Lessons learned building my own workbench - part 2

My new workbench part 2

Background

This is 3-part blog post:

Yesterday I built a workbench and then blogged about it last night. However I went to bed thinking I could make this better so today I made a few edits.

Edit #1

Originally I had the “frame” fastened to the table top. Ie., the horizontal 2x4 that joins the tops of the legs on each side was screwed into the plywood. This meant that I needed a small piece of 2x4 to mount the locking hinge onto.

Dumb idea. Today I removed that 2x4 from the plywood and screwed it directly to the legs. Now my hinges sit directly on the plywood and the entire frame rotates in as it folds. See if you can notice the difference now, compared to yesterday.

FFolding frame

Edit #2

This caused a problem, however, because the legs that folded inward were now 1.5 inches longer (because of the 2x4). The height of the table hadn’t changed but the length of the legs that folded inward was now longer. This mean that they hit eachother when they folded inward!

Folding problem

I was lazy and only moved one of the 2x4’s out by 3.5 inches, so they are no longer equidistant from the center of the table. I could fix this, I suppose, but I don’t think it matters much.

Folding fixed

Still to do

  • I still need a brace between the pairs of legs. I want to find a nice way to cut this so it’s still collapsible.
  • I probably still need some kind of measure to stabilize any table wobbling.

Updated: