Making a Workbench From Pallets

This is to document building my workbench from pallets. I am not an expert and the point of this project is to help me to learn as well as end up with a workbench. As a result some of the choices are a little over engineered or unnecessary but aim to just improve my skills. I also have a very limited set of tools and prefer hand tools so this may be a little unnecessary for most people who have more suitable power tools.

Lots of pallets.
Dovetail saw.
Tenon saw.
Wood glue
Chisels.
No 4 plane.
No 4 1/2 plane.
Set square.
Pencil.
Steel ruler.

This is a bit of a pain. There are lots of ways to do this but I favour a combination of the car jack method here https://www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/break-down-pallets.htm and using my big chisel usually used for getting concrete off blocks!
For the chisel, I hammer it between the plank and a block to make space for the crowbar.

Once you’ve broken them up, they need denailing.

The bench I want to make is going to be 130cm by 65cm so needed a good number of pallets (around 8-10).

You can see the amount of wood I ended up with. Not all of this will go in the bench but to find the right pieces I wanted and the right quality of wood I ended up with a bit more than I needed.

I found some really good pallets that had some solid stringers (the thicker pieces that run the length of the pallets) and thought I’d use these for legs. I’m making quite a heavy bench and I’m big and clumsy so what something that could take some abuse so I thought I’d laminate two together to make a leg.

First step is planing them down so they are finished and have a flat surface to glue. This also meant I could flatten any twists and make sure I’d get a good join. They weren’t all in as good condition as the one in the picture!

Anyway, once they were matched into pairs depending on how much work I needed to do to match their twists, lumps and bumps, out with the 4 1/2 plane and get them flat. Then slap on the wood glue On both surfaces and smooth it out so the whole surface is covered. Then put the edges together and clamp in place putting the claps at the points that close all the gaps. Good prep with the plane will make this easier so have a look here for advice on how to flatten boards https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/fairwoodworking.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/how-i-flatten-a-board-with-only-hand-tools/amp/.

I only had enough clamps to do two legs at a time and to be honest, even this was a stretch. I’ve bought some more because I’m coming to the conclusion you can never have too many.

Now a warning here: this may be a stupid thing to do. I wasn’t sure whether to laminate the top first and then build the base or do this first. I’m doing this first because I have defined space the bench has to fit in and haven’t yet got enough wood together for the top. Plus the mdf for the bottom shelf keeps getting in the way and I’d like to get that bit out of the way. As I’m writing this as I do it, we’ll both find out if it’s stupid later.

A quick note on the design of the bench.... there isn’t one really, it’s in my head. Again, this may be stupid but it is more fun, which is why I am doing this to start with. I would recommend that if you don’t want as many “bugger” moments as I probably have you don’t follow my example here and plan what you are going to do.

A workbench needs a way to stop the legs spreading. As you put a lot of pressure down on the bench it can cause the legs to splay out and even collapse the bench. This means the legs need a frame lower down to help keep them where they are put. So I’ve decided to put a shelf lower down on the legs, and have supports with half lap dovetail joints to hold everything up and together. I’m also going to use corner blocks from the pallets as extra small legs to support the shelf in the middle. I’ll take pictures and it’ll be clearer. Putting these additional supports in requires me to cut some joints lower down on the legs.

So the first thing was to have a look at the legs and figure out what way up and where they need to go so I can avoid knots and other “features”, definitely not flaws, that the full of character (rubbish) pallet wood comes with. Having picked the legs and which sides are going to need have joints cut I then cut the tenons on top that will sit in the bench. I mostly did this for ease of cutting and managing them when cutting the tenons on top.

There are loads of tutorials online for how to cut tenons but the most important thing is your saw. I bought a wrecked 8 inch dovetail say for about a fiver online and then a saw file and cut new teeth on it. This works really well for cutting the tenons. I’d really recommend this. I plan to do this kind of thing as a hobby and buying disposable hard point saws does not sit well with me. For about £20 in total I have a saw that will last the next decade and the skills to keep it sharp. I did the same for my tenon, ripcut (good god these are expensive new!) and crosscut saw which I think will be all the saws I will need.

Back to the point of this instructable. To mark the tenon, I measured two points 15 mm in from an edge and join them up. This marks out the top of the tenon. I then measured 4 cm down from the top of the leg and drew a line all the way round the leg. Extend two of the lines down the side of the leg to mark the depth of the tenon. Then cut along the lines.

Next, having chosen the bits of wood for the supports around the bottom of the legs I then cut the dovetails for these supports. Having cut the dovetails, I used these to mark out the recesses on the legs as can be seen in the pictures.

A note here, dovetails were not the right choice. I should have cut a tenon through the centre of the legs. By putting a dovetail in and putting the frame lower down on the outside of the legs, gluing up square became really hard. The dovetails on the outside of the legs put enough pressure on asymmetrically that the legs were twisted slightly. I thought that the dovetails would stop the legs splaying. I perhaps should have put a support on both the inside and outside of the legs to even up the twist but hindsight is great.

Anyway, once I marked up and cut the tails, I used the tails to mark the outline of the pins. I then made multiple saw cuts within the lines (see picture) and chiselled out the pins. Once they were chiselled, I glued the frame together (again see the picture).

