relatively cheaply in a home improvement store.

We welcome your comments and suggestions. All information is provided "AS IS. All rights reserved. You may freely link to this site, and use it for non-commercial use subject to our terms of use. View our Privacy Policy here. Toggle navigation subscribe. Written by Doityourself Staff. To ensure our content is always up-to-date with current information, best practices, and professional advice, articles are routinely reviewed by industry experts with years of hands-on experience.

Rebecca Hollada. Related Posts Best material for workbench back.? I have a workbench whose top is 2 ft x 4ft x 1. We are rear Read More. Rubberized undercoating on wood. I'm nearly finished building a workbench in my basement. The workbench wil DIY coffee table: wood recommendations?

We have a coffee table in our living room. I love the functionality of the Garage Overhaul - Seeking Advice. Hi guys and gals! Completely new to the forum here but hoping to get some a Christiana's design was a simplification of a bench from Sam Allen's book ''Making Workbenches''.

The bench I will be describing differs from both of these in a couple of areas, the most significant of which is the top. My top is more expensive in both time and money than either Christiana's or Allen's.

If you're looking to build something fast and cheap, I'd recommend Allen's approach over Christiana's. The hardboard significantly increases the durability of the top. The essence of the design is a joinery system using threaded rod that provides a great deal of strength and rigidity. The base is formed with 4x4 legs and 2x4 stretchers, connected with dowels and threaded truss rods. As screws are tightened down at each end of the rods, the structure is pulled together forming a rigid unit.

I am new to woodworking. I'm learning as I go along, and I'm documenting as I learn, in the hope of being helpful to other novices. On the range from slap-dash to deliberate, my method is definitely on the deliberate side. If you have enough experience to be confident in using techniques that are more time-efficient, go for it.

The techniques I'm using are those I thought least likely to go wrong, not those that would produce a product in the shortest time or at the lowest cost. You'll notice that I made a number of mistakes, spent considerable time on work I later determined to be unnecessary, and in a number of cases I used different techniques at the end than I did at the beginning.

These are all the result of learning. I thought it would be better to demonstrate how I made errors, and how I corrected them, than to provide a set of instructions that presented the false impression that everything went together perfectly. The bench is built from construction-grade lumber, of the sort you can buy at any home center or lumber yard. I built mine from the same.

There is nothing that says you can't use better material. Better wood costs more, but you don't need all that much of it. If you decide upon construction lumber, you want kiln dry lumber.

Green lumber will warp on you as it drys. Dig through the stacks and pick out the straightest, cleanest pieces. Generally, the boards that are sitting loose on the stack are those that other people left behind, as they sorted through looking for better. Be prepared to move them out of the way, and to dig down to the better stock.

Be nice, though, and put everything back when you're done. For the base: The base is made of four legs, four short stretchers, and four long stretchers.

The legs are 4x4's, roughly three feet long, the stretchers are made of 2x4's, the short are two feet long and the long are four feet long. I bought four pieces of six-foot length, and cut them down. For the top: Christiana's design uses three pieces of MDF - one two-feet by four-feet for the shelf, and two two-feet by five-feet to laminate the top.

These can be cut from a single 49x97" panel. Stack it flat, and leave it for a week or so to adjust to the shop's temperature and humidity. According to the "Getting Started in Woodworking" video, you can build this bench with only a few basic tools - a drill, a circular saw, and a hand-held router. This isn't quite true. First, there are a number of tasks involved in building this workbench that can be done faster, easier, and with more precision, on more sophisticated tools.

If you have a miter saw, a table saw, a drill press, or a router table, you will definitely want to use them. Second, if you do build this with a drill, a circular saw, and a hand-held router, you will need a few jigs and fixtures, and some specialized bits. And there are some places where other hand tools would make things easier.

In addition to the drill, circ-saw, and router, I used a belt sander, a random orbital palm sander, and a jig saw. Plus a screwdriver, a wrench, a hacksaw, and other miscellany. For the drill, I ended up purchasing a Wolfcraft drill guide.

I cannot. For the saw you'll need a crosscut blade and a plywood blade. Some routers are capable of using multiple collet sizes. More on that, later. And you'll need a workbench. I know, if you had a workbench, you wouldn't be building a workbench. Even so, you'll need some sort of work surface, even if it isn't as stable or capable as a proper bench.

The traditional solution is to throw a hollow-core door over a couple of saw horses. The advantage of hollow core doors is that they're flat, stiff, and cheap. I used a folding table and a hollow core door I had bought for a future project.

