Gee up Horsey

Gee up Horsey.

 It's pretty clear to me that I'm going to need a workbench at some point, or just some way to get my workpieces off the floor. The simplest way for me to do this is to go ahead with the construction of some simple sawhorses. As with most projects it all started out with a google and a look through a few YouTube videos on the subject. I subscribe to a few of the known makers and wanted to benefit from their experience, as I'm sure is the purpose of your visit here too.

The first design I want to draw your attention to - and ultimately the design I ended up using is that of Matthias Wandel. A Canadian woodworker whom I admire for his precision and lack thereof. Matthias is incredibly precise when he thinks it important, and very imprecise when it makes no difference. I want you to watch this and see how he cuts the joints for the legs and how brashly the entire construction is thrown together - then see the strength testing.

These sawhorses are incredibly simple and fantastically strong. I haven't even gotten around the actually putting the little flat leg bracing slats on underneath the main top of the horse, and they've still held up literally everything in my entire workshop at once! (I don't have many clamps right now... gluing is mostly done via weights and gravity!)

The next consideration I made was Jimmy Diresta's wooden sawhorses. Jimmy has a lot of very nice tools and makes some wonderfully elegant, simple designs. I believe that simplicity often gives you two core advantages - first of all is that you batch produce things without the need for skill. You can just "set and forget" most of your tools, and just whizz everything through just the same. Secondly is strength. Simple designs mean less parts, less potential for failure, and less accumulative error.
Here's his video of the make process:

Jimmy's sawhorses stack nicely, and would be great in my limited space "workshop", but Matthias's sawhorses are incredibly simple to make with only hand tools and extremely strong. Funnily, it's not the first time these horses have been compared, and if you're considering these two horses, please take a look at this next video; as there is a direct comparison of the build process and how they stack up against each other (hah!)

As you can see, Matthias's design has some significant benefits in both strength and stability.


At this point I want to point out the obvious - there are literally hundreds of designs in different materials. If you're here and just starting out like me, follow the people you like and find designs that speak to you. I went with Matthias's design because I have respect for him and his methodology - he knows when it is worthwhile spending time on a particular aspect and when something would be a complete waste of time, for which you would see little return on the investment; this speaks to me in more areas of my life than just this. Please do look out there for yourself, online or in books - whatever you love.

Without further ado - lets get cracking!

Matthias has kindly provided free plans for this build, so I jotted down the key parts like part dimensions and angles and walked over to my shop to start building. This all happened on a fairly warm day, so I was lucky that I could work outside. It was hard work under the sun! Step one for me was marking out the housing joints for my legs. Four legs on two sawhorses meant I had eight chances to learn here. I started by marking everything out.

Measure once, cut twice... No wait...

In this step, it was key to me that the legs be parallel to the ground. If I start making things crooked here, it'll only accumulate when I get to the end. I made the initial measurements on one corner and using my square marked all the way around the joint, shading my waste. I drew it in with pencil to begin, then I used a knife - this knife line severs the fibers in the wood and reduces the risk of tear-out. I eventually gave us with the pencil though - it took time and I wasn't really gaining anything out of it, though I still shaded the waste. Always shade the waste.

None of your fancy power tools here! ( TT _ TT )

My next step was to very carefully cut along my lines until I had cut two flat walls. The ideal situation here is that these walls a parallel to each other, and the bottom of each cut is parallel to the face of the board - obviously this did not happen!

Hulk smash!

The next step is to remove the waste between your cuts. Now it is absolutely critical that you learn nothing from me here. I have never cut this joint before and this image is the first time I ever used a chisel. The chisel itself is "factory sharp", and has never been sharpened. The mallet is lightweight and ineffective. The first cut, you'll notice, is right along the line I want to finish at. You should always cut above where you want to finish and pare down towards the end - it's easy to remove a little more, but adding material back is very time consuming and will affect the finished piece.

Nearly there...!

So as you can see - none of these cuts are clean or neat - but I don't have a fancy router plane or even a sharp chisel to clean these up. Honestly, at this point I'm not even sure I would know how to use them. For what these are, this is fine. Next up I have to move on to gluing up! Sadly, I don't have any pictures of this to show you - but needless to say, this was very annoying to do. I had to glue up one at a time using my Workmate as a clamp. I did nail these together too - but I wasn't taking any chances. I think it took about a week to juggle gluing, drying time and my life - not hugely fun.

We have the technology!

 As another cost-saving method, I acquire a few of these wooden block-planes at a boot fair. Again - fair from sharp, but this one is in very good condition. I spent an afternoon trying to get used to planing. I even took the time to clamp a little bit of cardboard to the end of my sawhorse to stop the wood getting damaged whilst using my wall as a stop. I only planed here to flatten the tops - not to square anything - just flatten.

Once that was done - the next step is fitting the legs! Now you'll get to see the difference between cutting my first ever housing joint, and my eighth. I did spend some time with each joint testing out my legs (which I totally don't have any pictures of - I just cut across 2 at a time, but hand - it really didn't inspire much picture taking!) against each joint to find the best fits. I also tried to clean out the joints - get them flat too - but I don't think I made much difference.

Ready for my terribly joinery...?



Really?



okay...!

Don't stare too hard...

As you can see, there are gaps everywhere - it doesn't even come close to filling the gap I had cut! This, would you believe it, was the best fit. However saying that, I did try to match up the tightest fits - so there may have been a better leg - but that would have deprived a nicer joint the leg it deserves. So here it is, preserved forever - my first housing.

This, is my eighth joint. Look at that! So much better! It almost fits! the gaps for this one were mostly due to the base of the joint not being flat, or anything even resembling flat. maybe I'll remake these in a few years to gauge how well I'm progressing.
Here it is, as above, my eighth housing. preserved forever.

another little touch I added whilst I was chamfering the legs to prevent damage, I chamfered the ends of the top section to extend the benefit of that protection to this part of the sawhorse. These might be cheap and nasty - but there's no reason I shouldn't want to make them live a long, natural life!

So, here they are, in all their glory. I did finish one with boiled linseed oil, but the wood was so thirsty that I used up half a bottle to get it looking even slightly finished. I might go back and do the other one if I ever build up too much oil - but until I think it needs a finish, I probably won't bother.

So, this is my journey to sawhorse ownership. The story of my trials through making housing and laminating 2x4" boards with no real clamps. If I can make these with a saw, a chisel, a mallet (about £12?) so can you, and you'll be on your way for less than £30 all in!

slap some boards across - and you've got a good excuse to learn ship-lap. place an old door over them and you're good for a bench for a little while! I managed to scavenge an old dining room table-top. so they'll do me for a while!

           -Elabs, James.