Build A Classic Sawhorse. Saw horses diy

Build A Classic Sawhorse

It seems I never have enough sawhorses. I use them continually around my home and inside the wood shop, and they are indispensable for supporting workpieces while assembling and finishing projects.

I built this sawhorse for the first time in 1987 based on an article in Fine Woodworking #24 by Sam Allen. I like it so much I have reproduced several more over the years. Even after considerable use they have proven to be reliable, comfortable, and effective. Also, the design is attractive and I am proud to own and display them in my shop.

CAD sawhorse plans save time

When this sawhorse was first featured in Fine Woodworking, the article offered vague plans and general dimensions so that readers could modify the design to suit their needs. However, after building several sawhorses for my shop, I’ve come up with a few useful construction tips, and created my own set of plans and templates to simplify cutting the joinery.

Complete list of sawhorse parts

For my plans I settled on a 75 degree angle for the splay of the legs in two directions, which makes these sawhorses stable and functional. After working out all of the complex angled joinery to meet this degree of splay, I was able to organize the project into a series of basic steps: produce the saddle, legs, and braces, and then assemble them.

Build a Pair of Simple Sawhorses! Strong, Cheap, Stackable

Prepare the saddle first

Start by milling up your lumber. My top choice of wood for this project is redwood, which is readily available here in California. I like the light weight of redwood and its resistance to weather relieves any worries about leaving them outside. Also, since redwood is so soft there is less of a chance it will mark up furniture parts. If you can’t find redwood, any soft or hardwood will do.

Prepare the lumber by cutting each part to rough size on the tablesaw or bandsaw. Then joint each face, plane them to final thicknesses, joint one edge, and rip and crosscut them to their final dimensions.

I make the saddle first. This workpiece measures 42 in. long by 5-1/2 in. wide by 1-1/2 in. thick. Once cut to size, use the two supplied joinery templates to mark out and cut the leg joinery on the saddle.

Cut joinery with sawhorse templates

Download and print the supplied full-size, top and bottom templates and paste them to poster board to make them more rigid. With an Xacto knife, cut out the templates. (Note: this template is designed only for a 1-1/2-in. thick saddle.)

Remove the templates and use a knife and straight edge to deepen the marks. These knife-cuts will be helpful for positioning your chisel when it comes time to clean up the joints.

Using a hand saw, cut the shoulders of each joint. Then make several spaced crosscuts across the width of the joint, and use a chisel to clean up the waste in the notch. To prevent tearout, chop from the top and bottom faces toward the middle.

Produce the sawhorse legs oversized

The legs are prepared to oversize dimensions. Each end will be trimmed parallel to the saddle after the sawhorse is assembled.

Each leg measures 28 in. long by 5-1/2 in. wide by 3/4 in. thick. To cut the leg taper, measure 8 in. down from the inside top corner of each leg and make a mark. Then measure 3-1/2 in. from the outside bottom corner of each leg and connect the two points with a line.

Finally, cut to the line with a bandsaw or jigsaw, and clean up the edge with a hand plane to smooth out any roughness from the bandsaw.

Fastening legs to saddle

The legs are attached to the saddle with glue and nails. To aid with assembly, I clamped the saddle to the corner of my workbench.

Before you apply glue, prepare four cauls from 1-1/2-in. thick off-cuts mitering one edge to 75 degrees. The cauls provide a flat surface for the clamps to register against and help pull the legs into the joint during assembly.

Apply glue to both workpieces where the saddle and legs join and then clamp the parts. Finally, nail the legs to the saddle with two 2-1/2-in. long nails. (I used Tremont Rosehead reproduction cut nails.) Use a wet rag to clean up any glue squeeze out.

Fasten the sawhorse braces to the legs

The last step is to prepare and attach the four braces to the underside of the sawhorse. I cut the parts entirely with a bandsaw. The top edge is beveled at 75 degree angle and is produced by tilting the bandsaw table.

The cauls are fastened to the sawhorse with four nails each. I did not use any glue on these connections but held the parts in place with my cauls and clamps while I drove the nails.

