Monday, April 25, 2011

How to Not Mount Things on Your Workbench

When I made my first workbench, I bolted my grinder to one of the front corners and my mechanic's vise to the other. You know, where they'd be handy. Well, they were handy enough, but they were also in the way a lot of the time.

So when I made my second workbench, I mounted both the grinder and the vise on some little wooden platforms instead of directly to the workbench. That way, I can clamp them to the bench when I need them, and put them elsewhere when I don't.



The funny notches in the platforms make it so "elsewhere" usually means hanging from French cleats on the shop wall.




3 comments:

HalfInchShy said...

I've seen your French cleats in action on other forum postings, but this has the closeups to sell it :) Also like the color in your shop; me? I didn't paint it before I loaded up the walls! d'oh!

rmac said...

The French cleats and the colors and workbench #2 all came about after I swapped an old radial arm saw for a table saw. That forced me to rearrange almost everything in my garage, and I took the opportuninty to redo a lot of stuff the way I wished I'd done it in the first place.

It would have been really nice to completely empty the place, do the painting and install the French cleats all at once, and then move back in. I had way too much junk for that to work, though, so I wound up doing it all piecemeal, one section at a time.

Besides the French cleats, I put a ton of drawers in my workbench, my outfeed table, and my lathe stand. I also moved all the household junk from open shelves into some cabinets with doors on them. The net result is that I truly have a place for everything. I find that it's almost fun to clean up the shop, and it's just wonderful not to have to search throuh piles of clutter to find things. Call it late-onset OCD.

Anonymous said...

Really Great. I like to copy and clear my garage.

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