so it's been a few years since I started incorporating the armor tool Mobil
workbench into my workflow and I absolutely love it because it's very
sturdy and it's mobility of course however whenever I roll it into the
center of my shop into a project on top of it I need a lot of tools or
accessories so what ends up happening is the topic it's cluttered and then I have
less space to actually work on it so this week I took the armor tool
workbench and then just personalized a little bit to hold all of the
accessories I need to actually build on it these accessories included a few
drawers for tucking things away such as safety glasses or tape measures a bottom
shelf that can store the tools as well as the self adjusting armored old clamps
that go in the holes on the top then also some Bessy quick clamp storage
which I always have a few different sizes on hand a few extra batteries for
my main tools to drill holsters to speed squares a mallet sanding block and then
of course wood glue I probably love something off but this at least gets me
going let me show you how I did it you can see on my current workbench that I
already added a few sheets of scrap plywood to create a bottom shelf
therefore giving me some storage area however by placing the wood on the
bottom I'm creating a built-in shelf by having the lip of the structures
creating a sidewall however I only want to treat half of this I was a regular
shelf I wanted to use the other half to store the bench dog clamps and I thought
the easiest way to do this was to drill holes for the stems of the clamps to
stab into since the top of the workbench conveniently has a hole pattern already
laid out I came up with a few jigs to place my shelf piece on the top so that
I go to the underside and transfer the hole location with the pencil however
instead of drilling upwards because this is going to be a lot of holes I flipped
the workbench over crawled inside and then used a Forstner bit of the same
size to punch through of course on this you can drill as many or as few holes as
possible or you can leave it all as a standard shelf once I was done drilling
over the holes I clamped it to the bottom side of the shelf and then
screwed it into place now I have plenty of space to store these clamps where
they're not gonna just be piled on top of one another and they're gonna be
easily accessible with that in place I moved over to the side of the workbench
now it's worth noting that I using only scrap wood for this project
it's a great one to use up all of those scrap bits that you can't make yourself
throw away I cut a piece of 3/4 inch ply to size and filled in the sides just by
simply screwing it and there's already pre-drilled holes for you and over on
this side I really wanted a place to store my longer Bessie quick clamps I
was there my most commonly used ones and I actually used two bussy clamps in
order to clamp on the block of wood and if you line up the job of the clamp to
your piece of wood then you can use that to go to the back side and know where to
drill your screws in to attach it and this gives me a very simple shelf to
store all of my Bessie clamps which I always have on hand I don't know if you
know but Bessie recently redesigned their trigger clamps and I absolutely
love the new robust design they not only can still be used with one hand but they
can also clamp up to 600 pounds which is incredible I personally also love the
longer footprint they've given them moving right up above that I
incorporated some spare battery storage I am in love with this new product
called stealth mounts they're holders for batteries they don't actually get
charged the batteries but they do organize them and give you a clip in
place so that they don't just fall off and get damaged
I now have these all over the shop and so whenever I'm working and my battery
goes dead I can very quickly reach down and grab a new one so what I did is
incorporated a few of the brands that I use the batteries most often they're
dead simple to attach with just three screws each and then the battery Clips
right into place I not only have these on my workbench but also on my lumber
rack my miter saw really anywhere I'm using batteries and it's worth noting
that the clips even have a feature that you can put onto a tool belt
I did start off putting this on a French cleat however whenever I would lift up
on the batteries it would sometimes let the entire attachment so I took off the
French clean and just screwed it permanently into the back all right
speed square holsters I originally built these whenever I was doing my plywood
workbench and I have one on every single corner so that a speed square is always
available so on this one I went ahead and corporated two more one on each
corner opposite of each other after using glue and Brad nails to build the
holsters themselves I then clamped it onto my workbench and then pre-drilled
and use the few screws to attach it and I think
that's it for one of the sides so let's go ahead and move on to the front
I thought of shallow drawer would be nice to hold safety glasses and tape
measures and maybe even some pencils or glue brushes so I incorporated one on
the top right actually made the drawer shallow enough to still utilize the
clamps on the top without hitting it however once I populate it full of stuff
then it kind of becomes a problem to avoid this you can scrap the drawer
completely on yours or you can simply pull it out before utilizing a clamp on
the top I would much rather have the drawer for some of the simple storage
and then inside to organize all of my simple little things I'm using the lock
align drawer organization system from Rockler this is an incredibly flexible
system for any drawer in the shop I already utilize it over in my toolbox
