The Workbenches That Mark Built

Mark built a second workbench for our garage sometime in 2007.  I can't remember exactly when, so I'm arbitrarily writing about it today.  First, he drew up some plans on graph paper (click on the image to make it larger):

The scale was 1" = 1', so every square was equal to 3" by 3".  However, I don't think he drew this quite to scale.  In the lower left corner, he calculated how much the wood pieces he would need were going to cost - a total of $37.72, probably before sales tax.

Below is the completed bench.  Mark made some adjustments.  The bottom braces are actually 15" above the ground, not one foot.  That was to accommodate the large wooden box you can see below it - which contains the film enlarger from his darkroom.  He also ended up altering the design a little bit, putting the lower braces on the longer sides on the inside, and on the outside on the shorter (end) sides.  That was to create a support for the piece of plywood he cut to fit above these lower braces to create a shelf.  Finally, he didn't cut the six-foot-long 1x8s he used to make the bench top down to five feet long, instead letting them extend longer on the left side, over a tool box he wanted to store there, since my car (parked to the left of that) was short enough that there was room.

This is roughly how his work area was set up, with the new workbench on the left, and the old workbench (which he'd had for some time) on the right, up on a little ledge on the back side of our garage, just to the left of a window.

This is the older workbench.  The gray tool chest belonged to Mark's father, and still has some of his tools in it, as does the wooden box on the floor on the far right.  The tire is the donut spare from my Camry (which I replaced with a full-size spare for my long road trips).  The blue bin on the shelf behind the tire contains various other pieces of darkroom equipment. 

This area doesn't look the same as it did when Mark was still alive.  I've given a number of his tools, including large ones, to his son-in-law Mike (like a router and a finish nailer) and his granddaughter Holly (like a circular saw, bench vise, and a vintage Waterloo tool cart, the latter two pictured below).  Holly helped me sort through the remaining hand tools, and I'm still choosing which ones to hang on the pegboard on the wall behind the workbench Mark built about nineteen years ago.  I hope to pass on more of the tools and tool boxes to the other grandchildren.

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