in today's video i teach you how to build this miter station
how's it going guys welcome back to the patriot diy channel now that we finally got some power in
our shop it's time to start building and the first thing we're going to get started with is our work
benches as you can see right now we're just using an old temporary workbench that i've had for years
but the plan is to build a nice long miter station along this wall here and that's what we're going
to get started on in this video that sounds like something you're interested in make sure
you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs up
that really helps us out now as you're following along in the video if you want to build this miter
station for yourself i will put a link to the digital plans in the description below now let's
get started now the bones of this miter station is going to be built out of just a simple 2x4 frame
with a birch plywood top and bottom we are going to be going back and adding drawers
and shelves and things like that into it later and we'll also be using birch for those
all right guys our miter station is going to have an eight foot bench on the left side of
the miter saw and a five foot bench on the right side of the miter saw and the
first thing we need to do is get our lumber cut down to size so we're going to be using our cut
sheets to help us out with that you can find the cut sheets in the plans in the description below
all right first thing i'm gonna do is get all this lumber cut down to size
we'll go ahead and pre-cut everything and as you can see
i got my little helper in the shop with me today
then we can go ahead and start assembling our legs we're going to cut them down to size and
then glue them together at a three and a half inch offset and then reinforce it with some screws
and we'll do that same thing for all of our legs next we're going to go ahead and drill some pocket
holes into our cross supports for the top and bottom of the frame this part's obviously optional
if you don't care about screws being shown you can just screw those supports in from the outside
we'll go ahead and get the frame laid out and we're going to clamp
everything together to hold it while we screw everything together
next we're going to go ahead and attach our legs and we're just
going to be screwing those together from the inside with four screws each
now at this point in the assembly our table is actually upside down with the top of the table
on the floor so then grab our bottom frame and go ahead and fit that in place
now for this bottom we do have to put in a couple screws from the outside of the wood
but that's okay we're going to go back and fill those with wood filler later
now we can go ahead and flip the assembly over and we'll follow
that same procedure for the smaller side of our
workbench
go ahead and fill those exposed screw holes with some wood filler
and then give everything a good sanding
it's important that you sand the top of that frame really well so
that once you put your top on there it sits flush
and get everything moved over into place
and then we'll install the center part of our workbench this is going to be
set three and a half inches lower than the two sides so that the bed of the miter saw
is even with the tops of the rest of the
bench all right guys we got our frame together and i think it's looking awesome
next thing to do is just get all our plywood cut for the tops and bottoms
and then we're going to put on some leveling feet and level everything up
now we're going to install our leveling feet now depending on your situation if you're on
a concrete floor it's very rare that you have a perfectly level concrete floor
or perfectly straight lumber for that matter so these little leveling feet come in handy i will
put a link to these and everything else in the description below if you want to check that out
then go ahead and start measuring out and cutting the plywood for the tops of the workbench
to do that we're going to be using our wind track saw i will put links to all
these tools in the description below if you want to get them for yourself
all right guys now that we got all our tops cut it's time to glue everything up
we're using two sheets of three-quarter inch plywood laminated together for the top
so let's get to gluing everything up and then once it dries we can cut it down to its final size
you're going to want to make sure you go ahead and put plenty of glue on here
and spread it out nice and even i'm just using a scrap piece of wood to spread this out
and then you can put your other sheet on top and match everything up this part doesn't have
to be perfect because we are going to go back later and uh trim it down to its final size
then we'll go ahead and put in plenty of screws from the bottom to hold everything
together now when you're doing this you are going to want to make sure you plan ahead for
where you think that t-track might go so you don't have any screws in way of that t-track
we'll go ahead and trim down the middle part of our workbench to size
give it a good sanding and then fit it into place
now to attach the top of the workbench to the frame
we did drill some pocket holes into the frame so we're just going to clamp that down
and then go ahead and drive in all of our pocket screws
let me just show you guys what i'm doing i get over here to put the top on
and i realize i put the top upside down my pocket holes are going the wrong way
so got to go back add new pocket holes going the correct direction oh well
we'll go ahead and put our flush trim bit in the router and trim those edges down flush
then we're going to put on some edge banding now this is optional
but it does give it a nice look and it protects the sides of the plywood
for these we're just using some 1 by 2 poplar boards and we intentionally cut these a little
bit long so that we can trim them down later with our pool saw and we're going to attach that with
brad nails and then go back and fill it in with some wood filler then we'll sand everything down
and we're gonna go back with our router
and a roundover bit to round over those edges of the trim
now we're getting ready to put that t-track in and to do that we're going to
go ahead and put the miter saw on the bench that way we can get everything
squared up and make sure we can get that t-track exactly where we want it
now you're going to need a nice long straight edge i'm just using the track from my track saw
and we're just going to put a piece of painters tape on that line where we're going to be cutting
in our dado we're also gluing on a sacrificial piece of wood on both ends to prevent any tear out
we're going to be cutting this in with our router and a three-quarter inch straight bit
that painters tape does a good job of making sure that you're
not going to have any splintering on the top and those sacrificial
boards did a great job of making sure we didn't have any tear out on the ends
now we can go ahead and test fit our t-track it fits nice and you want to
make sure that it's set just a hair below the surface of the
wood
for the finish on our tabletop we decided to go with a traditional shellac
i decided to use a foam brush to apply this shellac it gives it a nice even finish we are
going to go back and sand in between coats and we ended up putting three coats on this table top
we're ready to install our t-track uh the track we're using is from clear style now
to fasten these down we're just gonna be using some three-quarter inch black cabinet screws
this t-track comes in four foot sections so we are going to have to cut it down
and you can just do that with your miter
saw
all right guys there's one thing i almost forgot to do and that's install these kreg
measuring tapes so what we're going to do is we're going to dado out
a very small slot for this to sit down into the tabletop just above the t-track and then
once we get the saw on here and get everything centered up we'll be able to put these tapes on
now for our measuring tape we're just barely taking off the surface of that plywood
to make sure that that tape sits down just below the surface
now we can put our miter saw back in place and line everything up once we
get it right where we want it we'll go ahead and screw it down to the bench
and then we can take some measurements so we can get that measuring tape perfectly aligned
all right guys i think we've reached a good stopping point what we have here is a nice simple
miter station i do plan on putting cabinets and drawers in here that's why i didn't put a bottom
shelf on there but if you're just looking for a nice simple miter station i hope this video
has helped you out if you want to stay tuned for the rest of this build make sure you don't
forget to hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs
up we really appreciate that we're also going to have a link in the description below to the plan
for this bench that we're calling the simple miter station as well as the upgraded version with all
the cabinets and drawers and stuff in there so make sure you check that out if you have any
questions or critiques or anything like that i'd love to hear it make sure you leave them in the
comments thanks for watching guys please like share and subscribe and we'll see you next time
you