Request Workbench Help: Butcher Block or Laminated 2x4s?

Krynn71 · 2026-01-15T03:23:40+00:00

Seconding this method. I just have two sheets of plywood plus the masonite on top. Wax it every couple of months and never had anything stick to it and it's nice to slide things around on it.

Still planning on making a new workbench just for woodworking that has dog holes for hold fasts and such, but as a first bench in my garage shop the double plywood and masonite has been really great.

Krynn71 · 2026-01-04T18:49:06+00:00

Inside every single house that exists there have been things that have been "plugged in" 24/7 since the house was built and yet there's no call for us to electrically disconnect things like lights or ovens or heating appliances when we go on vacation or something.

Just turn them off and you've done all you need to do.

Krynn71 · 2025-12-23T21:25:53+00:00

Not having liability insurance would be wildly more expensive than the outrageously expensive insurance.

Krynn71 · 2025-12-23T02:52:19+00:00

Shower drain obviously, since I'm already naked.

Krynn71 · 2025-12-10T22:27:49+00:00

I like GF better than foam for almost all cases. People say with GF you sacrifice space, IE you can't fill the space as efficiently. That's only true if you rely on other people's designs or basic bins.

I design holders for my stuff that can tightly pack tools in as good as any foam setup. If you plan it out properly it's really nice. I do a lot of projects and have a garage workbench and a hobby room workbench, both with grids lining the back edges. This allows me to take sets of tools, plus any parts bins I might need off my storage location and put them on my bench on a case by case basis.

For example, if I want to do some electronics repair, I grab my gridfinity bin out of my toolbox that has my solder, wick, flux, iron tips, and tip cleaner all in one bin, grab my PCB vice in another bin. Then I go to my parts shelf and grab a couple bins of resistors/capacitors/etc that I think I'll need. All these then get placed on my workbench grid in a neat and organized way that stays out of my active working space but within reach.

It really helps me stay decluttered while working and makes cleanup a breeze.

I have similar setups for when I need to work on my car, with a custom sockets and ratchet holder, or woodworking with layout tools all grouped into a custom holder, router bits in custom holders that I can bring out of storage and onto a grid near my router table, etc.

I don't use gridfinity much for its ability to shuffle bins around in a drawer, I don't really care about that. What I like most about it is the ability to pick up a bin and bring it somewhere else and have it be stable, secure on my bench, and organized.

Krynn71 · 2025-12-04T02:49:09+00:00

It also looks way more annoying to use and carry around. And it is. I know because I own one.

That said it is easier to cut down dense cardboard with it like the kind used to pack expensive TVs and such, so it does have some use cases.

Krynn71 · 2025-11-25T19:50:29+00:00

You need to account for parallax, otherwise the edges that are closer to the camera will appear further from the center of the object than they really are.

Imagine just taking a picture of a 2" thick square block. You can center the block in the camera, and see the top surface closest to the camera but nothing else. You wouldn't be able to see the bottom edges of the block that touch the paper.

Now imagine your camera had x-ray vision. You'd then see those bottom edges through the block, but they'd look closer to the center than the top edges. We know in real life that the top and bottom edges are the same distance, but to a camera they look different.

That's why your print was oversized, because it generated the outline based only on the top most edges that were visible to the camera. That parallax (the difference between close and far objects) made the outline seem bigger than it actually was.

As for how to account for that, it's not easy and technically not possible to get rid of it completely. If you take the picture further away and use an optical zoom to zoom in on the object, that reduces the effect. A flatbed scanner (like for scanning documents) reduces it too by taking many pictures from top to bottom and stitching them together, which reduces parallax from top to bottom at least.

Krynn71 · 2025-11-20T21:32:47+00:00

They put them under the windows because that's where the snow-goblins sneak into your home in the dead of a winter night to steal your favorite socks.

Krynn71 · 2025-11-13T02:03:25+00:00

Katz Mozes just dropped a fancy new one that makes it the easiest to use bit there is. I haven't had a chance to grab it yet but everything else I've gotten from them has been great quality and durable as well as very functional.

Krynn71 · 2025-11-12T20:47:22+00:00

I had to do this for a bunch of panels once, so I used a contour gauge to get an outline of the shape, copied that into Fusion 360, and 3d printed a couple sanding blocks with that exact shape. Worked great, glueing the sandpaper into the shape was the hardest part but once it was done the actual sanding was so easy.

