Here’s some of my thoughts,

• I chose to go with a 29” tall top rather than use tall chairs like some benches require.
• The top shelf is 20” deep
• I placed the legs in a bit so that I’m not running into them as much.
• I recessed the upper shelf front support edge back so that I could put power strips on them.
• Lights could conveniently mount under the shelf and if they were towards the back would shine just fine down to the desktop.
• 2×4 parts are cheap but I need some fairly straight pieces
• You can’t see it in the picture but I put a 2×4 on the bottom of the benchtop mounted the short way so that it only goes down 1-1/2” below the bench bottom. I might run into it less that way.

• Larger bench than 4 ft wide
• Wide enough to do soldering in a different area than testing
• Deeper bench than 30” deep
• Work surface in contrasting color to most small parts (light color probably)
• Sturdy construction
• Shelf for Test Equipment like Oscilloscopes, Logic Analyzers, Power Supplies
• Spots for plenty of AC Power connectors
• Inexpensive (commercial units cost $500 or more) which probably means 2×4 lumber
• I don’t care if it’s pretty, just not too ugly
• Place to mount lighting – either florescent tubes or LEDs

I’m leaning towards using a piece of laminate counter top like they sell at Lowe’s Depot. For less than $40 I can buy a 36” wide x 8’ long piece of kitchen counter top laminate. [Edit: a friend just pointed out to me that is the price of the laminate material, not the counter top].

Verticals view:

Shelves view:

Horizontals view from top:

Horizontals view from bottom:

Overall view:

Exploded view:

Top and bottom dimensioned view:

Vertical assembled view:

Vertical exploded view:

Vertical cut pieces view:

Left side view:

Right side view:

Kickboards view:

Drawers view:

Top view:

Decided to try and watch some tutorial videos and figure out what’s the issue. Trouble was I didn’t know what to call the problem in order to search for a solution. Finally found a video which describes it as “Z-Fighting”. The video is SketchUp won't create a face where I want it to . Here’s a related video with the same stuff.

Here’s the end result – a hole that works.

Had a bad kickback from cutting the material. Crunched my left hand with the flying board edge – no blade contact. X-Rays show nothing broken. Fingers pretty lacerated and swollen. Got a long overdue Tetanus shot.

Accident was 100% avoidable. Should have been more careful and should have set up an outfeed table. Probably should not have worked alone. Then again, my 16-year old would have done it right and not had a problem to begin with. I get on him constantly about safety and using pushblocks but got lazy myself.

Taking a few days off. Will get some help this weekend from my 16-year old. Disappointed because I wanted to accomplish something on my own. Not gonna happen this time.

Material identification:

Material Sizes:

To get the material to mostly fit, I eliminated the two lower shelves. Here’s a link to the picture .

So what I want is:
- Nightstand as tall as the bed
- Shelf for CPAP machine
- Hole in side of stand for CPAP hose
- Two drawers
- Back behind drawers,but no back behind CPAP (may rethink this later since the machine sucks air in)
- Small width (at least as small as the current stand which is 20”)

Here’s what I drew up in sketchup.

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Turned out pretty good in spite of the table saw at work being way out of whack.

Here’s a picture of it with the first coat of spar varnish drying. I think it is a big improvement.

Next step finishing and then attaching the top. We bought the entry level Kreg joint jig so I’m thinking about using that for the attachment of the top. Not sure if expansion will be an issue. The top is plywood, but the base is 2×4s.

Here’s a picture with the corner blocks installed into the bottom and top horizontals.

These were the most difficult and dangerous thing we’ve ever made in the workshop. They took dangerous cuts on the miter saw and table saw. We will never do them again and will make a jig next time to be safer. Here’s what the side verticals looks like next to the horizontals.

Here’s the same with one of the stretchers from side to side.

Here’s the new leg design.

The legs should cost less than $5 since they are only two of 2×4s. Joinery connecting the legs will be through tenons and the top will be joined to the legs with Kreg pocket screws.

The plans do not have a tile top so we did some improvising. He made through tenons and a frame for the top. We had to do some improvising since things didn’t line up exactly on the top since the tenons were so long. In the end, we cut the tenons shorter and used plugs on the exposed side. Worked well.

I struggled for a while on what base to put the tile on, and remembered I had a partial sheet of 1/2” hardibacker from when we did the laundry room floor. He cut it up and we mounted the hardibacker to the base. Should be more stable than a plywood base (hopefully).

Bought the materials for the coffee table – around $200. Bought enough materials for the coffee table to start. My 16 year old son did the mortise/tenons and all the cuts. We did staining together.

Want to put on a mosaic tile top.

We prefer staining prior to assembly.

Posted it as a project a couple of times and it was removed. I guess it didn’t have enough “wood” component to be a project made of wood. It does have wooden doughnuts at the top and bottom. There are several others already here on LJ so maybe that’s why it got removed. Not sure.

Mine isn’t drastically different than the other ones. I used the same 8” x 2’ duct tubing that others used. I found a cardboard drum with locking ring for the lid that holds the 5 gallon bucket inside to make it easier to empty the dust. Found it at a garage sale for $2 which was pretty cool.

I did a sketchup of the cut for the duct to get the cone design.

I used Elmer’s Polyurethane glue at the spots where air might sneak in. To me that’s the weak spot of all of the other designs.

The thing works great. Didn’t take too much time – probably a couple of hours. Cost was around $50 not including the shop vac.

Using a fairly underpowered shop vac, but it still has good suction power (once all of the cracks/holes are plugged).

I really don’t need the 2” union and some of the adapter stuff at the top since I just ended up sticking the hose to the vacuum right into the pipe anyway. Maybe just a single reducer?

I still need to finish the drawers. It took a while to get the 14” drawer slides in at Lowes Depot since I made the cabinet too shallow for standard 16” slides.