A wooden sawhorse always comes in handy in our woodworking shop. Even if we have a workbench or a work table. I was thinking of making some simple wooden sawhorses, but in the end I think it’s a woodworking project that I’ll leave for another time. So I decided to reinforce two sawhorses that I have in the workshop and that I never use.
They are two of those height-adjustable sawhorses that are great for making a table or a desk for a room or for a family meal in the garden, but they are not stable enough to work with them comfortably in the woodworking workshop.
So, the first thing I’m going to do is to disassemble the top of the wooden sawhorse, that movable part that goes up and down to regulate the height, and in its place I want to screw a pine board. This pine board protrudes about 10 cm from each end of the sawhorse and about 3.5 cm from the sides. Then, I drill pilot holes making sure they go into the horizontal beams of the sawhorse, I countersink the holes and I drive in the wood screws. Thus, by countersinking the holes I get the screw heads below the wood surface.
The next thing to do is to screw some leg bracings to the bottom part of the sawhorse. I clamp the leg bracings in position with clamps and I screw them in place with wood screws. On this occasion I do not need to drill pilot holes, as the wood is soft and the screws fit without any problems.
I also decided to drive some screws from the bottom of the short leg bracings of the sawhorse. I don’t think they are necessary, but they always help.
Now I want to put some diagonal bracings. Then, I take the top board that was going up and down on the original sawhorse, and I’m going to cut it in two with the jigsaw. This way I have two perfect bracings that I will screw diagonally in the inside part of the legs of the sawhorse. I clamp them in place with a pair of woodworking clamps and I drive a wood screw into each end of the two bracings.
In this way I get a very rigid and stable wooden sawhorse that withstands very well the efforts along its length. And just by placing a foot on top of the leg bracings that I put at the bottom, it also withstands 90-degree efforts very well.
All this together with a larger surface area on top, and now I have a wooden sawhorse that will be very useful for cutting wood with the circular saw, the jigsaw, the handsaw, or for working with other woodworking tools.
And well, I just need to paint the sawhorse to make it look more nice. And I also painted some red lines on top of the screw heads as a warning to know where they are when cutting. This way I will be careful not to run the blade of the saws over the screws when I have to cut wood.