Trimming the sawhorse legs

After the glue has dried, use a hand saw to cut the top of the legs flush with the top of the saddle. Clean up your saw marks with a hand plane.

Finally, trim the bottom of the legs so that the sawhorse sits flat on the floor. Place the sawhorse on a flat surface. Then, using a 1-in thick block of wood as a reference, mark a line around the the bottom of the legs and cut off the waste with a handsaw.

Tim Killen is a professional furniture maker in Orinda, California.

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Комментарии и мнения владельцев

I have built several pairs of these horses and they are really nice. I have even used them for timber framing, and they are amazingly strong. Best of all, they don’t wobble back and forth when you are using a chisel or a hand plane because of the compound angle of the legs. I recall when I built my first pair from the original magazine article, all went well, except for the approximate 4 degree from square cut on each end of the gain cut in the saddle. (I cut in square, which created a small gap in the fit of the leg.) When I read Tim Killens articles, I was grateful for the information, but instead of cutting the four degrees in the gain, I ripped each edge of the leg with the tablesaw set at four degrees from square, mostly because if you leave the legs with square edges,when you fit the braces underneath the saddle, the outside ones will only touch the leg on the outer edge of the leg, and the inside braces touch only the inside edge, which bothered me more than my gappy gain cut. None of TIm’s articles, or the original article deal with that, but the sketchup model will show that from underneath, if drawn correctly. The gain will have to be cut a bit shorter than the template dimension, but I just used the actual leg to scribe the length of the gain, The end cuts of the gain can be made square for a good fit, and the braces will bear fully on all the legs.

I’ve been happy with Norm Abraham’s design: easier, quicker, and simpler. Ones I made over 30 years ago are still going strong.

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Create a portable workspace by building your own folding saw horses

Rigid saw horses take up a lot of space. Folding ones can be easily stashed away.

build, classic, sawhorse, horses

I started with a flattened box on two trash cans. Now I’ve got a flattened box on two saw horses, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. John Kennedy

Saw horses are a must-have for every serious DIYer, whether you’re actually using a saw or not. Just set ‘em up, drop something flat on top (maybe a piece of wood or a sturdy, flattened box), and you’ve got a work surface ready for woodworking, wiring electronics, or pretty much anything you’d do on a table. They’re even more valuable if you don’t have a lot of space or a dedicated work area in your home. Plus, they’re easy to make.

Rigid saw horses are the simplest—often nothing more than five pieces of wood nailed together—but they take up a lot of room with their permanently splayed legs. So if space in your house or apartment is at a premium, foldable saw horses are the way to go, even if building them is slightly more complicated. When you’re done working, you’ll be able to close the legs and store them snugly against a wall or in a tight space until you need them again.

Instructions

Set up your work area. If you’re building saw horses, you probably don’t have a proper workspace, so here’s your chance to improvise. I put a big, flat box on top of two garbage cans.

Cut the top boards. These sections of 2-by-4 will be your load-bearing surfaces—your horses’ backs. Most saw horses are between 42 and 48 inches long, but you should pick what works best for you. I cut mine at 42, which is the answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” As you will for every cut you make during this project, mark the wood at the proper length, and use the square and pencil to draw a straight line to guide your saw. Once you’ve made your cuts, use the sandpaper to quickly get rid of any splinters—it’s better than stabbing yourself later.

  • Tip: If you’re working alone and don’t have a miter saw, use a hand saw to make your first cuts. Cutting 42 inches off an 8-foot 2-by-4 means all that wood is going to be unsupported, and it will constrict the spinning circular saw blade as it falls, stopping it or kicking the saw out of the wood. That’s useless, at best, and unsafe, at worst. You should be able to manually cut through a 2-by-4 in less than a minute—and if you go fast enough, your cut piece will fall cleanly to the ground.

Rough-cut the legs. A comfortable saw horse height is directly related to the user’s height, so the length of these will vary based on your needs. (For example, a 32-inch-tall saw horse is generally fine for a 6-foot-tall person.) To make this step a bit easier, cut your remaining 2-by-4s into four pieces of 40 inches each. That will give you some length to play with.