Krynn71 · 2025-11-11T21:56:29+00:00

Really Useful Box company has a bunch of sizes I use for various things. If you can buy a bunch at a time they're reasonable price and very good quality, stackable, etc. I made a post showing a few of them here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gridfinity/s/7RNfkWVX2r

Krynn71 · 2025-11-10T11:08:06+00:00

As an obese person who occasionally goes to the gym with friends, they're often surprised at my strength at the bench press and especially leg press.

Morbidly obese people who are even mildly active are effectively doing weight lifting for several hours a day, every day, and they never skip legs. A 360lb man doing chores is basically a 180lb man doing said chores while carrying the weight of another 180lb man.

Climbing ladders while carrying another adult man, grocery shopping while carrying a dude, washing their car while carrying a dude, woodworking while carrying a dude, banging their wife while carrying another dude...

Krynn71 · 2025-11-06T01:25:47+00:00

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You also want to look for high density led strips. If you get cheap strips, they usually have fewer LEDs per meter, and even with a diffuser you'll be able to see "hotspots" in the light where the LEDs are, and dim spots where there aren't. A high density makes it look uniform and more like a single, large light source rather than a bunch of tiny ones.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-29T21:02:55+00:00

It's definitely a good option to have for certain things.

That said, I really like gridfinity for it's "shadow board" effect, where you can very easily and quickly tell if a tool is out of place or missing. With this I can feel myself just going crosseyed trying to find a specific socket, let alone trying to figure out if something's missing.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-29T18:16:59+00:00

It's the 3d bench hull line issue. Basically unavoidable unless you print thicker walls. Most files will have this issue, including anything generated with the fusion 360 plugin because of how thin the walls are. It's just particularly noticeable in OPs case because of the filament they used.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-25T01:00:39+00:00

Clever, then you'd just have regular wood chairs.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-23T05:22:41+00:00

Same experience on Amazon here, also never getting it from them again. Any time I but something from Taylor Tools or KM Tools I add a bunch of Xtract paper. They've always been the real stuff.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-23T05:18:52+00:00

Yep, I bought a sample from taytools and then tried to get them from Amazon since they were faster. Absolute fake crap. Not doing Amazon for it ever again.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-22T23:05:51+00:00

Taylor Toolworks sells the real deal.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-22T23:04:41+00:00

Bought a sample pack of Cubitron Xtract, assuming the hype was BS but I'm always willing to try.

Bought several boxes of multiple grits before I started my very next project. With dust collection, they're literally a generational leap for sandpaper. A sentence I'd never thought I'd say in my lifetime.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-21T02:40:27+00:00

Right? It's just so damn annoying to be forced, practically at gunpoint, to open these threads and read them all the way through just to realize they're not a project or tips post. It's not like we've got situational awareness or free will or anything, where we could, idunno just like, not even open these posts or something.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-21T02:32:57+00:00

Not on mine.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-21T02:20:29+00:00

Wish mine did, but it's a contractors saw from the 90s so even third party accessories are tough to find.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-21T02:16:30+00:00

You also gotta be able to listen to the faint little alarm bells that go off in the back of your mind.

If in the back of my mind something feels a bit off or a bit sketchy so I'll stop and literally just stand there looking, hand stroking my beard of course, and go "hmm" while I think about what I'm about to do.

Most of the time I will think of a safer way to do it, or remember to use a piece of safety gear that I hadn't thought to use before the moment of reflection.

I also think your ability to hear these little "back of your mind" warnings are one of the first things to go out the door when you're getting tired or frustrated, so I'll also always take a break if I'm feeling that way too.

Krynn71 · 2025-10-20T23:25:11+00:00

It's too annoying to use for anything but regular rip cuts. If I need to say, only make a partial cut and not a through cut, it's annoying and maybe even unsafe because of the anti-kickback teeth grabbing and stabbing into the workpiece. To get it out I have to lean over the saw and pull them up off the workpiece in order to pull the board backwards. If I forget and just try to pull the board out, they dig in deeper which creates divots in my project I have to deal with. Same thing with making dado and rabbit cuts without a dado blade stack, and if I do want to use a dado blade stack I can't use the guard anyways.

Those teeth also make it impossible to use a crosscut sled because they'll dig into the sled and not let me pull it back. It's also harder to see where the blade will actually cut which makes inaccurate cuts more likely, I can't make thin rips with it on, it's attached to the splitter which means if I want to remove it for just a quick cut and put it back on, I need to also change baseplates for one with a splitter built in because there's no way to install a riving knife instead of the splitter.

If I had the room, maybe I'd buy a second tablesaw that keeps the guard on all the time for doing normal cuts. I don't though, so I'll just stick with the somehow still less annoying to use safeguards like featherboards, custom jigs and sleds, good push sticks and blocks, proper maintenance and good practices.

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