This is what the feet of my sawhorses look like:

I got no problem with that. But some folks wanted more awesomeness. They want it cut at an angle. Here’s a comparison of the two different ways a leg can end:

As many of you immediately recognized, the angle on the leg’s top will match the angle on the leg’s foot. So, if you want you can use the jig I already made. It’s a little clumsy but workable.

Here’s the dedicated “fancy foot jig” next to the “re-oriented main jig”. I like the “fancy foot” better but either one will do the job. OR you could use a protractor. OR you could just ignore the whole thing. Whatever floats your boat.

Someone requested a hanging hole on “fancy foot jig”, so I added that. They also asked if I could print in yellow as well as red. Yes I can. I added that option to the order form.

All of this is up to you. Angled feet does look cooler and theoretically it’s way superior. However, I’ve been using my sawhorses without even thinking about “feet” and I didn’t notice any issues.

The sawhorse design I picked has legs that end like any normal 2″x4″; rectangular. The sawhorse’s legs are at an angle. That means the rectangular end interfaces with the ground as if it were a point rather than a wide flat surface. I never gave it much thought.

The video suggested a point is better for “digging in” to soft surfaces like dirt (for when you use your sawhorse outdoors). I’ve been using a them on my shop’s floor (cement) and outside (dirt). I didn’t notice anything good or bad about the leg’s “untrimmed” end on any surface.

A couple folks mentioned they’d like to trim the leg. They want an angled cut so the leg’s end is parallel with the floor. Who am I to complain?

I noodled around in Fusion 360, dredged up long forgotten high school geometry, and printed out a jig that does the job. Trace it on the leg (all four) and follow the line to cut the leg’s end. Now it matches the ground.

I had to make a name for the file so I called it “fancy foot”. If you’d like a jig to trim your sawhorse’s feet parallel to the ground, “fancy foot” is precisely what you wanted.

I added “fancy foot jig” to the world’s crudest order form at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/.

“Fancy foot” is entirely optional. You can make a rockin’ sawhorse without “fancy feet”. Or you can add “fancy feet” and enjoy the added awesomeness. It’s up to you.

It’s pretty simple so I’m only asking $3.

Pics or it didn’t happen so here goes. Hold the fancy foot jig on the bottom of the leg like so.

Trace a line.

Cut on the line and now your sawhorse’s feet are flat to the floor. I used a square and some scraps to test all the angles. It works flawlessly. (Note this is scrap for testing. The leg is unusually short in this image.)

Here’s how the “build the whole sawhorse” jig and the “fancy foot jig” would fit on the same leg. (Note, the leg is unusually short, it’s just scrap I used for testing.)

Improving the sawhorse produces almost no waste; which is awesome because I’m a cheap guy. A “fancy foot” sawhorse and a “default” sawhorse both use the exact same input wood.

I want to formally apologize to my high school math teachers. I whined “when am I ever gonna’ use this”. Yet, just now I was flipping angles precisely like I was taught. If my teacher had said “many decades from now you’ll use geometry to fine tune computer models that create 3d printed jigs to fine tune homebuilt sawhorses” that would have been real helpful. On the other hand, no sane person would have guessed it.

I tested my online form carefully. It worked. Then it didn’t. Go figure.

I’ve switched to a new plan. Send me an e-mail.

Go to https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/ for the form and links to how to pay.

I put the whole thing here too. Sorry about the delay.

Step 1: E-mail this form.

Replace question marks and email to ac@adaptivecurmudgeon.com

My email is: ????@????.???

My address is: 
???Street??? 
???Town???, ?State? ?Zip?

My name is: ??????????????

These are the things I want:

1 <- Flat shipping cost of $7. (Required.)

? <- Number of Jigs that are yellow. $12.50 each.
? <- Number of Jigs that are red. $12.50 each.

? <- Number of Rigs that are brown. $18.50 each.
? <- Number of Rigs that are transparent turquoise. $18.50 each.

Is this a present (indicate one option):
? <- I need it by Christmas.
? <- After Christmas is fine. Deduct $0.50 off cost!

How I'll pay for it (indicate one option):
? <- Paypal (link is below).
? <- Buy Me A Coffee (link is below).
? <- Patreon (link is below).
? <- A physical check sent to P.O. Box 133, Bagley, MN 56621.

Step 2: Pay in any of several ways.

It would be handy if the name you email with the form and matches the payment but so long as you give me enough information I’ll match ’em.

This is the link to Paypal*:

This is the link to “Buy Me A Coffee”:

This is the link to Patreon:

You can send a paper check. Crazy right? Feels as dated as the Pony Express. But snailmail still works. My super-secret lair is nowhere near the PO box but I get stuff forwarded from there.

A. Curmudgeon
PO Box 133
Bagley, MN 56621

When I built an order form for sawhorses I tested it thoroughly. So, of course, it’s not working.

I’ll fix it shortly. Sorry for the hassle.

Sawhorse jigs are for sale! I’m pleased with how they came out. I think people will like them. Christmas is coming and they’re totally useful. There’s nothing more awesome than easily making a sawhorse this cool:

The jig looks like this (the photo makes it look flat but it’s a 3d jig for a 2″x4″):

But there’s more! I was trying to convey how to make a sawhorse with no words at all. I created this:

It’s a scale model of every part of a sawhorse. Nine little mini-components that have the dimension of the component embedded in the object. I also embedded magnets so you can assemble and separate the parts over and over.