  • Tip: Stand upright and hold your arm by your side. Then, without moving the rest of your arm, flex your wrist until your hand is horizontal, palm facing down. The distance from your palm to the ground is approximately the height your saw horses should be.

Figure out the angle you want between your saw horse’s legs. Mine are splayed at 30 degrees, but you might like something different. Anywhere between 25 and 35 degrees should work well; anything narrower will mean taller, less-stable saw horses, and anything wider will take up more space.

Cut the tops of your saw horse’s legs at an angle. Once you’ve got your leg separation angle set, you’ll need to cut the top of each leg at an angle that’s half that. Given that my angle was 30 degrees, the cut had to be 15 degrees. Quickly square a straight line across the widest surface of each leg and about 1/4 inch from the end to serve as a guide. Then, set your saw at the proper angle, line the blade up at the line, and make your cut. Repeat for each leg.

Figure out the proper length of your saw horses’ legs. This is important to ensure that the saw horses will be the height you desire. I wanted mine to be 32 inches tall, so I subtracted the width of the top board (1.5 inches), to get 30.5 inches from the ground to the bottom of the horse’s back. Essentially, each leg is the hypotenuse of a right triangle, and I’d just figured out the triangle’s height. The problem was, I didn’t know the length of the other two sides. If you’re good at math, you can probably solve a couple equations to get those numbers—but I’m much better with words than I am with numbers, so I used a calculator I found online. It told me each leg should be 31.5 inches long, and it was right.

  • Note: If you use the calculator I’ve linked, select the option that allows you to input both the length of the base and the angle. My numbers, for instance, were 30.5 for base and 15 for angle.

Prepare to cut the bottoms of your saw horses’ legs at an angle. This is where things get a little tricky. It’s the same angle as the tops of the legs (15 degrees, in my case), but oriented in the opposite direction. Essentially, you’re turning each leg into a parallelogram. If you make the wrong cut here, the leg will be useless.

Cut the bottoms of your saw horses’ legs. Lay one saw horse leg on your work surface, widest surface up, with the uncut end off the edge, ready to be cut. Make sure the other end is laying with its angled cut sloping up, like a hill, not down, like a rocky overhang. Measure your desired length, mark a line across the wood, and make your cut. Repeat until all legs are the proper length.

  • Tip: It will be hard to measure from the angled end of the 2-by-4, so measure from the uncut end to where the wood starts sloping down. Then, subtract your desired length from the actual length and mark that on the wood. My legs were 39.5 inches from the uncut end to the beginning of the downward slope. So, I marked a line across the wood at 8 inches and made my cut there. Perfect.

Attach the hinges. Get two saw horse legs and lay them end-to-end, the angled cuts touching on top, not at the bottom. Knock the connecting pin out of the hinges and center one hinge half on the end of one leg where the two touch. Do the same with the other half. They shouldn’t interlock or hang over the edge of the leg they’re on. They should, however, look like they’re about to fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. Screw them down with the screws they came with.

  • Tip: You can knock the connecting pin out by hammering a nail punch or pretty much any thin piece of metal (a screw, perhaps) into the opposite end from the pinhead.

Connect the hinges. Lay the legs on their sides next to each other so the hinge halves fit together. Hammer the pin back into the hole it came out of.

  • Tip: The hammer won’t fit down between the legs, so once the pin gets most of the way in, finish the job with the nail punch or turn a screw upside down and hammer the pointy end.

Attach the legs. Put the 2-by-4 that will be your horse’s back on your work surface and mark a line about three inches from each end. The legs will go inside that line. Grab some 3-inch screws and your drill driver and sink one into each side of the leg closest to you, fastening them diagonally into the wood. Repeat this for each set of legs.

  • Warning: Do not screw both legs into the horizontal board: One leg in each pair should be free-floating—only attached to the hinge.
  • Tip: If you’re working alone, simply let the legs rest against your chest or shoulder and hold them with your free hand while you put the screws in.
  • Bonus tip: It will be hard to drive the screws vertically down in a straight line right at the beginning. Get them started at a more horizontal angle, and once they’ve just bitten into the wood, straighten them out to continue on.

