I built my first workbench. It was 4×8 feet, made with 2x4s and a heavy, three-quarter-inch-thick particleboard top. It was supported by homemade sawhorses. It was home base for the five-year build of my plansbuilt Sonex. When I was done, the workbench went to live in the Sonex factory hangar, where it remains to this day. When I started my Onex, I wanted something smaller (I found the 4-foot depth to be too deep), lighter, and somewhat portable. I settled on a slightly damaged hollow-core door from a local homebuilding store. I think it cost me all of $10. I could drill into it to hold parts down for polishing (though the thin veneer over the hollow core didn’t provide an excess of Cleco-gripping power) and move it about my garage with ease, even leaning it against my garage wall when it wasn’t needed. It served me well for years until, alas, I had it on my floor and put a knee through it.
Not wanting to return to a heavy, expensive homemade workbench, but wanting something a bit more robust than a wood, hollow-core door, I drifted again to the scratch-and-dent area of a building center’s door section. There, I found a 36×80-inch hollow metal door for $39. It’s flat, making it ideal for building control surfaces. It’s metal, meaning I can’t put a knee through it. It’s still light enough for me to move it around or lean it against a garage wall, to get it out of the way. There are two drawbacks, however, which are easily resolved. The first is the hole for a doorknob. I’ll put that on the “far” side of my work area, where it probably won’t matter. I could even drop a cup in it and make it a pencil/Cleco pliers/cellphone holder. The other drawback is it isn’t easy to drill through a part when the drill bit exits the part into a metal surface, instead of wood. Two solutions spring to mind: Place a thin piece of plywood under parts I’m drilling, or permanently attach a half-inch-thick piece of plywood to the whole door. If I do that, I may extend the plywood one inch or so beyond the perimeter of the door, to provide a thin edge for clamping parts to the bench.
When I poured the slab of my shop, I embedded J bolts where I knew the bench would be, plus a deeper footing for the embedded 4″ steel pipe the vice would be bolted to. The bench sides were framed with 2×4’s, then sheeted with 3/4″ plywood glued and nailed to the framing, I got off a salvage job, the thickness not needed for sheer but good for hanging all the tools etc. mounted on the sides. The back is all drawers. The top is dead nuts straight and level, with the 3/4″ high density particle board being removable for replacement when needed. It’s so solid I use it as a deadfall, to winch off of when needed, a bit overkill! The best thing I did was build a lightweight 3′ by 4′ bench on wheels, the same height as the main bench, so I can roll it right to where I’m working. I find the combo of a light movable bench and a solid permanent one just about right.
A couple of edited Harbor Freight moving dollies with a couple of strips of plywood to connect them together makes a good place to put a couple of sawhorses. Then you can scoot the whole table to wherever you need it in your workspace without disturbing whatever you’re working on at the time.