If the table is to be square and flat, the cuts must be straight and square. A table saw would be ideal. I don't have a table saw, so I need a cutting guide for my circular saw. And since I didn't have one of those, either, I made one. Or rather, three. These guides are like every pretty much every other one anyone has made - two pieces of whatever flat panel material is convenient -- a thin one that the shoe of the saw rides on, and one that provides the edge that guides the saw.

My first attempt at making a cutting guide didn't work. What I ended up with worked fine for cutting panels, but the guide-strip was too narrow, and when the saw was extended fully for rough-cutting the 4x4's the clamp heads got in the way.

So I made another. Actually, I made two more, so that I could cut one into shorter pieces that would be easier to handle. Making the cutting guide: Use whatever panel goods are convenient. You want the base to be thin, and the guide strip to be straight. There are two critical dimensions.

The guide strip needs to be at least as wide as the distance the saw motor overhangs from the edge of the saw's shoe, plus a couple of inches for the clamps. This is where I made the mistake in my first attempt. Since I was working with a 24" wide sheet, I just sliced it down the middle.

I used the factory edge of the half-panel of hardboard as a guide for cutting the ply. So I set my combination square to 10", and used it to mechanically set the distance. Hint - if you need two things to be precisely the same length, try to avoid measuring them separately.

Use some mechanical mechanism for setting the distance. These sorts of things are usually glued and screwed, but it's actually the glue that holds them together - the screws just hold everything tight while the glue cures. It would have been a bit easier, if I'd done this before I'd rough-cut the 4x4's, but it worked out. The next day, I used the 4x4s, again, to support them along their length, then ran the saw down them to cut them to match the width of the shoe.

Then I cut one of them into shorter pieces, and I had a workable set of edge guides. Because my base was originally 12" wide, after I'd trimmed it to match the saw, I ended up with a strip of hardboard roughly 2" wide - which proved useful in making a number of pads for keeping my clamps from denting my work pieces.

The first step of actually building the workbench is to cut to length the lumber for the base. The original design used a base that was 24" wide and 48" long. To go larger than that you need a second sheet of MDF. I ended up building mine 23x48". I want a height of 35", but I'm using a top that's 3" thick. If you're not using levelers, your legs need precise lengths. Layout the legs so as to minimize the number of knots, splits, or other flaws.

Pencil the cut lines, and mark which side of the cut line is to be scrap. We want to make these pieces square, and of identical length. Square is a matter of making sure the saw blade is square and that the cutting guide is square. The trick to getting the pieces of the same length is to clamp them together and to cut them all at once.

For the 4x4's, that means making a rough cut in each first, so we have four pieces, each " longer than we need, from which we'll get our four legs. The rough cuts: There's no real need to make these rough cuts with the cutting guide on the 4x4's clamped together, but I did so anyway, just for practice.

This revealed that with my first attempt at edge guides, the clamps would get in the way of the saw motor, when making a deep cut. That's why we make practice cuts.

In all, it wasn't until my fourth cut that I was satisfied. With my second attempt at edge guides, I made the other rough-cut. On this, the edge guide worked fine, but the end of the cuts revealed that the saw blade wasn't quite square.

So I adjusted the blade, clamped all four legs together, and made what would be the first final cut, if it came out clean enough. It didn't. I'd let the saw drift a bit away from the guide edge.

So I adjusted the saw, moving the guide back half an inch, and tried again. It's only the final cut at the other end that you only have one chance at. How clean and how square these cuts need to be is entirely up to you. The cleaner the cut, the tighter the joints will hold together, and the squarer the cuts the squarer the entire bench will be. The final cuts: When you are satisfied with the cut on one end, flip all four legs -- still clamped together -- and measure and cut the other end.

If you support them on the scrap pieces of 4x4, you can do this without moving the clamps. With the 2x4's. Layout on each 2x4 the best location for a 16" short stretchers and a 41" long stretcher.

Line up the marks for outside end of the short stretcher, clamp the 2x4's together, clamp the assembly to the table, clamp your edge guide, and cut. If the cut is clean, reposition the edge guide to 16" and cut again. Cut the long stretchers the same way. The next step is to route the grooves that the threaded rods will pass through. A router table would be best tool for this.

I don't have a router table, I used a hand-held router with an edge guide. There are a number of tricks to using a router. First, the bit spins in a clockwise direction, as you look down at the router from the top. This means that when you cut with the router from left to right, the bit will tend to pull the router away from you, and when you route from right to left, the router will pull towards you.

