Project idea: Simple folding (and interlocking) sawhorses made out of pallet and scrap wood!
OK, you can never have too many sawhorses. This guy made some sawhorses out of pallet wood and scrap wood which caught my eye in the title. When I watched the YouTube video, he offers at least 3 interesting ideas I think were worth posting on this thread.
1) He shares a tip on removing nails from the pallet wood which might make your pallet breakdowns easier. Worth checking out the video for that nice tip alone.
2) Shows you how to make folding sawhorses from pallet wood.
3) Made the sawhorses so they can interlock, meaning you can stack one inside the other and bring the tops close together when you only need a smaller work area. That is something I have often needed and his system works while keeping the sawhorse tops even/square with each other. None of my store-bought sawhorses can do that!
Here is a link to the video, less than 10 minutes long, and I have a few afterthoughts on his build....
Truth be told, I have about 5 sets of sawhorses already. So many, in fact, that I have some just stored outside in the snow. My oldest sawhorses had fixed legs and cannot be folded to take up less space in the shop/garage. So, they sit outside because they take up so much space.
This guy really went all out with milling (cutting and planning his pallet wood boards to perfection). He mentions in the video that you don't really need to do those steps, but he wanted to practice his woodworking skills. If I make these sawhorses. they will be cut to length and width for consistency, but that's all. I personally would not spend any time with the extra milling effort for a pair of sawhorses. But that's me.
The other thing that is not needed is manually cutting out half-lap joints for the bottom support piece. I think the half-lap joint makes his project better, but you can easily just attach the bottom support with screws and not mess around with the half-lap joints at all.
If you wanted to make half-lap joints, there are much more efficient/easier methods, such as running your circular saw successively over the width of the joint, at the correct depth, and then knocking out the remaining slices. Or, you could use a table saw with a stop block rig and make successive cuts to dado out that half-lap joint. He mentions in his video that he could have used his band saw but that would have been "cheating." It's not cheating in my shop!
Well, he wanted to use a hammer and chisel to show off his woodworking skills, but I am all for getting the job done with whatever system works best for me.
The main advantage I see to his half-lap joints is that the folding sawhorse will fold up just a little bit flatter. I'll let you decide if all that extra work is worth it.
Well, the best thing for me was how he made the second sawhorse the same width on top, keeping everything square/even, but the support legs on the second sawhorse are narrower, so the sawhorses can interlock and be brought in tight together. None of my store-bought sawhorses have this feature. So, I thought this video was worth posting just for that concept alone!
Hope you find some value in his ideas. I know I did.
