Building a Workbench out of Pallets

In my last post, I had talked about the veritable treasure trove that I found when I came across a sign pointing the way to some free wood pallets.

After doing a couple of more hunting and gathering trips for pallets, I finally lucked upon some pallets that were 8 to 10 feet long courtesy of a local fencing business.

Once I got the pallets home and disassembled, I ended up with a good supply of 8 and 10 foot 2X4 boards which were used as the stingers for the pallets.

Earlier this summer, I moved my shop to a slightly larger space (don't worry, it's still a small workshop so I won't be changing the site's name any time soon). Because of this move, I now had the opportunity to finally have a proper workbench and allow me to retire the old Black and Decker Workmate that had served me faithfully for many years.

Since I was fairly keen to try a project with recycled pallets, I figured that a basic workbench would be the perfect first project.

My criteria for the workbench was pretty simple. It needed to be large and strong enough to hold any large pieces that I may be working on. It also needed to be at a height that would allow me to work without too much strain on my back.

I determined that a workbench with 4 feet by 5 feet working area set at a height of 3 feet would be the best fit for me.

From there I drew up some quick plans.

Long Live the Lowly Pallet

As you may know, I am a bit of a sucker when it comes to looking for cheap ways of getting wood for my projects. 

Previously, I mentioned that I had great success in scoring some very nice wood pieces from scouring the "firewood" bins of a few local furniture craftsmen in my area, however, the wood that I tended to get was a little on the small size - great for small projects, but not so much if I wanted to build something that had a bit of size to it. 

A couple of weeks ago I was running some errands when I came across a large sign that had a magic word on it -  Free! 

The free item in question were pallets.

Intrigued, I pulled over and saw a mother-lode of pallets.

The New Toy - DeWalt DW745 Compact Saw

Every once in awhile Christmas arrives in the shop when a large box suddenly shows up with the promise of something exciting within.

For a long time, I had my eye on a DeWalt compact table saw to replace the old Black and Decker table saw that was starting to get a little tired after many years of faithful service.

What really drew me to this particular Dewalt saw was that the rip fence was integrated into a geared rail system that had a measurement indicator that showed the distance between the blade and the rip fence.

Basically what this meant was that I could accurately set my rip fence with just a twist of a knob versus manually sliding the rip fence and measuring the distance between the blade and the fence with a tape measure.

The fence system that this saw used also guaranteed that the rip fence would be parallel to the blade, something that I always had a bit of an issue with table saws that had to be manual slid into place.

Since I don't have a very large budget for tools, I had to rely on asking for Home Depot gift cards as birthday and Christmas presents. After a few years, and a lot of patience (not to mention a lot of gift cards), I finally had enough accumulated to claim my new toy.

Project - Junkyard Desk Chair

What sparked this project was a sudden need for a new desk chair.

The back of my old desk chair was broken the other day when I leaned back a little too far. Thankfully the only other thing that got injured was my pride.

When I popped out to the store to look at getting a new chair, I was downright shocked by the prices that are being asked for a desk chair these days.

Then it struck me, during the little tours of my local auto salvage yard, I did notice that there were an abundance of very well made seats that if you looked at them the right way, could make very serviceable desk chairs.

At around 20 dollars for a seat, the price was certainly right.

After a quick trip back to the salvage yard, I started work on building my Junkyard Desk Chair.