LK&O

A Railroad with Relevance

Upper Benchwork – Part I

Written By: Alan - Dec• 21•12

The first three sections of benchwork are built and mounted on the walls. The framing angle method of construction is working well. Glad I choose this method. Already needed to adjust the position of a cross member to better align with a wall stud. It was super easy just as planned. The wall brackets are working out good too. Plenty strong enough for the application although I am not liking the factory gray color. Going to paint them sky blue. The benchwork is solid enough I can remove every other bracket for painting. Speaking of brackets, I chopped off a little bit of the wall leg from the 24″ brackets under the corner benchwork. They originally had 18″ wall legs. Now, they have 12″ wall legs same as the 18″ brackets.

More progress to come!

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4 Comments

  1. Lee says:

    Not to beat the dead horse (old post) but based on your design of the cross members, I had purchased a large # of the same brackets. Not enough for the project, but enough to get started. I thought I had seen some discussion of this previously on your site (or maybe it was the MRH thread) but other than the cost of the jig/accessories (I know this is a huge factor) was there another reason why you went with these brackets and not a KREG jig?

  2. alan says:

    Several reasons.

    Cost. Kreg bits and screws are expensive. Brackets aren’t cheap but Kreg screws are a lot of money for what you get. Plus, it would be my luck to break a Kreg bit at the least opportune time.

    Ease of installation. Kreg forces you to have access at a specific angle. #6 screws in the brackets can be installed straight on or with a right angle screwdriver in cramped locations. Kreg forces a pre-drill with a rather large jig. #6 screws do not.

    Right angles – brackets automatically draw the mating pieces into a right angle. Kreg does not.

    Most of these concerns are not an issue during initial build but become real when modifying later on. For instance, look at the top picture on this thread https://lkorailroad.com/benchwork-part-iv/ . Can you imagine trying to use Kreg in this situation?

    All in all, the brackets just work better for me.

  3. Lee says:

    Awesome. Thanks for replying. It turns out I had totally forgotten I had bought an entire box of 100 of those Simpson Strong-Ties. (Funny how sometimes you forget some of what you have bought for the hobby if enough time passes before you can actually work on said project)

  4. Charles Weston says:

    Also, when using pocket screws, like the Kreg system, the workpiece will almost always slip out of line laterally. A block of some sort has to be clamped to the receiving piece to prevent the lateral movement.

    Also, if you can find it, most likely at a commercial plywood supplier that serves the cabinetmaking trade, a birch or maple plywood with a domestic fir core is less likely to split or warp than an import plywood.

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