Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 2Getting started: anchor to walls
When you are beating on a piece of angle iron in your vice to shape it for a new bike or siege weapon, you don't want the workbench that the vice is attached to to hop around the room so that you have to chase it while swinging your hammer wildly and cursing like a longshoreman. The answer to such a dilemma as any good seaman could tell you is proper anchoring.
Generally a workbench is required in an area suitable for working in a messy manner. A garage or basement for example. Such places have walls. These walls are usually tied securely to or comprise a foundation of some type. Thus, these walls can be thought of as structurally fixed and strong. What better place to anchor a workbench? That's right, no better place!
Furthermore, your workbench will probably be rectangular, and will benefit from being placed in a corner such that two of the four sides can be anchored. Since you can't work at all sides of your rectangular workbench at once, securing it to the walls of your garage/workshop on two sides will result in minimal impact on the workbench's utility.
Lastly, the floor on which the workbench stands is also most likely fairly structurally sound and can also serve as an anchor point for your ideal workbench. Now that you have the idea, we can get started.
In the presented example, I will show the process for building a workbench into the corner of a timber framed garage. The first step is to locate the studs. Use a studfinder or otherwise visually identify the fasteners to locate the framing members. Then decide on the height of your workbench. Be sure to take the thickness of the bench top (1" in this case) into account. I set my workbench bottom edge at 36" so that my rolling toolboxes could fit under it. That meant that the final top working height was around 40.5" which is a nice convenient height for me. Depending on your height and other considerations you may adjust the height accordingly.
The first step once you find your studs and decide on a height is to mark your wall and cut your 2x4s to length. You will need two short pieces of the same length and two long pieces of the same length so that you end up with a rectangle in the end. In the photo below you can see that you need 2 pieces of lumber to attach to the wall. Take a short piece (in my case 26") and a long piece (in my case 92") of 2x4 lumber and attach them to the wall into the marked studs with 3" wood or general purpose/drywall screws. Put in a screw at one end, and then move to the other end and use a level to ensure that the lumber is attached to the wall level. Put two screws into each stud. If your wall is sheathed in plywood like in the picture, you can use shorter screws and screw anywhere you want since the plywood is already attached to the studs.
In the picture below you can see that I have also attached the matching short length of 2x4 to the end of the long stud and secured the leg to support the right side stud. These two short pieces will be connected to define the rectangle of the workbench. The leg is made from two sections of 2x4 scrap. One cut to the height of the bench and screwed to the side of the short side stud (pictured) and one that is trimmed to exactly fill the gap between the short side stud and the floor while maintaining level. The second piece is not attached until the end so is not pictured. Also you can see the beginnings of the diagonal bracing that will give the workbench its strength.
Generally a workbench is required in an area suitable for working in a messy manner. A garage or basement for example. Such places have walls. These walls are usually tied securely to or comprise a foundation of some type. Thus, these walls can be thought of as structurally fixed and strong. What better place to anchor a workbench? That's right, no better place!
Furthermore, your workbench will probably be rectangular, and will benefit from being placed in a corner such that two of the four sides can be anchored. Since you can't work at all sides of your rectangular workbench at once, securing it to the walls of your garage/workshop on two sides will result in minimal impact on the workbench's utility.
Lastly, the floor on which the workbench stands is also most likely fairly structurally sound and can also serve as an anchor point for your ideal workbench. Now that you have the idea, we can get started.
In the presented example, I will show the process for building a workbench into the corner of a timber framed garage. The first step is to locate the studs. Use a studfinder or otherwise visually identify the fasteners to locate the framing members. Then decide on the height of your workbench. Be sure to take the thickness of the bench top (1" in this case) into account. I set my workbench bottom edge at 36" so that my rolling toolboxes could fit under it. That meant that the final top working height was around 40.5" which is a nice convenient height for me. Depending on your height and other considerations you may adjust the height accordingly.
The first step once you find your studs and decide on a height is to mark your wall and cut your 2x4s to length. You will need two short pieces of the same length and two long pieces of the same length so that you end up with a rectangle in the end. In the photo below you can see that you need 2 pieces of lumber to attach to the wall. Take a short piece (in my case 26") and a long piece (in my case 92") of 2x4 lumber and attach them to the wall into the marked studs with 3" wood or general purpose/drywall screws. Put in a screw at one end, and then move to the other end and use a level to ensure that the lumber is attached to the wall level. Put two screws into each stud. If your wall is sheathed in plywood like in the picture, you can use shorter screws and screw anywhere you want since the plywood is already attached to the studs.
In the picture below you can see that I have also attached the matching short length of 2x4 to the end of the long stud and secured the leg to support the right side stud. These two short pieces will be connected to define the rectangle of the workbench. The leg is made from two sections of 2x4 scrap. One cut to the height of the bench and screwed to the side of the short side stud (pictured) and one that is trimmed to exactly fill the gap between the short side stud and the floor while maintaining level. The second piece is not attached until the end so is not pictured. Also you can see the beginnings of the diagonal bracing that will give the workbench its strength.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
3
comments
|
Add Comment
|
May 6, 2010. 5:30 PMDIYfan
says:
Any time you need weight, cheap, run down to the nearest place that sells 95 lb bags of cement or concrete or garden gravel. Keep it in the bag for ease of removal. $5 worth is enough to stabilize a table/workbench used to just about anything, carving, engine work, vibratory tooling, you name it.
Reply
21
May 7, 2010. 6:52 AM
jmengel (author)
says:
jmengel (author)
says:
Good tip, thanks.
Reply
Dec 5, 2008. 7:28 AMFleaCircusDirector
says:
My workbench is in the shed so there's no good place to anchor too. Filing/sawing does shake the whole place. My plan to rectify this is to build a cupboard under the bench and attach the bench to that. I'll keep all my heaviest stuff in there.
Reply
 |
Add Comment
|
