Not necessarily for the project at hand, but soon enough.
I hauled the intended top for the first custom workbench over from the barn: a 36x56" slab of 3/4" plywood, one side sort of goodish. It's... a little big, really, for what I have in mind. Maybe I should save it for one of the other benches? Hm. I don't want to carve up one of the full sheets of plywood for this, but don't I have some quarter-sheets of something or other, left over from packing the cargo pods?
Why, yes. Yes I do. I have, in fact, a few quarter-sheets of 3/8" OSB, and several quarter-sheets of one-side-shiny 1/8" MDF. What if I laminate OSB between two sheets of MDF, shiny side out? Might be a plan.
Doesn't hurt that, as I pull pieces of 2x4 off a crate, I find myself staring at just the right combination to support a 24x48" bench top, no cutting required.
Well, laminating a top onto that slab of OSB used up about half the readily-findable supply of Weldwood. Like maybe more'n half. I guess the bottom doesn't really need MDF laminated onto it; I can take some other measures to keep it from peeling and chipping, like maybe a coat of urethane varnish. (I figure the top gets a coat of boat-deck paint. I don't want an exposed OSB surface; not only is it prone to various sorts of damage, but it's ugly even by my low standards.)
Ah, well. Bigger can of Weldwood is on order. Lunch time now; then I'll pull the moving boxes off my new bench top and see how the laminating went. The big workbench (for the electronics lab) is supposed to have a nice surface; I may end up buying a sheet of countertop laminate for that one, assuming I can find some that isn't too heavily patterned.
Update: In among cooling/hydration sessions, I got the frame together. Seems decently sturdy and stable; it may need neither bracing nor leg levelers (whereof I bought a supply for this sort of thing). Still need to apply some sort of protective coating to the bottom and edges of the top, attach the top, and paint the upper surface, then dig out the long-mothballed tools that are meant to be bolted to this bench.
And my high-school shop teachers all despaired of me ever being able to make anything. Well, (a) I wasn't particularly motivated, and (b) they didn't let me play with power tools.
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