In my other shop, I end up with such a dirty mess
on my workbench. So, I make a separate
metal-working bench on wheels,
and I've got some heavy duty casters for this purpose
and, I'll make it the way I make most of my cabinets.
with a box joint 2 by 4 frame
that leaves maximum opening on the front,
but is still rigid against side to side movement.
And, then a 2 by 4 joining that to the back.
Except this workbench will be more than twice as wide.
So, here's my sophisticated model,
and I worked out one 2 by 4 will be long enough
for one of these plus one of these
plus one of these.
Got my lumber cut. Now, I need to cut box joints
into the ends of these pieces and these pieces.
I'm putting in two saw blades so that I can cut a thicker curve
and hog those joints out faster.
OK, got the jig set up, and I've got
four 2 by 4's to cut in there all at once.
So, it turns out cutting that much stock all at once,
makes the blades a little bit squished together
so, I'll make the second cut a little bit further along
and that way the mating joints will have wider slots
and narrower fingers.
Well, I did screw up a little bit, for long pieces,
I have these symmetrical, so I start with a space on this side,
here, and on the far end I'm also also starting
with a space on here. But, for the short pieces,
I've got this space here, but then on the other end,
I've got it here. So, now I have to cut the rest
of them the same way, and then remember to
orient it all right when I assemble it.
These mistakes really make a project complicated.
Now, this part goes in the middle here,
and I can join that in there by cutting a series of
slot mortises in there, except I don't want to cut away
half the material, so I'll cut away half of the fingers, here.
So, I carefully marked where the slots actually need to go,
and to get the spacing for them, just right
I'm using a counter wheel, up here
which counts how many turns about 16 turns
for each threaded rod I'm turning.
And, since I know these are all a half inch spacing,
I just have to make sure the numbers on here are multiples
of 8, which corresponds to half inches.
Got most of the frame dry fit now,
and to avoid further assembly mistakes,
I actually labeled every joint,
so I'll put it together the same way.
And, now to join the front and back frames
I'm gonna have a whole lot of these pieces
and I'm gonna join those in actually using floating tenons.
So, with floating tenons, a mortise gets cut
into the end of the piece of wood so that tenon
can fit into it, like this. The advantage can be
sometimes it's easier to cut another mortise and make
a floating tenon than it is to cut a tenon into the end
of the wood.
Now I need to cut corresponding mortises
here and here.
So, the reason I'm now doing a series of plunge cuts
is cause it's always easier to remove chips from the
side of the piece of wood and so by making a plunge-cut,
I am drilling into the end and making side cuts
whereas when I was making the cuts in the end of
the piece of wood, I didn't want to plunge cut because
cutting out from the face is very difficult
but by sweeping side to side I was essentially
making side-grain cuts. And, sometimes I'm asked about
the advantages of floating tenons versus integral tenons
Well, in this case here, the floating tenon actually has
a strength advantage because I didn't want to make the mortise
any bigger because I didn't want to cut away too much of this wood
and this being made out of Maple it's stronger than the Spruce
that the rest of the piece of wood is made out of.
But, if the piece go in here was actually only this size,
then an integral tenon would actually be advantageous,
because it would be stronger because a floating tenon,
like this leaves way too little material, and it's just
doesn't have enough hold.
For now, some of the joints are just dry-fitted
but it's still plenty sturdy.
Gluing up this workbench frame is actually pretty tricky,
so I'm doing it in stages. So, this frame on the bottom
is actually the front frame and I've glued all the mortise
and tenon joints into that one, but for the back frame,
For the time being they're just dry-fitted to make sure
the parts actually line up.
Well, that went together better than expected.
I guess it helps to have a bigger persuader.
I also made some drawers for this workbench,
which I'll cover in my next video.
So, the idea is, when it's not winter, I can just wheel it
outside and do my welding and plasma cutting, there.