Countertop height

[Maurice Ungaro]

Ok, here's the project: I am getting my garage/shop constructed, and will soon start in on finishing and populating the shop area.

Question: What should the finished height be for the countertop/work area on a row of shop made legs/base cabinets? This set up will be against the wall, and with the center section a bit lower than the left and right ends, would serve as a thickness planing/chop saw station.

Maurice

[Glenn Clabo]

Maurice...How tall are you? Normal countertop height in a kitchen is 36". My shop wall benches are 40-42". But I'm 6'2" and I like them higher. If you are going to use them as extensions to your power tools then, of course, make them the same height.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Glenn,
I'm 5'9". I thought about 36", but wasn't sure if that's just some standard we accept for kitchens, and transfer that over to everything else!

Maurice

[Chris Padilla]

I'm shorter at 5-6 and like my stuff around 33".

[Ryan Singer]

one thing to think of is the clearance on the bottom for cleaning.. I wish we thought of that on my dad's bench.. you can't run a broom because the toe kick is too low

[Joe Mioux]

Maurice:

When I was building my workbench and floor cabinet I made all them the height of my table saw. The workbench and cabinet comes in handy for extra support while cutting longer pieces of wood.

[Cecil Arnold]

Joe and I have the same plan. There's nothing worse than working a long piece on the table saw and having it hit the top of a bench.

[Jim Becker]

Ceil and Joe have a very important point...depending on the size of your shop you'll want to really carefully consider material movement as you determine work surface heights. One of the best ways to do that is to make a quick scale sketch on graph paper that shows the tools and the necessary infeed-outfeed areas for each. In many shops, these areas overlap not only tools, but sometime work surfaces such as the bench you are planning. If so, you need to make sure that things are copasetic...

[Maurice Ungaro]

Good points, Joe & Jim. I've been using the free-ware on Grizzly's site to sketch out the florr plan and tool layout. On of my FWW back issues had an article on shop improvements, which centered around assembly tables, outfeed/multipurpose tables, etc. I'm now thinking about primarily focusing on first creating an outfeed/multipurpose table that will be about 24" x 48", will be on wheels, and MAY be adjustable in height (just a thought). As for the wall benches, I think they should probably end up the same height as the table saw, but since I want to put it no a mobile base, and may eventually get a cabinet saw, the final height may need adjustment.

Thanks for the input!

Maurice

[Jim Becker]

Maurice, John Yurko's article on page 22 of the Fine Woodworking Tools and Shops annual issue (Winter 2004/2005 # 174) really illustrates the material handling aspects of shop planning. It even has templates and some software examples, too.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Thanks for the heads up Jim - just got off the phone with Taunton and they've got one in the mail to me.

Maurice