they make a lot of trays that you can store miscellaneous items and dividers
for those trays to separate things further bit storage router bit storage
and a lot of other accessories to keep things functional the drawer is very
simple construction with wood glue and Brad nails then I made a tea that would
go up and under the workbench and rest on the side flange of that apron after
getting it set to its width I used a few sliders to insert the drawer after
getting the body of the drawer pushed in then I came back and made the face so
that it would cover up the side divider ok moving over to the other side I
repeated the process by cutting a scrap piece of wood to enclose the side
completely and it's over here that I really wanted to store my two drills
it's pretty standard that I'm always gonna have two drills on me something
for a pre-drill and then one with a bit in it I grabbed a piece of wood and then
used a jigsaw to cut out a few use shapes and then I use my spindle sander
just to refine it a little bit and make it smooth you can see on this side piece
that I have a cutout made custom for the length of my drills so while I do have
plans that you can use for everything on this workbench before making this I
would decide which drills you typically have on hand so that you can get the
hole to its exact size then to attach this I use some wood glue and screws
along the back and now I have two places that I can
very quickly not only store the girls but also grab them when needed something
else I always have on hand when doing projects is a variety of wood glue so on
the bottom here I decided to utilize this space for storing the different
bottles it's a very simple caddy that can store a huge variety of not only the
round but also the I guess they're called rectangular rectangle battles and
this is mounted far enough below the drills to not interfere when pulling
them in and out this next one is a mallet holder and it can really be done
anywhere since there's so many holes pre-made for you I grabbed a quarter
inch bit and enlarged one slightly so that I can use some hardware to lock
down onto the hole and then have a very simple melody holder then sticking along
the easy lines I grabbed a scrap piece of wood slightly larger than a sanding
block I drilled in a few pocket holes using my armored hole self adjusting
pocket hole jig and then attached it right next to my drill holders and this
just gives me a very easy shell for the sanding block to be placed onto then
moving on to something that wasn't as easy but it's still doable I wanted to
add a drawer to the very bottom which looking back on it you can completely
add this up front so that you don't have to crawl underneath later on after
drilling in a few pocket holes I use screws to attach it to the bottom side
on not only the far right but also the far left because on this one I didn't
want to add sliders I just wanted to add a shelf or a drawer to sit on and move
in and out so attached to the bottom there was no way that I could get a tool
underneath it so I just flipped the workbench on its face and then glued and
used Brad nails to secure it this is also only half of a drawer because on
the back side I really want to incorporate some hardware storage last
year I did some hardware storage in these little plastic containers that fit
into the stud of my wall and of course while doing projects I always have a few
of them on the workbench so I utilized this bottom space to make holders that
could hold four of them it's just a very simple shelving system and I know a lot
of you probably wouldn't want them at the very bottom where you're not gonna
be able to see them but keep in mind that you can move this
stum anywhere so if you like the idea of a hardware storage keep in mind that you
can very easily move them up on the workbench the very last thing that I
really wanted to incorporate was more clamp storage but this time for the
smaller sizes of Bessie quick clamps I probably utilized the longest size the
most but I still utilize these smaller sizes frequently enough to have them on
hand so I created another divider wall and an attached did chunk of wood to the
bottom to create a lip then I attach that to the workbench and now my longer
clamps can be stored along the side and then the shorter clamps could be stored
all along the back and I think that's it now just for fun I was really curious
about how much weight I would be adding to the workbench so before even getting
started I used my crane and a digital fish scale to weigh the workbench with
nothing on it 104 pounds fully loaded down but the original measurement wasn't
with all of the tools
okay so forty three and a half so I added three three and a half pounds of
accessories so that's sixty nine and a half pounds of tools not that it really
matters it's just gonna fund him though with it fully loaded down I've added
over a hundred pounds this thing still rolls and moves effortlessly I can very
easy take off the lock on the casters and push it not only straight but also
throw it around in the circle and as you can see nothing falls off of course if
you have an armored tool workbench then this is the easy route but keep in mind
that all of these add-ons can really be placed anywhere I have a lot of these
features on my plywood workbench I have a lot of them not even on a workbench
but around my shop so don't think that you can apply any of these storage
solutions if you don't have this one specific workbench but I do highly
recommend this workbench I actually have two of them I find them so convenient on
that note I also have a set of plans for all of the add-ons if you would like
that and I'll see you on the next one
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