Doing a bit of a reshuffle in the garage to give me more space to fiddle with my bikes and things and I feel I need a work bench. Thinking of just a decent slab of wood 6ft by 3ft on some shelving brackets and some cobbled together legs.

But not sure where the best place to try and scab a bit of thick enough wood? Any ideas? Or do I need to stop being a cheapskate and just buy something for the job…

Check gumtree etc for worktop off cuts or old scaffie boards.

3×2 or 4×2 frame screwed into the wall & a piece of 22mm ply resting on it. Legs from IKEA or use the 3×2. £50/£60 ish

8×4 sheet of 18mm mdf cut in half lengthwise and then then joined together was the cheapest way when I built my workbench.

Benefit of that is you have 4 clean sides to use/flip over once it gets too dirty. Or do it properly unlike me and paint or vanish it from the get go…

A door would be approximately 6×3. Fire doors are sturdiest but expensive new but could be a cheap / free scavenge

kitchen worktop is only 2ft wide so may be shallower than you want and quite a slippery surface if that’s an issue – I don’t like them as a worksurface

maybe see if there’s a sturdy dining table locally on gumtree or similar and just use the top if you need something taller.

if you’re near an IKEA they usually have a corner near the tills when they sell various panels that are surplus or ex display and there’s often descent size panels, table tops etc there for cheap

scaff boards can distort a lot when they dry out if you’re using them indoors

I got two cheapo modular workbench/shelving units when they were on offer at Aldi – they can be either stacked side by side or on top of each other so I have one in each configuration.

I then managed to get a load of T&G floor panels from a friend who had ripped it all out to do a loft conversion and used some to make a workbench top and the rest to make a wall unit for all my tools etc.

Then by some fluke I got a great vice from Freegle just after I had finished.

The whole lot cost me £80.

Find someone replacing their kitchen and snag a bit of old worktop. Or go skip diving.

I roughly followed this for mine though, it’s about as cheap as it gets for one with non-scavenged materials and MDF is nice and flat. http://straightchuter.com/basic-workbench-design-plans/

Plenty of material in skips or on Freecycle/Facebook. My worktops are old fire doors. Nice and solid and free. Consider scaffold planks, joists, kitchen counter

Off cut or damaged work top.

Fence post legs and a 3×2 frame.

I use old school table frames anf flush doors as tops, I have a stack of them for bigger jobs propped against the wall, table frames were from a skip behind a school, they replace them pretty often and the old ones get binned, the doors from a house that was being ripped out, flush ones are strangely like Ikea work tops.
And a Superjaws mobile vice, amazing piece of kit, does everything from sawing logs to clamping things, folds up and stores away, had to buy that unfortunately.

Metal side hung filing cabinets (scrounged) bolted to the wall with a sheet of 22mm ply on top.

I made the Andrew McLean (straightchuter) version, with a fire door for the top.

Took down a stud wall partition in the garage. The frame, screws and door all got used in the bench, there wasn’t a huge amount left over! Very satisfying.

Cheapest timber is CLS(from B&Q) For a 3’x2’x 900mm high you’ll need about 10-12m of 3″x2″. You can make the top with the same stuff just laid side to side glued together. Its basically 4 A shaped frames(square A shape) and will cost you about £20 plus the cost of the screws, and those should be about 4″xNo6 – 2 screws per joint

Wood from a loft conversion nearby.

that straightchuter bench looks pretty good and is economical with the materials

myself, I had a load of OSB sheet left over from my shed build, I used that to make 3 really basic copies of kitchen base unit carcasses (like, two sides, a base and a shelf – I used the shed wall as the ‘back’), then put the most budget laminate worktop I could find on top (B&Q’s cheapest, which is useless stuff for an actual kitchen but fine for a shed)

PS anyone need a 5′ length of worktop?

You can sometimes pick up nice big thick lumps of wood cheaply by buying old dining tables off FB Marketplace.

Kitchen base units and the cheapest worktop you can find. Having something wipeable is surprisingly good, and they are usually heavy enough to be a solid surface for all type of work. Having cupboards underneath is a bonus.

I had a couple of spare base units from doing the kitchen in our ould house and a length of old worktop from doing the kitchen in our current gaff. Only thing is the worktop is black, would recommend getting a lighter colour when scouring gumtree/FB etc

For just one or two, the B&Q base units were best value when I looked recently. They sell without doors, which cuts cost for a shed bench effort.

drawback to kitchen units, you can’t move the bench around, wheras something like that straightchuter build will be stable wherever you put it

Here’s my effort… already had the drawers from 2 kitchens ago. Built the timber frame and used hammer in threaded inserts and adjustable feet to level it all out. It’s lovely and flat.

The work tops were from IKEA – their basic 28mm thick ones – Lilltrask.

Thick chipboard shelf and thinner OSB back panel for tool hanging.

Lighting has been much improved since…

Did it in Feb. Timber was about £80, fittings £20ish and the worktops £25 each (2off used)

I used these https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-cwts1-work-table-supports-pair/ and a door I bought of ebay for £1.

Have a look on Ebay, lots of ex school hardwood chemistry lab benches up for sale, some just as slabs of wood, others as full benches.

>>thread hijack<< can anyone remember the thread where a poster (Shackleton?) made a rail setup, so he could then level a table top with a router?. Cheers

>>thread hijack<< can anyone remember the thread where a poster (Shackleton?) made a rail setup, so he could then level a table top with a router?. Cheers

This is how Ron Swanson does it:

https://www.finewoodworking.com/2011/09/23/tour-nick-offermans-workshop

Yeah if you prefer not to scavenge, then CLS and MDF from Wickes/B&Q with free delivery is pretty good value. I wasn’t very economical probably went a bit overkill with the supports in the framework, and it took me an age to build, treat, prime, paint, then the two layers of 18mm MDF on top, but since using it over the past few months it feels very solid so I’m pleased with it.

I looked for ages on FB marketplace etc.. looking for a decent sized piece of worktop. No one was giving it away or at a cost that was worth while compromising on size for. So I decided to bite the bullet and bought a full length worktop from B&Q. Should’ve been £38 but it had a chip out of the corner so I asked about knocking something off as it was damaged. They knocked it down to £25 and now its fitted you can’t see the damage anyway.

Supported it on a full length baton along the back wall and one end with cheapest and straightest 2×1 they had. Legs were courtesy of 2x lengths 3×3 that I had in the shed anyway, fixed top and bottom with a couple of L brackets.

I think the lot was just over £30