How to Build a 2×4 Workbench or Bar Height Table – Amazing DIY Workbench

How to Build a Workbench or Bar Height Table

I’m gonna be showing you how I built this 2×4 bar height table that can also be used as a
a workbench made with casters and a butcher block top.

My number one goal in this project was to keep the cost of materials at a minimum.
So I built the majority of this project out of two by fours except for the legs which were made out of four by fours. But you could use two by fours if you just glue them together.
All of the materials that are used for this project can be picked up at your local home
improvement store such as a Home Depot or a Lowe’s and the total cost for this project came in around one hundred and fifty pretty great dollars.

Like I said before this table can also be used as a workbench in your garage or your woodshop. These casters make it super handy for rolling around and then also that bar height is great for a work surface that you can stand next to if you like. What you see stick around and I’ll show you how I did it.

Let’s get started with our Workbench

The very first step in this project is to mill up all of the two by fours that will be used for the tabletop. Now for this project, I’m just using construction Grade two by fours and I’m only using my planer to square everything up. Normally you would want to start with your jointer before you move onto the planer to get a fully squared up board, but since these boards will just be glued together and I’ll be squaring up these glued up sections which you’ll see later on in the project. I’m just using my planer if you haven’t seen the video of me creating this flip-top workbench that I’m using with my de Waal planer and my DeWalt table.

Once I had completed planning all of that pi/4 s that will be used for this project I went ahead and prep for the first clamp up now for this tabletop.

I’ll be doing three separate clamp ups so that I can run each of these three separate glulam type beams through my planer so this first one I’ll be doing with eight of the two by fours.

Protip you do not need this much glue I got a bit crazy. After letting the first glue-up dry overnight and went ahead and prep the planer to send it through. Make sure your planer blades are super sharp as this is a pretty big surface to be sending through your planer and make sure you just take off really small bits each pass.

Once both of the faces had been completely smoothed down by the planer I went ahead and took it over to my miter saw to square up the ends and after squaring up the ends I took it over to my other workbench and, I used some bar clamps to position it upright on its side so that I could square up the sides with my bench dog hand planer I got to say this part of the process was pretty fun. Once I completed squaring up the side of this first beam, I went ahead and moved on to do the second and the third beam the same way and like I
said before each of these beams consists of eight two by fours that I have planned on my planner and the reason that I just do eight at a time is so that I can fit the whole piece through my planer.
I have a twelve-and-a-half-inch planer. If you have something bigger than you
know you can perhaps do bigger sections.
But for this project and my situation, I just did three separate ones and that made the overall width of the tabletop around 36 inches.

Once all three of these beams were thoroughly squared up I went ahead and prep for the big tabletop glue-up.

As I was prepping for the big workbench tabletop glue-up I had to move these three different beams around in several different positions to figure out the best placement of the three and besides after I glued up the three. I had to use my benchtop hand planer to smooth out the top.

Once I had figured out the best placement for these three beams, I went ahead and laid down a layer of glue for the glue up. Now once the glue-up had completely dried, I went ahead it took off all of the clamps and did a little bit of hand planning to smooth out the top.

Once I had finished hand planing that side of the tabletop I went ahead and took out my straightedge and my circular saw to square up the ends. Now you’ll notice that my circular saw blade is not big enough to cut through the entire tabletop so I had to do one cut on one
side and then flip it over and line everything back up to do the cut on the other side.
Once the ends were squared up, I went ahead and moved on to hand planning the opposite face of the tabletop

At this point in the workbench project, I went ahead and pause I’m working on the tabletop and moved on to working on the base of the workbench table. And as I stated before for this base, I’m using four by fours for the legs, and then for the cross-section, I am using two by fours. That I glued up and as I said before if you do want to just use two by fours instead of these four by fours you can glue the two by fours up and that will work just fine.

I am cutting these sections of the legs down to their appropriate length and then here in a second I will begin cutting the dados with my circular saw. There are many different ways that you can do dado cuts such as with a table saw in a dado blade set but, in this situation, I’m just going to be using my circular saw. If you haven’t done this before the first step in using your circular saw for doing data cuts is to set the blade to the correct depth and then you just do multiple passes within the section that you want to do the dado cut and then you can just finish it out with a chisel and a mallet.

I also did a dado cut for the crossbeam that will serve as a footrest if you’re using this as a bar high table. I then used construction screws in a Forstner bit to attach the crossbeam it
isn’t the top of the base that will then be attached to the tabletop.

After this, I went ahead and moved on to gluing up the base and then using some
clamps to hold everything together for the correct dry time.

I then did the same thing for the opposite side of the base. I then clamped up the two ends of the bases with the cross beam and the dado cut.

All the glue on the base was drying I went ahead and moved on to getting
started with the sanding process.
Once the glue used for the base of the tabletop and just about cured I flipped it over and used a Forstner bit and construction screws to attach it to the Tabletop.

I then moved on to a passion that casters to the legs. I then remove the clamps and moved on to the sanding process and as always I start with a low-grade paper such as sixty grit and then move up from there.

It’s interesting thinking about what originally got me into woodworking and one of the biggest things that I enjoyed right off the but was sanding and I think part of it is because you get to see a lot of the character of the wood come out right in front of your eyes
it’s kind of fun.

Once I had finished sanding the entire workbench down with 120 grit sandpaper, I moved on to staining the table and I’m using a dark walnut varnish Tint stain for this project now.
If you want to use this as a workbench I’d recommend just using some oil to kind of seal it at the tabletop up but if you’re gonna use this as a tabletop you should pick a nice stain that you like especially if you’re just using construction grade lumber and consider using a prefinished stain as well.

After letting the stain dry overnight, I went ahead and moved on to sanding the
entire tabletop with 220 grit sandpaper. This preps the tabletop for the high gloss polyurethane finish that I’ll be doing as well as smooths out the blotchy parts of the stain. Once this was completed, I went ahead and moved the table outside and used a microfiber towel to clean off the dust and prep it for the spray finish.

Since I’ll be using my Wagner electric spray gun to apply this finish to the workbench table I used some mineral spirits to thin down the polyurethane for the first coat.

If you have never used one of these HVLP spray guns to do a finish like this, you
should give it a try it really speeds things up and you can do multiple coats fast. The one thing that I recommend does not use the same spray gun for doing paint such as like a white paint that you used to do finishes like this it’s really hard to completely
clean the gun of all of the white paint or paint that you use within it so use different guns

Once the first coat of polyurethane had completely dried, I used a 320 grit sandpaper to sand the entire tabletop and the base, and then I moved on to do a second and a third coat.

Once I had finished applying the second and third coats of polyurethane to the tabletop and its base the project was complete and a man I gotta say is thrilled with how this project turned out. This table is super heavy and durable, and it’ll be great for an
outdoor table in my situation.

If you like this table you shud look this post Live Edge Concrete Epoxy River Table

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