Question about workbench/table

[russellellis]

Habitat Restore has a few heavy heavy solid core industrial door blanks for 15.00. I need a workbench/assembly table. Im picking up two of them. What has been the preferred method of attaching the doors (obviously as tops) to the trestle base? Im only in WV for about 2 more years, so i do want to be able to remove the entire top at some point.

[Steve Martin]

I made a kitchen work table out of a single piece of hard maple as the top, about 5 feet by 15 inches by 1 inch. I cut dove tales in the long sides of the trestle about 1 inch deep and 1 inch wide at the bottom and 3/4 inch wide at the top, three sets of matching dovetails. Then I cut three pieces of hard maple to fit into the tails, the same length as the outside edges of the trestle. Then I placed the top, upside down, on my worktable, with the cross pieces in place in the trestle. I bored holes through the cross pieces into the top, counterscrewed the top in place and turned the whole thing over. When it was all finished, I slid the top out of the dove tails to carry it into the house and reinstalled it. Have been using it daily for about 4 years and it is still in good shape with occasional renewing of oil finish. When I need to move it very far or to another room or outside, I just slide the top off and move the two pieces. Maybe this would work for your situation.

[LeftyTom]

On my workbench, I used four L-brackets (5" long). My top (3" thick Baltic ply) sits on the top of the four legs. I attached the brackets to the inside of the legs. Then I sat the top on the legs, made sure the overhang was the same at front/rear and at the sides, and screwed it down (or up, depending on your perspective).

[JimmyC]

I countersunk holes in the trestles and used 1/4" lagbolts to attach the door from the bottom. It worked fairly well, I'm still using that workbench 20+ years later.

Jimmy