Quick and easy sawhorses. It doesn’t get much simpler than this, particularly considering they are pretty strong sawhorses that, when folded, take up about 2″of space. Just make sure you don’t accidentally saw through the hinges at the top! The photos tell you all you need to know. Some 1″ x 4″s and five hinges. I’ll leave the joining up to you. I used dowels at the time (about 15 years ago!) but might put some extra effort next time and use floating tenons. The last photos show a jig for holding a kayak I was building in our tiny shop with NO space to work on a 20′ kayak. Using a bicycle hoist rigged with longer rope, it’s a simple matter to drop it down from the rafters for working on the sawhorses.

First, we have finished sanding to 220 grit on a belt sander. We simply keep pouring on the CA until we have a fairly thick, solid coat with no dull areas, occasionally spraying accelerator to set the CA. Be careful with the accelerator as too much too fast will result in a white crusty foam. Practice! We spread it carefully with a toothpick, moving the CA puddle around to keep it in a dull porous area until it sets. CA tends to move away from a porous depression for some reason.

After we have a rough impervious coat over the whole inset, we use a file to roughly get the surface smoother. This will show any low spots that we again fill.

We then move on to sanding it with 220 and (this is the trick!) scraping it with a slightly curved single-edge razor blade, again filling low spots that are revealed. This is laborious but well worth it and is actually faster than sanding. It’s also satisfying work.

Then we move through 400, 600 and even 800. After a quick buff with Fibral synthetic steel wool or regular steel wool we finally end up with a very smooth surface ready to finish along with the rest of the box. We will be lacquering and lightly sanding and buffing later so any very small depressions are usually smoothed down enough to not be noticeable. It feels good to save this beautiful wood that otherwise barely makes good firewood!

Here’s a quick and easy way to make your steel or cast iron mechanic’s vise wood-friendly. The usual way to cover those jaws is with some slip-over affair or double-stick tape or other awkward scheme. Instead simply cut two pieces of wood to match the size of the jaw faces. I use my supply of ever-present and ever-handy Baltic Birch ply – in this case about 3/8″. Drill two holes with a 3/8″ Forstner bit and carefully press in 3/8″ (about 1/4″ thick?) rare earth magnet discs with the vise. Presto, easily removable protectors. You could of course use larger magnets for stronger grip, these 3/8″ ones were just handy. Next time I will use thinner but larger diameter magnets so I can use thinner ply – I can use all the capacity I can get.