Cut the 1-by-3. Measure the length between the outside edge of the legs on each long side of your nearly finished saw horses. Then, cut the 1-by-3 boards to fit.

Attach the 1-by-3s. Lay a piece of 1-by-3 against the same-side legs of the saw horse, making sure it’s flush against the top and outermost edge of the legs it’s resting on. Use four 2-inch screws to fasten it to the legs (two on each leg). This will keep them sturdy and ensure they move in unison. Repeat this step for every set of legs.

Attach the chain. Mark a spot about eight inches up each leg where you will fasten your chain. Put a washer around a 2-inch screw and put it through one of the chain links. Once you fasten it in place, the washer will keep the chain from slipping over the screw. Fully open the legs and do the same on the other leg. If you haven’t cut the chain already, cut it now and repeat this step on each pair of legs.

  • Note: The chain doesn’t have to go eight inches off the ground. I chose that height because it’s high enough that I won’t trip on the chain and low enough that it should keep the legs from opening too much under heavy weight.

Done. Now you’ve got a solid pair of foldable saw horses that will allow you to quickly set up a real workspace in your yard or garage. Then, when you’re finished, you can stow them away just as quickly.

John Kennedy is PopSci’s DIY editor. He previously covered legal news for Law360 and, before that, local news at the Journal Inquirer in Connecticut. He has also built and remodeled houses, worked as a fencing coach, and shelved books at a library. When he’s not taking things apart or putting them back together, he’s playing sports, cooking, baking, or immersed in a video game. Contact the author here.

DIY Saw Horse Plans and Ideas (Homemade Designs)

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A sawhorse is a handy structure for supporting wood projects and items’ weight in a workshop. Considering how costly and bulky some of them are, it’s best to construct one with a good DIY plan. Unfortunately, some plans are complex for beginners to comprehend.

This post contains various DIY sawhorse plans recommended by our pro woodworkers to construct a robust structure.

Inexpensive Sawhorse Plans

As the name suggests, these saw plans minimize the costs of building a reliable saw horse without compromise. They contain a limited number of materials for a design with detachable legs.

With detachable legs, not only is storage easier, but it will save some space in your workshop. You can neatly fold the design and hang it on the wall when not in use. The instructions are straightforward too. Therefore, no one will find it complicated to build with the plans.

Cheap, Improved Sawhorses

Sawhorses help to keep your tools and materials off the ground. However, the vast majority are expensive and flimsy. Cheap, Improved Sawhorses will help you to construct a durable structure without spending a fortune. All you need to carry out this construction is some scrap wood and screws.

The good thing about this plan is it’s easy to set up and work with. You can build the sawhorse quickly once you have all the tools and materials down.

Beginner Sawhorse Plans

Beginner Sawhorse Plans are some of the best homemade plans to follow for beginners. The design is comprehendible, making it possible for woodworkers to cut, measure, and build. Unlike the inexpensive DIY plans, the structure after construction isn’t foldable.

The advantage here is the rigidness can support heavier items than most foldable designs. over, the sawhorse will have shelves for extra storage. These plans will be perfect if you are not concerned about saving space in your workshop.

Heavy-duty Sawhorse Plans

These plans will build a pair of heavy-duty sawhorses, durable enough to bear the weight of bulky items. Heavy-duty sawhorse plans allow you to create matching dovetail grooves along the perimeters of the sawhorses to prevent shifting and enable the user to secure material to the structure.

The sawhorse plans feature simple layouts and several instructional videos that are comprehensible. They show how to cut and construct specific parts of the structure to attain perfection.

(But if you want to layout your project yourself, here’s a complete guide on how to draw woodworking plans to make the final product as good and accurate as possible.)

Homemade Sawhorse Plans – Simple, Cheap And Perfect For Every DIY’er!

