Work Bench

Work bench with drawers displayed

My garage is too small for all of the tools and projects I would like to have, but this bench has definitely helped me to maximum the utility of the space. The bench houses my belt sander and router, both of which fold away when not in use, and my lathe is mounted on top. The bench has 7 drawers, 1 cabinet, plus some open storage on the end caps. The top of one end cap also has a built-in roll of builders paper so the deck can be easily covered for messier projects. Fully loaded the bench is very heavy, but the 6 locking castors allow me to reconfigure the setup with little effort.
The drawers on this bench use 16" full extension slides and provide plenty of organized storage. While I would not like to build custom drawers for a living, making the jigs to align and install the drawers as well as the jigs to install the pulls was kind of fun.

work bench with sander and router displayed

The deck contains two removeable pieces to hide both the router table and the belt sander. The router pivots about four small turnbuckle arms so that it is flush with the deck during use. It also has two internal clamps to secure it in place during use. The belt sander rotates up so that the base of the sander is deck height, and it is secured in place using two 500lb toggle clamps (probably overkill, but it is what I had). Both of these tools have plenty of space for power and vacuum connections even though the lathe is bolted to the back of the deck. The original design had a fold out section for the lathe as well, but since it is more than 150lbs, I thought it would be better to secure it in a more permanent fashion. While the bench is mobile and its deck has limited space, I built a fold out table against the wall of the garage that is flush with the deck of the bench. In this way the bench can be positioned relative to the fold-out table in several ways to accomadate larger pieces.