pocket83's Stationary Workbench (with upgrades & tricks)

Original workbench video:
►   • T-leg workbench: design & build  

There's something that I wish I could go back and add to both videos. Note that load distribution is only part of the picture. A frame can only be 'sturdy' along an axis that receives diagonal support. A work bench frame has three axes: length, width, and height; in order to get your bench to be as tough as possible, you should try to get extra diagonal strength along all three:

●A plywood top surface provides diagonal strength in one dimension.
●Side panels or gussets will add diagonal strength to its second dimension.
●Front/rear panels give diagonal strength to the third dimension.

Ideally, you'll get all three, somehow. But of course, in the real world, we're often forced to compromise. Also note that diagonal bracing can be used to the same affect as plywood panels, but try to provide both sides of the 'X' if you do this, since a single diagonal brace will have to work double-duty in order to pick up both the tensile and compressive forces.

~~~~

If you're a regular here, you probably think I go on and on about tension and compression. That's only because it's so important.

First rule of building things: The basis of sound construction is triangulation. Squares can't be strong without getting help from outside the square. Even the biggest rectangle will succumb to imbalance and become parallelogrammed. Triangulation is the process of giving a rectangle diagonal strength in the form of tension/compression resisting braces. No structure is secure without this.

First rule of cutting things: (ideally), only tension can be cut, not compression. When cutting anything, tension is released as it is cut, and compression builds underneath the cut (in proportion to the mass) until both become zero, at which point the cutoff becomes weightless. Whether it's a chainsaw working its way through a log or a piece of metal being fed through a bandsaw, try to be mindful of where the material is most tense and least compressed, and try to cut through it there.
First rule of cutting things restated: one piece gradually becomes a cutoff.

Of course, this model is conceptual. Just as the Earth-Moon system is ensconced in a two-party gravitational dance, but we still think of it as being a simplified 'Moon-orbits-Earth' scenario. The Earth/Moon system and the Sun are also locked into a compounded version of this dance, along with all of the neighboring planets. And this entire Solar mass swirls into its host Galaxy, who slowly careens an adjacent comparable body. All and every, in orbit of one another, to precisely the tune of the displacement of their individual mass.

First rule of understanding the universe: one cannot come to understand the universe.
Second rule of understanding the universe: the first rule is unalterable and absolute.
Third rule of understanding the universe: the second rule is the only certainly in the universe, paradoxes notwithstanding.