Every homeowner and DIY’er needs a great pair of sawhorses for projects, and with these easy to follow homemade sawhorse plans, you can make 2 great looking sawhorses on the cheap, with just a few 2 x 4’s and a single 2 x 6!

There are simply thousands of uses for a good pair of sawhorses. They are perfect for holding trim, shutters, and more for painting. The same goes for providing a great work surface for all types of woodworking projects as well. And nothing makes a better makeshift table than a sturdy pair of sawhorses and a sheet of plywood.

However, so many sawhorses on the market today are simply too flimsy to hold much of anything. And to boot, they can be extremely expensive! Even a pair of plastic sawhorses can run you about 30 or more.

But no worries – these easy to follow homemade sawhorse plans will create two super strong sawhorses you can use to hold all of your projects. You can build both in under and hour, and even better, it only takes a little bit of lumber to complete!

Over the last 7 years at the farm, there is hardly a week that goes by that we don’t use our homemade set. I love that they are strong enough to hold nearly anything we put on them. And its great knowing we won’t have any of our projects collapse over. So enough talk, here is a look at our homemade sawhorse plans, step by step.

Homemade Sawhorse Plans

Materials And Tools Needed: (Builds one set of 2)

Your two angle cuts on each leg should be angled in the opposite direction as shown above

Screw Gun, Impact Driver or screwdriver (only one needed)

Circular saw, jigsaw, or compound miter saw (only one needed)

Step 1 – Cutting pieces to size.

(8) 2 x 4 x 8’s – cut (8) pieces 36″ long each for the legs. Save the remaining 2′ pieces for the angle boards

(2) 2 x 6 x 8 – cut (2) pieces 48″ each for the I-beam

Step 2 – Cutting the Angles For Legs

For each leg, you will need to cut a 60 degree angle on one end, and a 30 degree angle on the other side.

The I beam construction using a 2 x 4 and a 2 x 6

The cuts need to be made so that the short ends and the long ends are on the same side and not parallel. You can see the picture to the right for more detail.

(These plans are for a standard height sawhorse. If you are taller or smaller, you can simply adjust the leg length to accommodate what you need.)

Step 3 – Assembling the Top Beam

Start by assembling the (2) pieces for the 48″ beam assembly. Lay the 2 x 6 on end on a flat surface, and then place the 2 x 4 evenly over the top of it so that each edge is even spaced evenly.

Use (4) 2 and 1/2 screws to secure the 2 x 4 to the 2 x 6 piece to create an I-Beam or a “T”.

Space the 4 screws evenly along the top to secure the whole beam.

Step 4 Assembling the Legs

Assemble each leg with 3 screws, two smaller ones at the top, and one larger one below in the middle

Now it is time to attach the legs. Turn your I-beam over so that the top of the sawhorse is upside down and lay on a flat surface. Measure in one inch from each side on both sides and make a mark.

A Japanese-Style Sawhorse

Take one of the legs, and lay flat with the angle until the top is touching the underside of the top of the I-beam, and the outer edge is touching the 1 inch mark you made. Use your square or speed square to make sure the leg is squared to the I-beam, and then secure with a total of 3 screws. Use (2) 1.5″ inch screws at the top, and one longer 2.5″ screw in the middle.

build, classic, sawhorse, horses

Repeat for the other 3 legs until all four legs are secure. All four legs should be inset 1″ from the outer edge of the beam.

Step 5 Adding Side Angle Braces (Crossbars)

Last step! Take the left over 2 x 4 ends from your 4 leg cuts and hold 3/4 of the way up on each side of the legs.

build, classic, sawhorse, horses

Use a small level to make sure the board is even, and make two marks for cutting on the inside edge of the boards. Then use your saw to cut. Screw in place in the middle of the 2 legs with (2) 2.5″ screws on each side. Repeat for the other side and you are done!

Happy Sawhorse and Project Building! – Jim and Mary. If you would like to receive our DIY, Gardening and Recipe articles each week, sign up via email at the bottom of this post. You can also like and follow us on. or Instagram. This article may contain affiliate links.

These sawhorses look great, are inexpensive, easy to build, and sturdy!