Pallet Workbench

As a tall fella, I’m fed up of breaking my back leaning over to reach tables built for ‘normal’ people. I decided for my back’s sake its time I built a workbench for me…or any other tall person.

Please bear with me on these instructions, I don’t know any technical terms and I’m sure there are better ways of accomplishing what I've done.

To do this I basically used a crowbar and had about a 60% success rate in getting the boards off without them splitting. If anyone has a better technique then please let me know….it got me very angry very quickly. I broke down 2 large pallets to get the amount of wood I needed.

As my workbench was going to be tall, I knew that it could potentially be unstable so I built two identical frames to wrap around the legs for extra support. These frames will be attached at the top and bottom to give strength and will also be the surface to attach the panels, which will create the worktop and bottom shelf.

Before attaching the panels to the first frame to create the worktop, I planed off the edges to remove any nasty bits and sanded down the panels. I didn’t spend too much time on this, I quite liked the idea of my bench to be rough looking…at the end of the day, it’s going to get more than a few knocks and scratches in its lifetime.

My frame was built to be the exact length of the panels to reduce cutting and to keep things easier. In reflection I wish I’d have made the frame slightly smaller to allow for a lip around the edge, rather than everything being flush. I didn't worry too much about each panel being completely flush against each other, but I did the best I can and I’m happy with the outcome. Once each panel is screwed into place it instantly gives the frame stability.

This is the fun bit. At this stage you should have one frame, with panels for your worktop, another frame without panels for bottom support and 4 legs (I used a good piece of wood that I cut into 4 that I salvaged whilst looking for pallets). Turn the worktop upside down and place each leg into each corner of the frame and screw into place. Once secure slide your bottom frame over the legs and screw in place, my advice is to keep it off the bottom and have it high enough so your feet can fit under the frame. Now the moment of truth, stand the workbench up on its feet and check for wobble….luckily for me everything was level.

I decided for some extra shelving I would attach bottom panels to the bottom frame. This also creates a more ridged frame but at the same time provides me with some extra storage space.

I’m really happy with how this project working with used pallets turned out, as I've never done this before. Looking forward to starting on the next thing…whatever that might be. I hope this helps and I apologise if it’s quite basic, I didn't decide to write this guide until the end. Next time I’ll take more photos and notes of the build phase :)