Building a Torsion Box Assembly table from Hollow Core Doors!

Watch me build the Assembly Table

Watch me build an organizer to go in the Assembly Table

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When building furniture, one of the most important things is to make sure you keep everything square. This is almost impossible unless you are building off of a surface that is perfectly in plane. That is why it is very important to have a table built specifically for assembly.

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A torsion box is a common way to build a surface that is not only flat from the beginning but that also resist twisting with changes in temperature and humidity. It is made from two skins with a grid of small squares, hexagons or octagons in between them. This grid is what helps to resist movement.

A torsion box takes a long time to make and the cost of material can add up, but there is a cheaper way. An everyday product that is built with a torsion box is a cheap flush hollow core door. These can be purchased at your local home center for around $30 for a 36” x 80” door. Doors are made with a torsion box because they too need to be able to resit warping. Luckily for me I had just remodeled my house and I saved all of the door slabs that I removed from the house. I used two of them in this project. One for the Top and one for a lower shelf. There is one major drawback to hollow core doors however and that is how thin the door skin is. This is fine for a door in most cases, however for a table that is going to have heavy objects on it and a lot of pounding with hammers and other tools it is not so good, so if you are going to use a door as your torsion box you need to be sure to add a suitable surface on the top side to take the abuse. I used 1/2” mdf with a layer of 1/4” hardboard to be a replaceable surface for mine

A Cabinet for My Parts Storage

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If you watched my first build video then you know from the beginning I wanted to build storage for my parts containers since I first built the Assembly Table. But like most things, other projects seemed more important at the time and it took nearly 3 years for me to get around to doing so. I store all of my parts in Stanley SortMaster Junior organizers. I like them because they have 4 latches on them and I have yet to have one open on me while carrying them. I also like that you can connect up to three of them together so if I need to carry a few of them to somewhere else in the shop or on the property I can easily carry six at a time.

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I made two separate cabinets that slide in from either side to hold the organizers. I started off by measuring the space I had between the corner post of the table and backed out my spacing from there. One of them I built with 4 columns and 5 rows each slot sized for the Stanley Sortmaster Junior Organizer. On the other side I took a different approach. I had recently purchased a few Harbor Freight organizers. They are smaller than the Stanley, but because the bins are completely removable they have proved nice for storing small tools with accessories like a dremel and also other things that have a combination of large and small parts. I decided that I wanted to build some slots for these organizers on the other side. I also wanted to add a place to store my glue. 95% of the time when I am using glue in my shop it is at my assembly table so I thought it made sense to make a small storage are just for the glue.

At this point, the project could have been finished, however, this project marked a notable change in the Shawnee Hills Workshop. In the past I never put finish on any of my shop projects, honestly it just seemed pointless to me. As I have gotten older though, I have started seeing value in how things look. When you are in a space that you feel relaxed and comfortable in you tend to spend more time in that space and that is what is happening in my workshop as I have been making it look nicer. This table was the first piece I painted when I finished it and it has sparked a complete shop remodel!

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