Hello !!!

If you are a DIY Geek or doing a lot of projects like me, you will be frustrated to find all the components and stuffs which are lying around somewhere. If you do not have a nice and cool workplace, it will eat up your efficiency and you will loose the interest you had at the beginning on making cool stuffs.These problems were bugging me and then I decided to build my own workbench of what I call Makers Workbench.

You can make your own design of the table, your shelf and your workplace. I will present you with my design. It is simple, looks good and when you look at the table you have a feeling that "Yeah ! I have to build something today !".

Time required to complete : 1 Week. You can do this along with your work or school !!!

Do watch the Video that I made first, to get a brief overview and continue with the reading for detailed information.

Step 1: Materials Required

All the materials used are available locally and for power tools, you can purchase online. Here are the materials required :

* OLD table (If you don't have, you can make one of your own ! All you need is plywood of around 4 or 5 foot long and two old stools. Fix the plywood to the stool and bolt them)

* 3/4th inch thick plywood pieces from any carpentry shop.

* Hacksaw (optional, but it is useful)

* Handsaw

* Power drill

* Screws, Nuts and bolts, a Hammer

* Sand Papers

* Measuring Tape, Scale and Paper to write down the measurements

* Wooden Primer

* Paint of your choice

Step 2: Measure and Mark

Now its time to measure your table. Instead of one single shelf across the table, I have made 2 separate shelf with a gap in the middle, So that you have 4 different compartments where you can organize your items. You can keep a table lamp in the middle and also fix a power adapter extension cable. Also remember to keep sufficient work-space and make sure that the shelf wont occupy more than 50% of your table space. You can take your own measurements of what size of table that is required. Note down the height of the shelf, length and width in a sheet of paper. Then mark the wood pieces for cutting.

For a 2 floored shelf that I am going to make, you will need, 3 plywood pieces, one for the base, one for top and other for the middle. You also need one for the back and 2 for side walls. You need 2 sets since there is 2 shelves. Once the marking is ready, you are ready to cut them.

Step 3: Cut the Pieces

Now you can cut the pieces of wood. You can use power tools for cutting. If you use it, you can reduce the time of completion of workbench to 3 days from one week. This is the most laborious and fun part. If you don't have any power tools, you can use good old hand saw along with a hacksaw as I used. Hack saw are very sharp, but you can only cut small pieces of wood with precision. You have to use hand saw to cut big wooden pieces.

Once you are done with cutting, arrange all the marked pieces together and you can head to the next step, i.e., attaching the pieces together.

Step 4: Drill and Attach

Once all the plywood pieces are cut, it is time to attach them together. Simple method is to drill holes and hammer a nail. Start with the 3 sidewalls. Drill 2 holes at the edge of the base plywood on all 3 sides. Measure the exact distance of the of the hole from the node of plywood. Drill the holes on the side walls at the measured distance so that both the holes (base and side wall) align together and you can insert a nail and hammer it. Once all the side walls are fixed, then attach the top in the same way.

Then fix a plywood piece in the middle to make a partition. Make sure that this piece is smaller and it fits in the middle.

Step 5: Attach to Table

Once you finished building a shelf, make one more of it since you need two of them. Now attach the shelf to the table or your workplace. I have made only 2 shelf because it is sufficient for me. If you want to improvise and have sufficient time, you can make multiple shelves, may be 3 or 4 and attach it to the table. And yes you need a long table. You can always extend the table by attaching more plywood pieces by the side. In case you improvise and make it bigger, do share the photo. Woodworking is fun. Drill a hole, attach a screw and bolt to fix the shelf to the table. Once you fix it, you are ready to paint.

Step 6: Lets Paint !

This will be the most exiting and fun part. After your hard-work building the table, this is the step where you can be creative and make your workbench look out of the world. Yes ! just by painting. You can choose nice color combination ranging from bright red and white, red and black, blue and black, blue and white. You can choose any but I will stick with black and white as it gives more robust look, a premium look.

And remember, while you are painting wood

* First apply a coat of wooden primer and leave it to dry. If you do not apply this, the paint might fade away on a long run. Priming ensures better adhesion of paint to the surface, increases paint durability, and provides additional protection for the material being painted.

* Next you can start painting with the color of your choice. Remember to wear a pair of glows while painting. Leave it for a day and its done. You could give it another coating, but its not required.

Step 7: Add Your Items

Once you are done building and painting, its time to add your items and materials to your table. So what are the essential items for a makers workbench ? If you are new to this, I have listed some of them :

* Soldering station : A soldering iron, brass sponge, solder wire and flux. This is the basic item you need. And also pcb board and a helping hand will be useful for soldering.

* Single/double stranded wires, switches, jumper wires

* You need a micro-controller. May be arduino and raspberry pi. You can have pic uC, ATMega etc. if you are going deep into it. And a wifi module may be, if you are into IOT projects.

* DC Motors, servo motors. You will need this some day.

* Old or Scrap electronics. You can always extract components from this. I have one compartment dedicated for this. You can extract motors from your old RC car. Components from broken down refrigerator or old computer will definitely be useful !!

* If you are into electronics, then having basic components like capacitors, resistors, transistors and few all time used IC's like 555 timer and Opamp 741 will be useful.

* If you are building lot of stuffs from scrap, you can have a compartment dedicated to the tools you are using. Hot Glue gun will definitely be useful.

You can have all the items you want. The above list will be useful for those who are starting with DIY. I am more into electronics. Check out the items that I kept in it !!!

If you make something similar to this, please do share the photo .