Once the frame was glued, I added an two additional feet halfway across the span. I used corner blocks from the pallet for this and then put an extra piece of wood across to support the bottom shelf. Cutting the mdf the bottom part is done.

Moving to the top, I wanted some additional support for the bench top other than just the tenons and legs. I put some pieces from front to back which will support the ends of the bench top. This showed up the mistake of the dovetails as putting these pieces across the legs showed the twist which was introduced. This was not huge, but was noticeable.

Once this was done, I put another piece of mdf on the top with some temporary bearers to make a temporary table top I could use to glue up the rest.

For the top I used longer pieces from pallets. I aimed to use planks about 120cm long so gathered as many as I could. I could not get enough of the right length so I had to lengthen some. Before that, I prepped the pallet wood.

Now, while it is lovely and satisfying to recycle pallet wood for things like this, preparing the planks only with hand tools is a complete pain in the backside. If I had power tools, specifically a thickness planer, this would have been a lot easier.

I chose to prepare the surfaces that would be glued together and would worry about the other sides once I had laminated the top.
So having planed the surfaces to be glued together, I could start gluing. I used titebond 3 for the gluing. It has a longer open time than the other titebond glues, and this was hugely useful given how many pieces there were to laminate. I found this quite tricky as I only had some sash clamps at that point. I would highly recommend getting some cauls to hols things in line. I could only glue a handful of planks together at a time. The first set I glued I did not keep the ends straight and there was some slipping (see photo). This was not the end of the world as I could plane this out once laminated but it added work and meant I would lose an amount of thickness.

After this I did fewer planks at a time and this was easier to handle.

I did not have enough planks of the right length so I had to lengthen some. I didn’t mind so much as I viewed this as an opportunity to practice lap joints. After matching planks for thickness I marked the lap joints, cut them carefully, glued and clamped. This became much easier to cut once using a marking tool which scored a line rather than a pencil, I don’t know why. Once at the right length these were then laminated.

To cut the mortise, I measured how far from the front of the bench the tenon was and marked appropriately.

I then used a drill to clear out the bulk of the wood and then cleared out the remainder with a chisel. This then meant the front half of bench now had a tabletop.

The back half of the bench would have a well and sloping sides. There would also be an overhang at the back of the front half of the bench to secure the well board.

To make the wellboard I decided to edge join a number of boards to make a base for the different height elements. At the back would be a stack of boards at the height of the front part of the bench. The well would be made by thinner stringers taken from the pallets. The sloped ends would be made from a pallet corner block cut appropriately.

First I selected 4 boards to make the base for this part of the bench. The edges were jointed using a number 4 plane. The long spirit level was used as a straight edge to check the edge of the board was prepared. The bubble of the spirit level was irrelevant, but the straight bottom of the aluminium spirit level was useful for checking that the board had a straight edge for joining.
With the edges prepared, the boards were joined together.

I used sash clamps for this but it was very difficult to keep the boards flat while doing this. This would have been easier if I had a caul to put across them and stop them bowing at the join. I bought some box aluminium tubing to help with this in the future.

Now having everything laminated, I chose to flatten the tops of everything. Again only having a 4 and a 4 and a half plane meant this was a bit more work than it could have been. The issues with gluing the well boards meant there was a slight bow on this and caused more work than it could have been.

Lastly for this step, I cut the mortises for the well board and made sure that could fit in place.

Having glued the well board I now needed to build up the back side of the well. This was simply a laminated stack of pallet boards.
Once this was made and I could select the stringers for the bottom of the well and cut the sloped ends of the well board from pallet blocks.

All of these being selected and having been checked by laying out without glue, it was clear the overhang from the front of the Bench was not sufficient. I dropped some more planks in half and and glued them to the front half of the bench to create the overhang for the well board.

This having been completed, the well board was glued together in position with cling film in place to make sure it wasn't stuck to the front half. Keeping the sections separate would mean in the future I could repair or replace the elements if necessary and would make it possible to dismantle the bench and move it more easily.

I then found the overhang over the well board want deep enough. To fix this I ripped some boards and glued them on to extend the overhang.

This completed, I used a saw to cut the bevels on the end blocks and glued them in place along with the base of the well and the back of the week board.

With this done, the basic bench was complete and it just needed finishing.

To finish the bench, it needed levelling. This was not as trivial as it sounds as all I had was a no 6 hand plane to do it with. I love just using hands tools but this job did make me wish for a power planer!

With this done I put a vice I bought off ebay on to the front. I did toy with building an end vice into it but life is too short and I wanted to get on to building other things.

I also bought some hold-fasts (which I really like) that came with an auger and drilled holes for those. I didn't do many to stay with until I used the bench a bit and figured out where they would be useful.

And that is it. A bench made pretty much entirely from pallet Wood to a design I pretty much made up as I went. More detail than you probably wanted but if this gets read by anyone other than me I'll be amazed.

I'm currently finishing the chest of drawers in the picture to sit under the bench but don't have enough photos to talk about that you'll be relieved to hear. Thanks for reading.