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This third post on refurbishing and reusing would be best served had I taken before and after photos. However, all I have photos of the finished result. This is my workbench. I found the black metal base rusting and discarded in an alley down town. At the time I already had a workbench, but I wasn’t too fond of it. I had pieced it together using lumber left over from a workbench by dad had built when he was overhauling his first Goldwing. So finding this hunk of rusting metal with some casters welded to the bottom seemed like inspiration enough to build a new one.
I had a friend weld some tabs in the corners for securing the 4×4 wood posts, as well as some plates on the bottom for attaching floor locks. There’s a great powder-coating place about 20 minutes south of Goshen that is run by an Amish guy. I’ve had him paint several bike frames for me already and his prices are very reasonable, so I had him sand blast and repaint the base after the welding was done.
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While waiting for the base to be painted I started working on the top. The top is made out of local 2″ maple that a co-worker of mine cut on his portable saw mill. The wood started out as very rough boards about 10″ x 12′ (though the width varried). I’m not super skilled word worker, so making the top took way longer than I had initially anticipated and it didn’t turn out quite as nice as I had hoped. But after a lot of measuring, cutting, sanding, planing, gluing and clamping I ended up with something that is certainly useful, if not also nice to look at. It’s not completely flat, but I joked with my coworker that provided the wood that I intentionally made it ever so slightly concave so that if I dropped a ball bearing on it the bearing would roll to the center instead of off the end!
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Fom the beginning I new I wanted a bench that could fold up some when not in use. The hinges were a little tricky to install as their resting position while open was not always straight with their resting position while closed. But a little trial and error and they went on without too much cursing.
I still have a bench vise that I might attach to a corner of the center portion of the top, but the vise is rather large and the bench is a little higher than a normal bench (makes for a better working height). All in all it was a great project that took a little longer than planned, but resulted in something I find extremely useful for a long time to come.
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