Rocket Science: Workbench, part 2

Made a lot of progress on the workbench.

I need to notch one of the long side 2x4's for the bandsaw to be able to rotate down. The only way to avoid this would have been to make the workbench surface height taller, but I already designed it to be as tall as I wanted to be. So...notch it is, and I decided to try to use the reciprocating saw for this.

What a mess...super uneven, too

The beam is too long to make the notch on a table saw with a dado blade, and it was already installed anyways. You can also make notches with a circular saw by making a comb, then using a chisel to knock out the teeth, but there isn't really enough surface area here to safely hold a circular saw edge-on. Turns out the right way to make notches like this is to make a comb with a hand saw, then knock out the teeth with a chisel. Eh, oh well. Gotta clean it up and reinforce it:

Lots of wood filler. Also a thick steel strap on the inside.

Looks slightly less than bad after sanding and staining the wood filler.

Next step was installing all of the base shelves.

Shelves stained and screwed in

The band saw notch wood filler staining mess made me want to try to get the wood filler color to match better. I bought about 12 of little samples of varathane oil based stain. The DAP "premium" wood filler I have says to mix the stain in before applying the wood filler, so I tried that, but the results weren't very good.

The amount of stain necessary to darken the filler, even if using really dark stain, is so much that the filler ends up being runny. I also tried some test hole fills with staining after applying the wood filler, didn't really notice an appreciable difference, and it was easier to stain after applying. I had to use a stain quite a few shades darker than the surrounding wood, though, and because the filler is white, no matter what you do, the stained filler always looks sort of "pastel".

Not terrible, but not great either. Wish I had taken the time to pocket hole the shelves from the bottom. Also tried filling in one of the 2x4 radius gaps a little, but didn't like the results, so didn't do it anywhere else.

Two lessons learned here: 1. Stained wood filler sucks. It's good for filling wood you will be painting, but it's not useful for professional looking final stained wood. Design future wood working projects to not need it. 2. There's a good reason why wood workers plane all of their wood. Everything ends up squarer, better tolerances, fewer gaps, etc.

Luckily this is a garage workbench, so looks don't really matter.

Next, I spaced the base off the floor and leveled it. By leveling the base, I can use a level to level the horizontal 2x4 beams and make sure the vertical 2x4 beams are straight up. My garage, like most garages, has a slight slope towards the door to help water drain out if it ever floods, so I compensated for that.

Then I started cutting all of the vertical and horizontal 2x4s with my miter saw. Regularly got better than 1/32" accuracy on length, though I noticed some of the 2x4s were up to 1/8" oversized in a dimension (1-5/8 vs 1-1/2 and/or 3-5/8 vs 3-1/2)...should make putting this together interesting.

Running out of room, time to move outside

Lots of 2x4s, lots of colors, lots of saw dust:

This thing works great

The mitered pieces will form the box under the plywood shelf that the table saw sits on. First time using a strap clamp, went really well:

I started installing the vertical columns next.

So many pocket holes O.o

Turns out pocket holes kinda suck for alignment. As the screw is driven in, it can cause the 2x4 to shift some. Ideally I could clamp them in place with a pipe/bar clamp (normal pocket hole clamps don't have enough reach for 2x4s oriented like this), but there was no way to get a clamp to these inside ones. Another problem came from not having planed/squared the base 2x4s: the vertical 2x4s wouldn't sit vertical, so even if I could clamp them, they likely would have shifted after removing the clamps. This was exacerbated by the pocket hole screws being on one side, which tended to tilt the 2x4 to that side. Thus, installing each vertical 2x4 required shimming with index cards and multiple screw - unscrew - screw cycles. Some required 1/32-1/16" wood shims instead of index cards. I used wood glue in the joints, too, to help make them stiffer. I used three pocket holes on some 2x4s; I spaced the two on one side out more and had the third centered on the other side, which helped with the tilting issue. These HD pocket hole screws (#14 x 2.5") require a lot of torque to drive in. This happened after about 40 to the T25 drive that came with the kit:

Ouch

Luckily, I had two more 6" long T25 bits, but I suspect I'll need to buy more by the time I'm done. The reason they need so much torque is the #14 part: that's a wide screw with no pilot hole. There just isn't a good way to make pilot holes for these though, because, even with a 12" long 1/8" drill bit, there isn't a good way to keep it axially aligned with the pocket hole in the other piece, and if you get the angle or location wrong, it'll pull the joint out of alignment. With a lot of patience and shimming, I was able to get them all pretty close to vertical.

Lesson learned: learn mortise and tenon joinery and use it for beams like this instead of using big pocket hole screws. Pocket hole screws might be ok for drawers/shelves, etc, but they aren't great for this application.

I bought some 1/2" and 3/8" dowels to make plugs for the pocket hole holes. I have a nice fine tooth handsaw, and I'll probably 3D print a miter box for it to get the angles right, but that's for later. I took a break from pocket-holery to glue (5 minute epoxy) the vacuum adapters together, which I had 3D printed out of PETG a few weeks ago.

The big one on the right is for under the table saw (more on that in a minute). You can see where I ran out of black PETG and changed to clear PETG. The one in bottom left is for the drum sander. Not pictured is another piece for the drum sander and one for the bandsaw.

I used the router in the router table with a 3/4" bit to make notches in three of the vertical 2x4s.

These are going to be for little blocks of wood that will keep the drum sander locked in the up or down position. I cut little half circles on the outward facing sides so I could get my finger in behind the blocks, and I hardened the inner surfaces with thin CA. Then I installed these on the base.

Due to the way I designed it, I need to install the router shelf before I can install many of the horizontal 2x4s (will be clearer in next post). That shelf is cut from the same 23/32" nice pine plywood that the base shelves are made out of. I used the circular saw for that. While I had the circular saw out, I decided to cut the table saw shelf out of some cruddy 5/8" plywood I've had for a long time. This shelf will be screwed down to the 2x4 box I showed earlier, and the table saw will sit on top of it. As such, I wanted to have a dust collection port in the shelf, so I designed that big 3D printed vacuum adapter in the above picture to fit in a 5.5"x5.5" hole with 1/4" corner radii, meaning I need to cut that hole in the plywood shelf. Hmm...never made a (nice) square hole in a piece of wood before. Turns out it's pretty straight forward. First, I marked the 5.5" square on the wood where I wanted it (centered under the table saw blade). Then I measured the radius from the spindle center to the outer base edge of my router (3"), then subtracted the radius of the bit I was going to use (1/2" 2 flute end mill) = 2.75". 5.5+2*2.75 = 11". So I drew an 11" square around the 5.5" square. Luckily I had cut the shelf pretty square, so it made drawing the squares using a carpenter square easy ("square square drawing squares on a ... rectangle", whatever). I then drilled 1/2" holes inside but near the corners of the 5.5" square and used a jig saw to rough cut the hole.

I'm a big fan of the Kobalt 24V brushless tool line.
They're just as strong as plug in, but way easier to use

Next, I clamped a bunch of random straight things I had around the 11" square. In the future, I'm going to 3D print some fasteners for some t-slot aluminum extrusions in order to make a nice router jig to do this.

Then I just pushed the router around inside the 11" square, which made an almost-perfect 5.5" square with 1/4" radius corners. The 3D printed vacuum adapter fit perfectly.