The sawhorse pictured above is based off of Troy and Rebecca’s kitchen table, which I think came from Ikea. Its height is adjustable with pegs. This offers more versatility than a standard sawhorse, of fixed height.

Rather than detail the build, I’m just going to show you how it’s put together, and you can pretty much figure out the rest. I mean, I did it, and I’m kind of a hack at woodworking, so you should be able to do it too. Your end result won’t be identical to mine, but who cares, right? And just think of all you’ll learn in the process.

The main body of the horse is two 1×4 boards, with 2×4 pieces sandwiched between them. The 2x4s are cut out to make the holes for the legs of the top of the horse to go into.

It’s important to make the holes into which the legs fit bigger than the exact size of the 2×2. If the fit is too tight, the legs will stick when you insert or remove them. There’s really not much down-side to the small amount of wobble that you get when the holes are loose.

The top part of the horse is made from 1×4 boards with pieces of 2×2 sandwiched at the bottom of the 1x4s. This makes a horseshoe shape into which pieces of scrap 2×4 could fit. The scrap 2×4 would extend above the sawhorse a little bit, if I was cutting across the sawhorse and wanted to raise the cut board above the sawhorse itself, so as to avoid accidentally cutting into the sawhorse.

The legs are attached by screwing from the “inside” of the 1x4s, before  “sandwiching” the 1x4s around the 2×4 center of the horse. Basically, I built the two sections of 1×4 with two legs attached to each of them, then I attached the 2×4 pieces to one leg-section (making an “open-face” sandwich), then I attached the other leg-section, (putting the “top” on the sandwich).

The top section has two 2×2 legs with 1/2″ holes drilled in them at 2″ intervals. A 4″ section of oak dowel fits into the holes in the legs to set the height of the top of the sawhorse. For this part, a drill press would really have helped, as many of my holes are off-center and not straight through the leg. I recommend a spade bit, as opposed to a regular 1/2″ drill bit, as the spade bit made much nicer holes and was easier to keep from “drifting” as it started up. After the holes were drilled, I used a regular 1/2″ drill bit to ream them out. Otherwise, the dowel stuck much too tightly. If I had a 5/8″ spade bit, I’d have used that instead of the 1/2″.

Here’s the top part of the sawhorse, separate from the bottom.

… and the bottom section, separate from the top.

One final note: On the first one of these I made, I screwed everything together. The legs, especially, were just too wobbly, so I went back and added glue. I recommend that you screw and glue at least the legs, if not every joint in this project. Sawhorses are going to be subject to some abuse, so they should be as strong as possible.