Workbench

Sjöberg woodworking benches are beautiful and it would be great to have one but: a) I cannot afford it now, b) I cannot leave it at the boatyard. I’ve decided to build a budget-option bench using three EU-palettes.
They are strong, heavy and are for free.

For a worktop I chose pine bookshelves, edge-glued. I could go with plywood but shelves at Byggmax were in the size exactly matching palettes so no wood was wasted. Besides - they allowed me to pick some pine off-cuts so I got all the wood for reinforcements for free. People in Byggmax Norrtälje are indeed very nice!

Assembly was pretty straightforward - bolting all together with stainless, self-drilling wood screws, reinforcing with cross members and voila! Top side took me a bit longer because I wanted it to look good. Even cheap bench should be pleasant to work with.

I screwed pine shelves to top palette, added side reinforcement and thick pine timber as a base for retractable bench dog.
Oiling followed - to protect the timber from dirt and humidity. I picked shelves with as vertical grain as possible but anyway they will start to move with time in these conditions so oil should help here.

In the space between palette legs I will make a shelf which will house my tool box. It is so damn heavy that it’s weight will further stabilise the bench. Even without toolbox the bench is rock solid.

I’ve placed the bench adjacent to my storage case. Should I need to use table saw it will stand on the box and with matching height the bench will serve as out-feed for the saw.

I’ve checked oiling status on Meritaten. Akter canister was already empty so I recirculated oil. I then noticed that canister’s valve has developed a leak. So much for Biltema’s quality. I fixed that by placing it in a bucket so leaking oil will not be wasted.

The last thing for tonight was my usual ritual of burning all paper towels soaked with linseed oil.