It has been a long time since I have completed a project and
I really need to get something done. The
saw horses were to fit two needs and a desire to try something. Our coffee table/ kids table has been pretty
well destroyed. For some reason my kids
think it is a trampoline and are shocked when they get hurt jumping on it. I needed a new one but I wanted to function
as a homework table also, maybe a serving table, coffee table, and just a
general purpose table. My wife and I
were walking though Ikea and I saw this adjustable height table leg
design. I knew that is was the design I
wanted. I had to make some small changes
because it was not very adjustable once it was set up.
I do not have a workbench in my shop; it is a folding table
from my Grandmother. Although it is very
useful it is starting to wobble pretty badly and it is a good height if I am
putting equipment on it to machine parts.
The top is starting to show its wear and I should probably replace the
top in the near future. So the adjustable
sawhorses would be great. They would
also be a lot easier and lighter than the metal ones that got rid of a few
years ago.
One of the main reasons I wanted to do this project was
because I wanted to do compound angled legs.
This should not be a hard process and it wasn’t once I figured out how
to do it, but getting to that point was a mess.
It started out with the drawings.
I could not get my model to come together, probably because I was doing
it wrong so I started to cut and machine parts before I was done with the
drawings. That was my first
mistake. Just to ruin the story, this
project was a complete failure from what the intended purpose. However they work and I like how they turned
out.
The first of the major mistakes was cutting the angles
wrong. I thought for some reason I
thought I had to make mirror images of the legs with opposite angles. Apparently, all the legs are the same, it
just depends on what is top and bottom.
This is the reason I wanted to make angled feet. I lost about an inch of length on the legs
because of this mistake. This compounded
the fact that I did not account that the angles would also reduce the height of
the project a few inches. I thought it
was going to be less than an inch. The
next design flaw that I had, which I fixed before machining a bunch of parts,
was locking the extension posts in place.
I was just going to let them float which means any horizontal force
would cause the table to shift of the bottom assembly. It was a good thing that I decided to push
through the design after I cut the legs wrong.
Things did go much more smoothly after the design was complete.
After both sets were complete, I was kind of disappointed
that they were not as tall as I thought they would be. Then I checked the model and realized
why. My other design fail was not
allowing enough room for chairs to fit between the legs of the table. There are a lot of easy solutions, and I
think it will work. The kid’s table is
now very strong and heavy. I don’t think
they will be knocking over all the time.
The saw horses are a couple of inches shorter than I want them to be,
but it is nice to have the ability to raise the table when doing assembly and
finishing work.
The table has a kitchen island top on it. This is another one of the perks of working
at a large cabinet manufacturer. It is
quite heavy and a very good work top.
The top for my garage table is particle board with melamine. There are reasons for the holes. One main one is the handle holes. The second is that I have 36” bar clamps that
will mount to the top. However, the top is 42” wide. I will be putting beech around the edge of
the board to protect it.
I am putting the plans up on instructables for free. I hope to be using this site a little
more. If you have not seen what my plans
look like please take a visit here. My plans
for purchase will also have instructions and a bill of materials. Instructables is forcing me to take more pictures
of the process which is nice.
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