Rustic Sawhorse

May 9, 2022

I’ve been slowly working through a big pile of logs sawing and splitting the wood. The smaller bits will be used on our firepit and the larger, I hope to get some planks and spars to make projects with.

I’d been using a couple logs as supports to cut the wood but that mean I was cutting quite low down and it was not the most comfortable of actions. So I decided to build some saw horses.

Following an idea from Trustin Timber I’ve made these three legged. That means that they should be stable on uneven ground. My first step was to cleave off one side to give a flat surface to put the legs into. Reviewing Trustin’s video that may have been a mistake.

Next up was sharpening the ends of some smaller branches. I did that with a chisel but you can use an axe like Trustin if you have one sharp enough.

To make my holes as I was in the workshop I used a forstner bit, and tidied those up using a chisel.

And the last step was to hammer those in using a mallet.

In use the horse did it’s job of supporting the wood and was certainly more easy to manoeuvre than the heavy log I was using at the other end. But I did have two issues, both with the end with two legs. These did not want to stay in place, and I kept having to hammer them back in. I think this is a two part problem. Firstly that I’ve not used a shallow enough taper, and secondly due to flattening off that first side. This has meant that the legs don’t have equal support on all sides.

The second issue which is related is that when hammering in the legs it was hard to get the legs to spread out and hence give a more stable base. Again, I think this is due to my error of flattening off the side.

So I used the horse to cut me another starter log and I’ll follow Trustin’s approach more accurately next time.

By Andy from Workshopshed Add Comment

  Posted in: Inspiration