To fast forward things a bit, starting with my last post, after graduating college, my oldest son managed to get a job, pay off half of his student loans, and buy a house in the Denver area (of all places), all within a few months of his college graduation. The house that he bought needed a lot of work, and so he decided that he and some friends (some of whom had volunteered to help repair and build new homes in New Orleans after Katrina had devastated the area) would basically flip the house, starting with the upstairs.
They completely gutted everything and rebuilt the entire upstairs of the house. One of the last things to go was an old door frame and the front door that went with it. When I saw the existing door for the first time I noted that it was just about to fall over, and you could not even close it completely. The next time I saw the door, it had been completely removed and replaced with a brand new door, and the old front door was laying on its side on the front patio. My son said, " I have no idea what I am going to do with this old door now."
It was then that I had brilliant idea. While looking over the door I noticed that it appeared to be a solid core door. I then asked my son to get me a level or two. I then started to run the level across the door and noticed that it seemed to be very straight. After a few minutes I told my son that I would be happy to take the door off his hands, so we loaded it up in my truck and off I went.
So why did I want that door? There were several reasons, the first of which stems from a problem that I had been dealing with ever since I build the first work benches for my garage-based airplane-building workshop. My original work benches were unfortunately built with 2x4 side braces for each benchtop that were not cut properly at the mill. While I did check them initially to ensure that they were not warped along the wider 4 inch side of the wood, I neglected to verify that they were also true and straight along the skinnier 2 inch side of each board. The shorter side was the one that my work bench tops ended up sitting on. As you may have already guessed, the bench tops soon adopted the shape of the warped side of each 2x4, resulting in about 1/4 inch bend in each bench top. Keep in mind that this was also after applying not one, but two 3/4 inch plywood benchtops for the top. Here is a pic of the original bench shortly after I had completed it in 2009. It makes me sick to my stomach to look at it because the bend in the top is very noticeable to me, and I should have corrected it right then and there.
My "solution" was to place shims in the middle of the bench top to try to level it out as best I could. I have been living with this situation ever since I began my build. This is where the door from my son's house comes in. As soon as I saw that door I knew that it was time to address my crooked workbench problem once and for all. Last fall I began the arduous process of removing all the stuff from my existing bench, unscrewing the bench top and those crappy 2x4 side supports, and I began the process of preparing the door for use as my new benchtop.
One of the key changes I made was to replace those crappy 2x4s with some 1x8 wood from my old wing kit crate. I obviously check those this time to make sure that skinny 1 inch wide edge was straight.
There was one other major reason that I wanted to use the door. My original benches were not wide enough to support my dimpling table from Cleaveland Tools. To fix that problem I had to build a hinged extension to the edge of the bench top. The door is wide enough to support the dimpling table without the need for any extension. So I get a straight bench top and a wide-enough one all at the same time. A win-win.
Here is the "new" bench after completing all the necessary modifications:
It's a little bit thicker, a bit wider, and a bit shorter than the former workbench, but at least I know it's flat. Now perhaps I can get on with the build. Thanks to my son for providing me with a fix to a nagging problem. Sometimes you just have to make changes to the shop before you can proceed with the build. I also need to get heat into my garage somehow to solve another very bad problem in the winter months. I plan on getting back to work on the wings in a few weeks.
