DIY: Saw Horses

Intro

I recently managed to get a mitre saw and a sander on eBay at a great price of £30 for the pair. The only issue I've got with the mitre saw is that it doesn't have a work stand / workbench. When faced with a problem, don't complain - solve it, so let's make one!

A dedicated workbench is fundamental to any workshop, but right now I'm in rented accommodation and the garage is very full with​ all of our stuff, as a result I need something compact. My idea is that I will make a pair of saw horses​ that will support a hardwood top that I can use as a workbench to support the mitre saw. I believe that making these is a good investment because long term they can be used to support work in the future even after I've built a workbench, so it's not like it will only have a short useful life.

Design

I've got very little in the way of tools so I need a simple and straight forward design. I have been watching Better Homes & Gardens recently (which I think is great to see affordable home improvement ideas as a general tip) but one video in particular caught my eye. It is misleadingly called "everything you need to know about saws" but it's a brief overview on building your own saw horses - watch it here.

This video became the inspiration to building my own.

Now I'm not experienced at DIY, it's not like I could just start sawing wood and eventually the product would appear - so I like to put a bit of effort up front in the planning and designing stages.

So step 1 was to fire up SketchUp. For those of you who haven't heard about SketchUp, it's a fantastic free modelling tool - it's straightforward and very powerful, I highly recommend it. Read up more about it here.

So I got to drawing the design based on what I could see in the YouTube video that I am using for inspiration, it didn't take long before I had a design.

When doing some research, I found that the angle to put the legs at was subject to a lot of opinion, with angles varying between 15 and 25 degrees. I chose 15 degrees in the end. A shallower angle means you'll need less wood, but it's theoretically less stable because the load you are supporting won't be spread out as much because the legs won't be angled out as far - practically I wouldn't worry about it - 15 was convenient for me.

Another area of opinion was height - now this was an area where I knew what I wanted. I'm 6'4" (or 193cm for those using new units) and I do have a sensitive back (I can typically do anything any normal person can do - but I'll be very achy and sore) as a result I wanted to set these at a height that suited me.

I chose that the top of the saw horses should be at 115 cm. This eliminates any bending, using tools like my mitre saw wouldn't require any bending as they would be at perfect operating height.

One last design feature, I wanted these saw horses to be easily stored away so making them folding so that they would collapse to save space was very important so the top of the saw horses would be hinged.

Putting all of these requirements together I came up with a design. Now the great thing about SketchUp is that it's more than just a sketch, I drew everything to scale: I knew the dimensions of the wood because of what was discussed in the video; I knew what height I wanted; and I knew the angles so the model in SketchUp matched exactly what the real product would be. So from this I could generate a cutting list and ultimately my raw materials list.

I went to Jackson's Timber to get the wood I required. It was amazing how quickly the lengths added up, in the end I needed:

• 10m of 4" x 2"
• 4m of 4" x 1" 
• 2m of 6" x 2"

I should say that originally I was going to get 8" x 2" for the top, but after talking to one of the guys at the shop he recommended me down to the 6" x 2" with the reason of weight. So it's definitely worth striking up a conversation with these guys - I learned a lot from them.

Because I have a compact car I had them cut the lengths down so that they would fit in the car - you can see all the wood I needed!

Lot's of wood

Step 1 - Making the legs

Time to get cracking, I got my cutting list from the model and got to work. I had to recruit my wife, Charlotte, to help because the lengths were so long and heavy that they needed support while I was cutting - ironically a saw horse would do the job!

First thing was to make the legs as everything is built from them.  I had chosen a 15 degree angle for my saw horses, so the first cut was really simple: make a 15 degree cut that would waste as little material as possible. So first cut was taking the corner off the end of the 4" x 2" with a 15 degree cut. 

First cut

Then I would measure back the length I needed, in this case 1.5m.  Then I had to make a parallel cut. From now on, I just used this first leg as a template to make the rest.  I used an off cut so that I could cut the end of the second leg so that it would be angled too.

It was then a case of repeating another 3 times so that I had all four sets of legs.

Step 2 - Making the top

The 6" x 2" wood was used to set the width of the saw horse. I chose to use 75cm.  This was based on the fact that the 6" x 2" material also came in 1.5m length so cutting it straight in half was very easy.

Step 3 - Cross supports

This is a simple job of cutting the 4" x 1" down to the length I want, which will be the width of the saw horse. The standard width is 900 mm. It was at this point my wife suggested that because I had the 6" x 2" pre-cut into two 1.5m lengths that we could save the second piece by just cutting one of them in half again.

The cross supports go between each "vee" of legs and are the same length as the top support, this is cut from 4" x 1"

Now that all the cutting is done, the full set of material is : 4 x cross pieces; 2 x tops; 8 x legs.

Step 4 - Hinges

Next I wanted to attach the hinges. I'm using spruce, a hardwood, I wanted to play things safe and pre-drill the holes for the hinges.

Hinges will be put for each pair of legs, this will allow the saw horses to "collapse" and take up much less space when in storage.  The hinges are placed on the wood, the holes marked and then pre-drilled.

Using the included screws they are then screwed into place firmly. The process is repeated for the mating leg.

Step 5 - Notching the tops

Because of the hinge design I had chosen, I had to notch the top piece so that it would sit flat on the top of the legs. I did this with a drill.

Step 6 - Cross Supports

The cross supports are now prepared by pre-drilling them. I measured in half the thickness of the legs (I'm using 2" thick legs so I measured in 1") marked and then drilled. I then used the first pre-drilled piece of wood as a template to save marking up every piece - I just drilled through the holes I had already made. This was repeated for all the cross braces.
I decided that I wanted the cross-supports at a third of the way up from the ground. So I measured this point, and marked it across the leg so that I could easily line up the top of the cross brace. Using the holes in the cross brace, and the line I had already drawn, I could then make a small pre-drill into the leg by going through the cross brace to give me a template. Then i finished off the pre-drill now that I knew where the holes would be.

The cross-supports were now populated with all their screws.

I found it easiest to lay the legs on the floor and then screw the cross braces down into them then I would secure the other side - that's one side of the saw horses made!

I did try doing this with the horses stood up - don't bother, it's just so difficult! At least with them laying down you can push into the ground.

Step 7 - Secure the tops

To secure the saw horse tops, I knew I wanted to drill down through the top into the legs. So I measured the thickness of the wood, then measured in half of this and scored a line - now I know my screws need to be somewhere along that line - I then worked out where 1/3rd and 2/3rds along this line is - this is where my screws would be.

So I marked these points and pre-drilled down through the top and into the leg and then screwed the top in to place.

This was then repeated for the other end.

Step 8 - Admire! The job is done!

Having the SketchUp model was a massive help to me, I didn't (and still don't) have the self-confidence to know that cuts would work out, so I trusted the numbers rather than my gut feeling and it worked!

Job done!

To support this blog article, I've also created a video on YouTube which shows you the detail of the steps that I went through to make these saw horses. You may find this useful:

Also the SketchUp CAD file that I used for my design is available here.