Found Dreaming

I have been away a while and the photos will show you why. Every spare moment while I have been putting in 60 hours per week at work has been eaten up by my new workbench project. I needed more storage space than my previous workbench allowed. Out it went and in went this new bench. It was a lot of work but will pay dividends in time saved cleaning from here on out.

Barry

nice bench I bet you already got the drawers mostly full

WOW that's way to clean it looks great

Mike

Barry, that is awesome... Now to build a mental map of whats where

HOLY KEEEEE-RRRAAAP!!!! I NEED SOMETH'N LIKE THAT!!! Saw a video on "Woodsmith Shop" program (some cable chanel) where they offered a pattern (free) to build something identical to that outta Heavy Duty Plywood. I was almost smitten enough to opt to do that (of course gotta factor in all the time it would take to do it after work each evening), but that, there, looks far more worthy and durable considering the bulk of tooling I have to containerize and separate. How much did them tool chests run ya and where'd you get'em? Assembly required?

Here you go FC, the tag is on the other side on this one but it is a 13 drawer US general so I would guess it is the same. At $399 each that comes to 2 G's, not cheap but then you wouldnt expect nearly 75 draws to cheap and honestly it would be easy to spend that on a single box. They sometimes go on sale and HF always has 20% off coupons for a single item... sounds like five trips to the store to me

How much did the bowling alley cost for on top??

Thank you everybody for the kind comments. Sorry I have not been here in a while. The cabinets are indeed the $399 ones from Harbor Freight which were on sale for $359 each. So I bought six of them. Five boxes made the bench and the sixth still has the casters on and holds up the mortising machine, 12 inch sheet metal combo machine, and the Atlas bench model Drill Press. It was a ton of work getting them in place because they weigh 320 pounds each. I have a chain hoist in my car port that allowed me to hoist each box out of the bed of the truck then drive the truck out from under it. Next I drug each box on a convertible hand truck into the workshop. In the workshop I hoisted them off the hand truck using a come along from the ceiling rafters to get the damn hand truck out. Once the crating was off the boxes, they had to be tipped up on end to remove the casters which were not very well tightened at the factory.

Then because my workshop floor slopes so badly I had to make feet for each cabinet staring with a 4X8 on the highest end and 2X4 on the shortest. Once the feet were on, the box was tipped onto its feet and maneuvered into position using a floor jack and hand truck. Then a level was laid across the 2X6 ledger I had attached to the wall which was level across the 24 foot length of the wall. Measurements were made for left front, left rear, right front and right rear. The cabinet was again tipped up, the feet removed and cut on the bandsaw to the appropriate height. Then the feet were re-installed, the box tipped back down and put into final position. That took a week to do five cabinets.

Next 3/4 particle board was cut for each cabinet top and then all boxes were tied together with 1 1/4 plywood as the bench top. Then I installed some inexpensive laminate flooring on top of the plywood and made a custom edge treatment from solid maple. The maple was biscuit joined to the front of the plywood and flooring top and clamped with 80 C clamps.

This whole process was a pain in my ass, but now it is finished and will not have to be messed with in my lifetime.

I may make one more bench like this along another wall just to hold up my Atlas metal shaper and Horizontal Milling Machine. Not sure yet.

This may seem extravagant, but it is really quite affordable considering what it does. It is an enormous amount of drawer space which will help to eliminate a lot of clutter in my tiny shop. This was WAY cheaper than building a larger shop. The drawers are still empty, but I have a 15 foot shelving unit in my shop that can now go away. Then they will be full. I will have to label each drawer because I am already sick of opening 75 drawers to find something.

Since those pictures were made I have re-installed the dust collector shroud over the miter saw.

Thanks again for the nice comments.

Barry

A good chunk of money and a ton of work but awesome results. Nothing but envy from this side of the room

Yeah dude! It looks significantly more commendable and sturdy recognizing the majority of tooling I need to containerize and differentiate. What amount of did them apparatus midsections run ya and where'd you get'em? Get together needed?

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