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In the beginning, there shall be a sawhorse.

6K views 14 replies 9 participants last post by  Robb 
#1 ·
Bought my lumber.

Hit the Busy Beaver today and bought all the lumber I need to make the 14 minute sawhorses. Right now it is all stacked up in Bill's shed-tomorrow I will go over and use his table saw to cut all the lengths I need.

It's all pine, construction grade 2×4s. The guy in the lumber yard and I went through it all piece by piece picking out lengths that will be decent. Two of the pieces are really nice-I'll use those for the I-beams, so that the tops will plane down easily.

I also got a couple of boxes of nails. We already have nails, but they are nails for the household, and everyone grabs from them for what ever they need. These are MY nails, and will go in my tool box.
 
#5 ·
Cutting.

Visited the inlaws, in order to admire the MIL's cookies (some kind of HOF she's doing) and use my father-in-law Bill's table saw. It's a older little 10" Craftsman saw, and the centerpiece of his workshop. Almost everything else is shoved up against the walls around it - every time I work there I want to tear my hair out and scream "space planning! space planning!". Bill has a wonderful set of tools, and a nice amount of space-it's just so badly organized that if you want to use anything but that saw , you need to rearrange the whole room.

All my lumber, piled up out of the way, on top of the sofa and hot-tub cover in front of the drill presses.

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Marking. Nice and straight forward. I need 8 30" pieces, 6 32.5", another 4 32.5" out of my 1×6, and some 12×12 squares of plywood.

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The saw is set up, I've got my faceguard, and there's a clamp to help stabilize the 8' pieces.

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Stabilization is needed because there is nothing really good to support long lumber pieces on here. The bucket chairs? The other table saw? Neither is the right height. Speaking of that table saw, Bill told me today that it is my table saw, and I just need to tell him when to bring it over. I'm not sure if it is late mother's day, early birthday or a right on time "get this the heck out of my shop" gift, but I'm not going to argue with a free table saw.

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Cutting proceeds pleasantly and uneventfully. I make lots of saw dust, and get Bill to help me rip the plywood because I have never done plywood before (I turn out to be crap-tastic at it. I need more practice.). In the end, my pile of long lumber becomes this nicely binned pile of short lumber sitting in the workshop area and ready to become my sawhorses.

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#8 ·
It's a stunning gift - I hadn't thought I'd get a tablesaw this year. And it's a Rockwell to boot so I know it'll clean up well. I haven't got the room for it though, so it's going to have roll out of the way when I'm not using it, and I'll need to set up outfeed supports on a per use basis.
 
#9 ·
Sawhorse the first - the oops version.

Headed down stairs after dinner this evening to start building my sawhorses.

I started by sorting out the lumber and selecting which faces I wanted on top of the I-beams. Oops the first - I need to finish the cuts on two of the legs - they should be 30" and they measure 36" - I forgot to cut trim the ends. Well, I need more practice handsawing anyways.

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With the very bored help of my daughter, I built the I-beams.

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Next up, nailing on the legs. I propped them up on a plastic bin to help them stay seated in the beam while I nailed these. I then beat the hell out the 2×4 with my hammer, managing to drive the nails in in the process. I need more practice driving nails. Finally got all four legs on.

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Oops the second. I decided to nail the stringers on the interior of the legs, since it would be easier to hammer them on with the sawhorse flat on the floor. I got the first stringer on, and when I tried to turn the sawhorse over, discovered I had nailed it to the basement floor. I was wondering why that last quarter inch seemed so hard to drive. So, unpry sawhorse from floor, flip over, nail second stringer more carefully. All's well that ends well.

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Nail on plywood. Saw off edges of plywood flush with legs of sawhorse. Well, as flush as I can manage, which is not very. Easy-peasy. But next time I'll trace and pre-saw this.

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Oops the third. Realize that I didn't level legs on other side of sawhorse, making nailing plywood on second side not so possible.

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Decide to call it done, and go celebrate with a tall glass of iced tea and an episode of The Woodwright's Shop.

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#14 ·
Sawhorse the second - the 'aaaahhh' version.

I finished my sawhorses this afternoon-I have to say that having a sawhorse to use made building the second sawhorse much easier. It was also educational. I learned not to nail the sawhorse to the floor, and that the stringers should be nailed on the outside so that when you put your foot up on them to saw something they stay attached to the sawhorse and don't pop off.

This one was nice - I was in the zone. It went together like a dream, in very close to the titular 14 minutes.

First I trimmed the last two legs to length. Then I neatened up the ends of the I-beams to make sure the legs could go in flush.

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Once I got the legs on the sawhorse, I traced out a template for the plywood side faces.

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Saw what you will about my other skills, but I am a dab hand at cutting straight lines with a handsaw.

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On went the side faces, and then I trued up the legs so she would stand level.

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And then I was done. Aaaaahhhh.

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