Work Horses

This is a project I started 6 or 7 years ago, when we took down an old shed in the backyard at the house. I borrowed a thickness planer from a friend and planed a bunch of 2×4’s and 2×6’s, and glued them into rough pieces for a pair of work horses. These are like saw horses, but heavier, stiffer and when finished they will have work holding capability. That is, they will hold onto the wood for me so I can have both hands free to work the wood. They are essentially a small, portable tool bench.

That at least was the idea. However, I got side tracked by buying a farm, and since then it has kind of fallen off my radar. But with a house remodel coming up (hopefully), I am looking at having a lot of woodworking to do, and I will need a better portable workstation for it. So I pulled these out of the shed, and got back to work on them.

First step was milling the legs square and true. That was all done on the thickness planer and the table saw. I had already done the bench tops well enough for now.

Then I scribed and cut some mortises in the bench tops.

Legs are half-lapped at 10 degree angles, and tapped into place.

The tapping bit was fun.

Then joined with a stringer just underneath the bench top.

A second stringer a foot lower supports a tool shelf, which is just a scrap pine plank screwed down to the lower stringer.

You can tell which of these I did first by looking at the gaps in the joinery. I learned on the one on the right, and then did it better on the one on the left.

It’s a work horse, it doesn’t have to be pretty, but it does have to be strong.

Too tall, at the moment, It took some finagling to level them, by marking and cutting all the legs to the same length (36″ measured from the tabletop down the outside of the leg).

My shop hand.

Once the holdfasts arrive, I’ll install those and then they will be complete.