So, if you're hooking the edge guide along the near side of the board, route from left to right, and when you're hooking it along the far side of the board, route from right to left. Second, always test the position of your bit on scrap material. Your odds of getting it exactly right by eye are nil. I ended up making a number of practice cuts. The first revealed that I hadn't tightened the screws on the edge guide enough.

The second revealed that the design of the edge guide provided very little support at the end of a board, because of the cut-out for the router bit. In the "Getting Started in Woodworking" video, they had screwed a piece of hardwood to the edge-guide, to provide a continuous -- and longer -- bearing surface.

I may do that myself, some day, but I didn't have the materials at hand, so I clamped some 2x4 scrap to the end of each board, to provide a continuous bearing surface past the ends. The two grooves in the long stretchers and the side groove in the short stretchers have identical layout. I made practice cuts in scrap until I had the edge guide set correctly, then I cut them all with that one setting.

The bottom groove of the short stretchers uses a different setup, so it was back to the scrap, before cutting them. As I was handling the 2x4's, during the routing, I realized that I really wouldn't be happy with the look of the bench, if it were made from these unfinished boards.

They had stamps, pencil marks, and more importantly, incipient splinters left by the saw, none of which I wanted. And I was remembering what other shop furniture made from unfinished pine had looked like, after a few years in the grime of a shop.

So I determined to clean up the boards, to remove the stamps and splinters, and to prep for a finish of some type. There's only the one picture for this step, but it was by far the most time-consuming. I used the hand screws again, to hold the pieces.

I used a belt sander to remove the surface problems, then used a small random-orbital sander to remove scratches left by the belt sander. In total, it required five passes - 50 and 80 grit on the belt sander, , , and grit on the orbital. My advice? Don't do this. If you have jointer and a planer, use them. If you don't, seriously consider using dimensional lumber that has already been planed and sanded.

If you are going to try to clean up construction lumber by hand, using a hand plane is a lot faster and more pleasant than using a belt sander. Except, of course, that to do a good job of planing a board you need a solid bench to hold the board, and you don't have a bench, yet. Me, I'm stubborn, and nearly always insist on doing things the hard way. Now that we have parts, we'll take some of them -- two legs and two short stretchers -- and make our first trestle.

Matching up the parts Not every part and not every cut will be perfect. Match up your parts so that the less-than-perfect parts are in less-than-critical locations. The top is supported by the top ends of the legs and the top sides of the top stretchers.

Stand your legs on end on a flat surface like my door and see if they wobble. If you have an end that isn't quite stable, use it as a foot, where the leveler will make it's flaws unimportant. Check the top edge of each stretcher for straightness.

If one has a bit of a bow, use it for a lower stretcher. It's less critical that the shelf be well supported along its length. Do a trial layout to see how the parts fit together. Label each part to indicate which part joins with which. Mark the holes The holes we want to mark are the holes through which the threaded rod connecting the two legs will run.

The hole for the upper stretcher has to be positioned so that when the rod is running through this groove, the top of the short stretcher is even with the top of the legs. The most precise way I've found for marking the position of this hole is to use a dowel center. Fit the dowel center into the bottom groove, line up the stretcher, and bang on the end with a rubber mallet.

The dowel center will leave a mark indicating the center of the hole. The precise position of the lower stretcher is less critical. I marked out a position 8" from the end of the legs. Drill the holes In the "Getting Started with Woodworking" video, the holes through the 4x4's were drilled from the back. That is, they start on the side opposite the precisely-positioned mark, and drill through to hit it.

I drilled from the mark. That way I could ensure that the hole was where it was supposed to be, on the side where the position was critical. Brad-point bits are far more precise than twist bits -- they're more likely to start where you want them to, and they're more likely to stay straight. So I started each hole with the brad-point bit, then finished it off with the twist bit. I clamped a piece of ply on the back, to reduce tear-out.

When the holes were complete, I flipped the legs and drilled the countersinks with a 1" Forstner bit. Trying to drill a countersink when the center was already drilled would be impossible with a spade bit or an auger, but Forstner bits are guided by their edges, not their center, so they can handle this job.

On thing about Forstners, though -- they have a tendency to skitter around a bit when starting, before they bite. An easy fix for this is to drill a hole through a piece of ply, and to clamp that to your work, creating a jig that will prevent the bit from drilling in the wrong spot. The countersinks should be deep enough to hold a nut and washer, plus a little bit. These stretchers already have a groove running their length, centered on the bottom edge.

