Making a pair of sawhorses the hard way

[jcs0001]

I decided the other day that my second pair of (outside) sawhorses had seen better days and should be replaced.  There are many designs available but I wanted ones with a slot in the middle of the top support and also ones that would fold into one dimension.  Shopnotes Issue 58, July 2001 had a pair that looked good so I proceeded to make up the pieces.

Note that I have more than sufficient tools for this - tablesaw, bandsaw, skill saw, drills and lots of hand tools.  This should have been an exercise for an afternoon but it wasn't.

First off I figured I use up some of my scraps of 2x 6 and 2x8 material.  Since the sawhorses are made up of 2x4's it meant ripping a few pieces but no problem.  I also bought a couple of new 2x4's as I didn't have enough scrap.

Had I followed the plans I would have drilled the pivot holes before assembly but that would have been too easy.  Likewise had I used a little bit of common sense the angles on the bottoms of the "feet" would have been cut before assembly - again, why make it easy.

Each sawhorse is made up of two frames - one fits inside the other.  I blithly proceeded to put parts together and once they were all glued and screwed in place noticed that one pair fit ok but the other did not.  Somehow I got things out of square.  Tried cutting it down on the tablesaw but that resulted in a real mess.  This all happened yesterday. 

This morning it was back to the building supply store to get 2 more 2x4's and cut enough pieces for another frame.  This time it fit.

Drilling the pivot holes after the fact was an exercise but eventually it got done and things lined up.  Then it was time to angle the feet.  Only way i could figure that worked ok was with a carpenter's hand saw - instead of 5 min. it was about 30 min. between marking, anchoring the frame and cutting.

Anyway here they are:

Sawhorse ready for use.


Folded up.


Uses a 5/16 in. bolt through both pieces (on both sides) for a pivot.


They are certainly strong enough and will give me years of use I expect.  The lessons learned might be handy in future also.

John.

[velocette]

Hi  John
Unable to see the finished saw horses so I will fly blind.
The traditional saw horses were fabricated with handsaw, chisel  and hand plane only one setting with the bevel square set (if memory serves me correctly) to 15 degrees) and all marking was done on the one setting.
Remembering that the there are two left and two right legs on each horse.
Saw bench makes it easier Blade tilt 15 deg mitre slider 15 deg left or right and a batten screwed on to the mitre with a 15 deg bevel on the front edge
Would you please add the photos as attachments.

Eric
 

[jcs0001]

Velocette:

I'm afraid I don't know how to add photos as an attachment.  Not sure why you can't see them but if anyone else is having trouble please let me know.

Here is a direct link to photobucket:
http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa327/jcs0001/IMG_0576.jpg

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa327/jcs0001/IMG_0575.jpg

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa327/jcs0001/IMG_0577.jpg

Hope this helps.

John.

[velocette]

Hi John
Great idea for  space saver saw horses nice job.
Tipped up the Photobucket and found the Photos can view them great
Filed away the Idea for a future  project.

Many thanks for sharing
Eric

[PekkaNF]

Nice writeup. I founf it enjoable and filled with great humour straight from the first chapter. I hope the humorous part was intentional and not just my dry humour and lack of English language skils.

But probably that is just the way I had done.

Pekka

[jcs0001]

Eric:

Happy that you can view them.  They are indeed handy and don't take up a lot of room - important in my case as my shop and storage is limited.

Pekka:

Glad you "got" the humour.  It's good once in a while to poke a bit of fun at oneself.  I do think I had my brain in neutral when I made these.

John.