# Making a raised workboard - help retaining flatness?



## Dissolve (7 Apr 2014)

Hello,

I have my main workbench alongside a wall in my home workshop, It would be very useful to make a rasied workboard (two sheets of 18mm MDF for instance with spacer blocks in between to allow clamping all round smaller work pieces.

I have tried doing a "dry run" using off cuts of 18mm MDF stacked up and spaced evenly apart in a 3x3 "grid" of sppacer blocks, but with clamps on each block the top remains somewhat unflat. Would using a hardwood frame in between the MDF sheets be a more accurate way of retaining the boards flattness?

I could obviously plane these accurately and glue them together with simple butt joints before clamping the two boards together?

Any ideas?


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## carlb40 (8 Apr 2014)

How about using 2 layers of 18mm mdf for the top to give it extra stiffness?


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## SammyQ (19 Apr 2014)

Torsion box!!

Sam


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## Stu_2 (19 Apr 2014)

I've made a top for one of my work surfaces which I find really useful for clamping smaller jobs. As the surface was already quite high, I needed to keep the overall height increase to a minimum, while still being able to use rail clamps for general clamping. The slots were originally used to simply allow the clamps to pass through the table, but have proved very flexible for positioning, too.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Stu


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## DeepBlue (24 May 2014)

If you do want to go the whole hog, Marc Spagnuolo did a great video on torsion boxes:

http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/videos/episode-18-assembly-table-torsion-box/


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## MMUK (24 May 2014)

How about using something more structural than the satan spawn known as MDF?


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