Shop Benches

[joneill]

Anyone have a preferred design for full length along the wall shop benches? Cheap is great so long as it is stable. Wall is probably nearly 20 ft long and it would be nice to have a place for my mitre saw but it's a slide which makes it hard to fit near a wall.

 

[Jeff]

A member recently did something similar. Take a look at his idea. You'll have to think about how to accommodate your sliding compound miter saw.

https://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?t=61412

 

[MarkE]

I also did something similar.

 

[MarkE]

For the miter saw I built a couple of cabinets to go on either side of the saw with a lowered shelf between to hold the miter saw.


After some period of time I added a dust hood for better dust collection. The cabinets still have to be about 12-14" away from the wall to accommodate the slider.

 

[Frank Berry]

Very nice job Mark.
I kept my sliding miter saw on the folding frame so I can wheel it wherever I want to go with it. Makes it easy to cut my wood outside on a nice day.

 

[Bill Clemmons]

A slightly different approach. I built plywood boxes w/ drawers and set them on a 2x4 base. Then laid shelves in between. The top is 2x8 SYP but jointed. Sturdy, but still doesn't solve the slider problem.

​

 

[junquecol]

For the slider, put it on a box (think upside down drawer) with full extension slides, so it can be pulled out when needed.

 

[JohnW]

I just extended the counter top out a bit to accommodate the extra depth.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showphoto.php?photo=78591​

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showphoto.php?photo=78590​

 

[JimD]

This is my second long wall workbench setup. I have about 12 feet of cabinets 7 inches shorter than I want the saws to be at. I add shims under my CMS and RAS to get them to the right height. Where I do not have saws, I have a 7 inch tall Paulk style worksurface with movable stops for the saws. The workbenches have all drawers. I find them much more useful than shelves. The longer cabinet has simple drawers made of 3/4 plywood joined by pocket screws. I dovetailed scrap 3/4 softwood for the other cabinet. The drawers do not have slides, they just slide wood on wood. I have hardwood storage above the saws. It rests on short pieces of conduit slide into holes in the doubled 2x4s of the wall.

I use a 12 inch CMS and a RAS partially because they don't require as wide a bench as a slider.