Many builders spend a lot of time and energy in building the perfect shop, workbench, or the like. I guess it goes with the territory. People who are crazy enough to build planes, like to be elaborate. While I love my shop, and I strive to keep the organization near perfect, I’m not always about building the ultimate item. We have a farm, and farms always have lots of scrap material. If I can find a perfectly workable solution using scrap, there is no way I’m making a trip to Home Depot and spending money to make the perfect back rivet table.

I found this particle board laying around. Its not perfect, it could scratch aluminum pretty easily, but its free and is the correct width. I was also lucky enough to find an old can of urethane.

My idea is simple. I’m going to create another table top that I can lay on top of my existing workbenches with the particle board shown. I will make it in two pieces with the plate cut out and in the middle.

I forgot to take pictures, so I’ll post them the next time I go out. But I got the wood cut, sanded the surface and applied a polyurethane to the surface. If the surface is still too rough, which I doubt, I’ll either re-sand and reapply the polyurethane, or I will lay some extra rosin paper I have laying around over top of it. I intend to anchor this to the work bench with 4 predrilled screw points, so that I can easily attach and un-attach as needed for back riveting. It might not be pretty, but its functional and with a $0 investment and only an hour of time, its the perfect solution in my book.