Precise placement isn't necessary, but keeping track of which part is which is. We need a hole in each end of each stretcher. Take care to keep these holes square, you don't want them running at angles. Mark the leg dowel holes Lay a leg flat on your work surface, with the countersink side of the thru-holes down. Stick a piece of threaded rod in each hole.

Take a stretcher that is marked to have one end adjoin the top of this leg, stick a dowel center in its dowel hole, line it up against the leg, using the threaded rod for positioning, You want the top of the stretcher to be even with the top of the leg, or just slightly above it.

Give the end of the stretcher a whack with your rubber mallet. This will leave a mark indicating where the matching dowel hole in the leg needs to be drilled. Repeat with the lower stretcher than adjoins this leg.

Then repeat for the other leg that will form this trestle, and the other ends of the two stretchers. Drill the leg dowel holes When you have both legs for this stretcher marked, drill the other dowel holes at the marks.

Again, take care to make the holes square. A board jack is mechanism to provide support to long boards that are being held in the vise. These can be quite sophisticated, involving parts that can be moved both horizontally and vertically. The simplest mechanism is simply to stick a dowel into a hole drilled into the front of your bench.

The "Getting Started in Woodworking" video showed only one hole, drilled in the right front leg, level with the vise. This is useful only for a narrow range of boards. I decided to drill holes at four different heights in each of the front legs, six inches apart. The Jig Drilling a precisely positioned, deep, wide hole isn't easy, without a drill press.

So I bought a WolfCraft drill guide. After experimenting with it, and drilling some test holes, I build a jig around it. To mark the centerline, set a compass to span something more than half the width of the leg. Draw an arc from corner of the leg. The point where the arcs intersect will be on the centerline. With a centerline point on each end of the leg, place a scribe on the point, slide a straightedge up to touch the scribe.

Do the same on the other end. When you have the straightedge positioned so that you can touch both points with the scribe, and in each case it is touching the straightedge - without moving the straightedge - scribe the line. Use scribes, rather than pencils or pens, because they make more precise marks.

Then mark the second hole on the centerline, six inches below the first. Repeat for the other two holes. To precisely set the span of the compass, use a rule with etched markings, and set the points of the compass into the etched grooves.

Place a centerpunch on each of your four points in turn, and press down to make an indentation. This will mark the center of the hole. Drilling the holes Because of the depth of the holes, drilling each hole became a four step process: 1. Flip the leg, position the jig, and finish the hole off with the Forstner bit.

This gives a clean exit. The top hole on each does not extend through, and only steps 1 and 2 are necessary. If you bought 6' lengths, cut off two 24" long lengths.

On one end of each, place a washer and a nut. Screw on the nut only half way, you don't want the end of the rod protruding. Thread the rods through one of the legs, then set the leg flat on the table. Insert dowels into the dowel holes.

Place the matching stretchers into place. Put dowels into the dowel holes at the top end of the stretchers. Place the other leg onto the threaded rod and settle it down onto the dowels. You'll probably have another opportunity to whack away with your rubber mallet.

When you have the other leg seated, the threaded rods will extend father than you want them to. You'll want to mark them so they can be cut to length. Place a washer and a nut on each threaded rod, and then tighten down the nut to pull everything tight. Depending upon the wrench you are using, and how much longer the rod is than it needs to be, you may find it necessary to stack up a number of washers, so that the nut is positioned where the wrench can operate on it.

Once you have pulled everything tight. You want to cut it slightly below flush. Then take everything apart. Cutting the rods There's nothing very tricky about cutting the rods. Clamp them to your temporary table, and cut them off with a hacksaw. Make sure you're using a sharp blade.

While you're setting up the clamps,. The hacksaw will often damage the last thread when it cuts. Running a nut off the end will fix this. You'll have to run the nut all the way down from the other end. This doesn't take long, if you chuck up the rod in your drill and let it do the work. Hold the rod vertically, with the drill pointing down, and just hold on to the nut enough to keep it from spinning.

Assembly When you have the rods cut to length, put everything together the way you did before, and you'll have your first trestle. Repeat the same process for the second trestle, and then for long stretchers to assemble the base Once the stretchers and legs have been connected, flip the assembly upside down, and install the levelers.

