Sawhorses

It seems in my small shop even though I have an old craftsman workbench and a government issue desk I tend to end up with both of them covered in clutter (typically lumber) so I decided to build some saw horses that I have seen in the Complete Book of Woodworking which I checkout from my local library about once a month (I’m also in the middle of building a swing from the same book, along with a future sandbox and kids picnic table)

The book gives all the measurements and suggest using a jigsaw. This sounded like it would be a lot of marking and layout so instead I used their measurements to determine the angle, set my Incra miter gauge, and made common marks to align with the end of my gauge at each angle. This worked out so well that the legs were flush with each other and level on the floor with only the experimental leg requiring an adjustment. Since I used my own angles and not their measurements I went ahead and attached the gussets and then the shelf supports level and used my jigsaw to trim the excess.

The plan calls for quarter-round for the shelves to keep items from rolling off, I started to put some on but broke my cheap small bit I was drilling pilot holes for and then realized without the edge it would make for even more lumber storage. I just used some 2” and 3” deck screws to put it together and will probably try my first finishing job on the body of these in the near future.

If you look closely to the first picture you’ll notice there actually isn’t a top yet to these sawhorses, I don’t have any pine wider than a 2×4 sitting around so it’ll have to wait till my next trip to the store. Not that I let that stop me from using piling on!

-- Scott