The Work Bench
After we moved into the new house, all my tools were taken out of their compact storage area in the trunk of my dad's '57 Chevy and sprinkled on the floor of my new garage. I eventually arranged them against the wall, but it was a less than ideal solution. So, I started drawing sketches for the work bench in November, 2008.
The work bench needed to be a clean, simple design that could hold a lot of random objects. Unlike my dad's impressive collection of tool sets, my tools are a hodgepodge of what I could buy when I needed a particular tool. So, it's a mixture of random brands of random tools. So, goal one was it needed to have plenty of shelves and places to put random things from rhino ramps to drill bits.
The work bench was not simply a storage area. It was also a surface I could work on top of. Given that consideration, I wanted it to be tall enough that I could work while standing, wide enough that I could place and cut long boards, and deep enough that I could lay a bunch of random items on it.
Finally, I needed it to be mobile. If I needed to build something outside, I didn't want to walk back to the garage to get a tool. I wanted the tools with me. Further, I didn't want to have a slough of extension cords to run all over the place. I wanted the work bench to be powered so that I could plug up to it and only need to run one extension cord.
I did the following drawings:
- The initital sketch sort of lays out the concept for what I would like to do.
- The exploratory sketch was done with Erin, my wife, to flesh out the idea and throw in some other concepts that Erin thought might be worth exploring.
- The cut sketches attempted to determine how I could cut plywood as well as determine some dimensions. This was still an exploratory drawing to explain to Erin what I was looking at.
- The construction sketch was to lay down how I thought I should put the wood together to make a solid structure that was easy and clean to put together.
- The final sketch helps clarify the construction and includes a preliminary parts list.
Over the weekend of December 15th, 2008, I spent some time over at my parents. I talked to Joe and my dad about my sketches. Joe seems to think that a lap drawer or two would be nice and my dad thinks I should go with 4x4s and 2x6 instead of 2x4s. It's also been called to my attention that 4 foot deep is a lot of space. So, I'll go out into the garage and look at it from a storage standpoint to make sure it fits without getting in the way. I also feel like I didn't address the vertical bracing well enough since I turned a 4 foot long idea into an 8 foot long idea with very little changes beyond mathematics. I will address these issues this week.