Then flip it back upright. Next is the shelf. Start with the 24x48" piece of MDF. Clamp this on top of the base, and pencil in the outside of the stretchers and the inside angle of the legs.

Flip it over, pull out your trusty cutting guide, and cut it to width and to length. Cutting out the angles is simple, with a jig saw. It's not much work with a hand saw. If you took enough care with supporting blocks and stops, you could probably do it with a circular saw. Since I did have a jig saw, I used it. I'd decided on an oil-and-wax finish. Oil finishes are by no means the toughest.

In fact, they're really rather pathetic, so far as protecting the wood goes. But they're easy to apply, and not even the toughest finish will stand up to the abuse that a workbench will suffer, so it's more important that it be easy to repair.

Wax is usually used to add a high gloss. On a bench, it's there to keep glue from sticking. And then decided that the oil alone would be sufficient for the base. The wax serves to give the surface a gloss which I see no need for , and to make it easier to remove spilled glue and paint which I also see no need for, on the base. So I oiled the base and oiled and waxed the top. The "Getting Started in Woodworking" video series has an episode on applying oil-and-wax finishes, that includes steps such as wetting the wood, and then sanding down the raised grain.

All of this seemed excessive, for something that I was going to put in my basement and bang on with a hammer. I made a low table out of a couple of step-stools, my hollow-core door, and one of the MDF panels that would eventually form part of my top. I was concerned that any oil that dripped on the door might interfere with its glue adhesion, when I finally get around to the project for which I'd purchased it. The top side of the top sheet of MDF, though, I planned to oil, anyway.

Ditto for the bottom side of the bottom sheet. Putting the base up on this temporary table put it an a more convenient height than it would have been on the floor or on a full-height table. Applying the oil is easy. Put on some vinyl gloves, pour some oil in a bowl, take a piece of clean cotton cloth the size of washcloth or smaller, dip it in the oil, and apply it to the wood. You want the wood to be wet.

Apply oil to the entire surface, and then go over it looking for dry spots, applying more oil as needed. After fifteen minutes of keeping it wet, let it sit for another fifteen minutes. Then apply another coat of oil, and let it sit for another fifteen minutes. Rub it dry. Wait half-an-hour, and then wipe dry any oil has seeped out. Check it every half hour and do the same, for a couple of hours. The next day, apply another coat, wait half an hour, then wipe it dry.

Do the same on successive days for as many coats as you think are necessary. I applied three. Remember those fire safety tips you used to get in grade school, about the dangers of oily rags? It was linseed oil they were talking about. All oily rags are dangerously flammable. Linseed oil will self-combust. Linseed oil doesn't evaporate, it oxidizes. The oxidization generates heat, and the increased temperature increases the rate of oxidation.

Linseed oil sitting in a bowl, or spread on the surface of wood, is perfectly safe. But a linseed oil soaked rag provides a vastly increase surface area, so the oxidation happens faster, and the rag can provide insulation, trapping the heat. The increased temperature speeds up the oxidation even more, which raises the temperature even more, and the runaway feedback can quickly result in temperatures that will cause the rag to spontaneously burst into flame.

This isn't one of those "do not drive car while sunscreen is in place" warnings. This is one of those "keep your finger off the trigger until you have the gun pointed at something you want to shoot" warnings.

Rags soaked in linseed oil will catch fire, if you don't handle them properly, and they can do so far more quickly than you might think. Hang them up outside, away from anything combustible, and where there's enough air circulation to keep them cool. Or put them in a bucket of water, and hang them outside later.

If you're just setting a rag down for the moment, set it out flat, without folds, on something non-flammable. Hanging outside in the breeze, the oil in the rags won't retain heat while they oxidize. For the oil to completely oxidize can take in a couple of days, if it's warm, or more than a week, if it's cold and rainy.

When fully oxidized, the oil will be solid and the rags will be stiff. At that point, they're safe, and can be thrown in the trash. Toss them in the trash before that, and you might as well say goodbye to your garage.

Before you start cutting or drilling the pieces that will make up the top, determine the layout of the top. This should include the dimensions of the MDF, the dimensions of the edging, the locations of the vises, and of the screws or bolts that will support the vises, and of all of the benchdog holes and of all of the drywall screws you will use to laminate the panels, If you don't lay it all out in advance, you could easily find that you have a bolt where you need to put a benchdog hole, or something of the sort.

