For those who have read the Epoxy Resin Table post will realise that I entered a difficult situation of having a beautiful piece of table that needed to be planed. Yet no-one in the region could offer me a planing service which was incredibly frustrating. Mainly because YouTube had convinced me that my local timber suppliers would be up for helping a hobbyist like me.
So what to do, well the other option was to a user router, with a sled. I’d have to make this myself, but i’d also need a bench on which to do it. Mainly because the amount of mess that was going to be made would get me in trouble if I did it in the gym area (where I did the pour).
My garage isn’t that big so I needed something compact, foldable but multipurpose. So I cleared one wall to make some fold down tables.
The space I have is a approximately 70cm (depth) by 250cm so I figured anything up to 2m in width would suffice. I found some Moisture Resistant MDF Multipurpose Top with the holes for the various extras on eBay and managed to get a few. I thought about buying the MDF and drilling the holes in it myself but buying the MPT wasn’t that much more and would obviously be more accurate.
Then back to the trust 2x4s to build a frame for each of the work benches
I used 2×4 because I wanted something sturdy. I drilling pilot holes to minimise splitting and used some cutting wood screws to hold it all together.
Then I had to decide whether to fold up or down. Now I opted to fold down because I may put some storage on the walls at a later stage. I secured two smaller pieces of 2×4 to the wall with wall anchors, ensuring they were level. Then just used some standard hinges to hold the frame on.
The biggest nuisance in all of this is the fact that the garage floor has a slope towards the front of the property so each of the legs was a different size. This meant that they kind of impeded each other so I ended up cutting them same length and customising some floor pieces to level it all up.
With the frame built and level, I opted to varnish the MDF with Rustin’s MDF sealant. I used it on a previous shelving unit and it worked well.
The MFT tops are pretty sturdy so i’ve opted not to fix them to the frame for now. I’ve also got some sawhorses so I can use these outside when needed.
Now I need @benchdogs to hook me up with some kit 🙂