I sketched out ideas on graph paper, then drew Portable Woodworking Bench Diy Mac the plan full-size on the top side of the bottom layer of MDF, using the actual parts as templates. The width of the top is determined by the width of the base. The length of the top depends upon the vise or vises you uses. The end vise I had purchased was intended to be used with hardwood jaws that extend the width of the bench.

I had a piece of 2x6" white oak I intended to cut down for the purpose. The decision to be made with respect to the end vise is whether the support plate should be mounted to on the inside or on the outside of the stretcher. Mounting the plate on the inside of the stretcher reduces the reach of the vise - it can't open as far, because the support plate is back from the edge by a couple of inches. But mounting the plate on the outside of the stretcher means that we need to add some support structure for the inner jaw of the vise, which the legs would have provided if we'd mounted the plate on the inside.

I mocked up the two scenarios, and determined that with the plate inside the stretcher the vise would have a reach of 8 inches, and with it outside the stretcher it would have a reach of 9 inches. I decided that 8 inches was enough, and that the extra inch wasn't worth the extra effort.

With the end vise mounted like this, the right edge of the top would have no overhang. I wanted the left edge of the jaw of the front vise to be flush with the left edge of the top, the right edge with the left edge of the left front leg. So the amount of overhang on the left depends upon the width of the front vise jaw.

The width of the jaw is, at a minimum, the width of the plate that supports it, but it's normal to make the jaw extend a bit beyond the plate. How far? The more it extends, the deeper a bite you can take with the edge of the vise, when, for example, you are clamping the side of a board being held vertically. But the more it extends, the less support it has. What you need to determine, by this drawing, is where you need to drill the dog holes, the mounting holes for the vises, and where you will put the drywall screws you'll be using for the lamination.

As well as where the edges of the top will be cut. The next step is to laminate the two sheets of MDF that will make up the lower layers of the top. First, trim the MDF to slightly oversize. You'll want room to clean up the edges after the pieces are joined, but you don't need more than a half-an-inch on each side for that, and there's no point in wasting glue. If you're lucky enough to have a vacuum press, use that. Otherwise drill holes for the screws in the bottom layer at all the points you had indicated in your layout.

You'll also want to either drill a row of screws around the outside edge, in the bit you're going to trim off, or you'll need clamps all around the edge. I just added more screws. The screw holes should have sufficient diameter that the screws pass through freely. You want the screw to dig into the second layer and to pull it tight against the first.

If the threads engage both layers, they will tend to keep them at a fixed distance. If you're using drywall screws, you'll want to countersink the holes. Drywall screws are flat-head, and need a countersink to seat solidly.

If you're using Kreg pocket screws, the way I did, you won't want to counter-sink the holes. Kreg screws are pan-head, and seat just fine against a flat surface. Both drywall screws and Kreg pocket screws are self-threading, so you don't need pilot holes in the second sheet of MDF.

Regardless of which type of screw you use, you'll need to flip the panel and use a countersink drill to on all of the exit holes. Drilling MDF leaves bumps, the countersink bit will remove them, and will create a little bit of space for material drawn up by the screw from the second sheet of MDF. You want to remove anything that might keep the two panels from mating up flat.

I set a block plane to a very shallow bite and ran it over what was left of the bumps and over the edges. The edges of MDF can be bulged by by sawing or just by handling, and you want to knock that down. After you have all the holes clean, set things up for your glue-up.

You want everything on-hand before you start - drill, driver bit, glue, roller or whatever you're going to spread the glue with, and four clamps for the corners.

You'll need a flat surface to do the glue-up on - I used my hollow core door on top my bench base - and another somewhat-flat surface to put the other panel on. My folding table was still holding my oak countertop, which makes a great flat surface, but I want to make sure I didn't drip glue on it so I covered it with some painters plastic that was left over from the last bedroom we painted.

Put the upper panel of MDF on your glue-up surface, bottom side up. Put the bottom panel of MDF on your other surface, bottom side down. The panel with the holes drilled in it is the bottom panel, and the side that has the your layout diagram on it is the bottom side.

Chuck up in your drill the appropriate driver bit for the screws your using. Make sure you have a freshly-charged battery, and crank the speed down and the torque way down. You don't want to over-tighten the screws, MDF strips easily.

Once you start spreading glue, you have maybe five minutes to get the two panels mated, aligned, and clamped together. So make sure you have everything on-hand, and you're not gong to be interrupted. Start squeezing out the glue on one MDF panel, and spreading it around in a thin, even coating, making sure you leave no bare areas.

Then do the same to the other MDF panel.

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