I didn’t know an English word for such a thing so I called it a “Rig”. It’s for sale at $18.50. Go to the form and order up a few. The same form works for jigs and rigs.

Shipping is a flat rate $7 no matter how many or how few you buy.

I started by printing in brown because brown = wood. Then I decided to try a different look. This one is translucent. Same price as the brown rig. Same deal on shipping.

Here’s the whole happy family of “prototypes”.
The order form is here.

I made a jig that displays everything you need to create a sawhorse AND marks the angles. I wasn’t sure if anyone was interested in buying one. Turns out they were!

They’re for sale, starting now:

I made a few improvements. There’s a hole to hang it on a hook. The hole can be used to find the center of a 2″x4″; because why not? The text on the back helps you know which side of the jig to use. (If the letters are upside down, you’re using it wrong.)

Here’s how the jig marks the taper for a leg.

Here’s how the jig marks an angle for the leg spreaders.

They cost $12.50 each. Someone already asked for one in red with black lettering so I’m offering in yellow or red. (Same price.)

I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out postage. Finally I decided dividing ounces by zipcode multiplied by USPS form number “27B/6” was hopeless. I’m charging $7 per order. Same price for one jig or ten. That’s it. Seven bucks. (I probably underestimated, but if I did that’s on me.)

The order form is on the blog’s header or you can just go to https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/.  

I’ll take payment in any of several ways or you can mail me a check.

I’ll have them shipped before Christmas.

If you have a special (or large) order, e-mail me directly at ac@adaptivecurmudgeon.com.

What are you waiting for? Click over there and crash my crude order form!

Oh yeah. I had been working on my “second invention” and that’s ready to go too. Yes, it’s already on the form. I’ll describe it in my next post.

I was fiddling around with sawhorses and made a 3d printed jig. I offered to sell copies. I wasn’t sure anyone would care. Apparently I was wrong!

A handful of people were interested. How awesome is that?

I didn’t plan ahead for that. Give me a little bit of time to sort through details. I need to go to the post office and figure out how much it costs to ship a jig (or many in the same box).

Then I’ll order some filament and post a price here on my blog. The good news is I’m way ahead of the curve. I plan to print and ship with plenty of time before Christmas. Hint hint… they’re the perfect stocking stuffer for the kind of guy who knows what a miter saw is and uses sawhorses.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, photos of the jig are copied below (or just scroll backwards on my blog).

Here’s the jig (it’ll be a little nicer because I’ll use more infill, the photos are of a haphazard “prototype” I made for my own use). I picked the colors at random but I like how they came out. For now, I’ll plan on yellow PLA with black PLA.

Here’s the sawhorse you make with the jig. All you need is three studs and some screws. It’s a bargain compared to buying a sawhorse.

One more note, you don’t need the jig if you don’t want it. (Though it does make things much easier.) You can make the same sawhorse by following along with this video. That’s what I did at first.

Also, the video is a pleasant watch and I recommend it. The guys in it seem pretty chill. I hope it doesn’t freak ’em out that some rando (me) is making a jig. I intend to send them a free jig if there’s an address available. I haven’t done anything yet but I will. I don’t want to make a bad impression.

A.C.

P.S. If anybody wants a different color jig, that’s do-able. I think translucent blue PETG looks cool. Or you might want pink to annoy someone with a flaky color. (The pumpkin spice of colors.) Funky colors will cost a little more but I can do it. If that’s something you’d like shoot me a request in comments (or privately at ac@adaptivecurmudgeon.com).

P.S.2. I was leading up to my next level 3d printed design in “text free communication” about the sawhorse. I had a print failure so I can’t post that just yet. Still, it’ll be cool when it’s done. I’ll post as soon as it’s ready.

P.S.3. Once I get a price, I can take payment via credit card on PayPal. If you want to order, please tell me you’re interested but wait on the payment until I set a price. OK fine, if you’re nuts and want to pay like $100, just pay now. That’s crazy but I’m not going to stop anyone from burying me in cash! 🙂

P.S.4. I’ll check U.S.P.S. box dimensions but I think I can put several jigs in the same box. Buying more than one will probably cost nothing extra for shipping!

P.S.5. If you’re in a rush, I might possibly get a few jigs out by Thanksgiving. But that’s a stretch. Filament takes a week or more to deliver. I can only print “rush jobs” with “filament I’ve got on hand”. I might run out of yellow.

I absolutely love the sawhorse(s) I built based on this video.

Everything is awesome except being a YouTube thing. I think video is the worst possible way to impart specific data. OK, maybe pheromones and interpretive dance are worse. (The video versus text thing is part of why politics is so weird now. Politics, as practiced now, is almost pure emotion. It’s nearly devoid of facts or logic. That’s why it’s almost entirely communicated by video or memes.)

At the end of the video I expected to find a link to the parts list. Just a quick *.pdf. Heck, I’d pay a buck or two for the *.pdf just to support the nice guys disseminating their excellent ideas. But alas, there was none. (They’re advertising coffee and stuff… I might buy some because I appreciate what they’re doing and like coffee.) As for a text based *.pdf, I was thinking like I’m from a different era; which I suppose I am. Sigh. I’m officially an “old guy”.

I’m GenX. I’m literate. This doesn’t mean I sit in a rocking chair whining about kids on the lawn. It means I have skills I’d prefer to use in a world that has moved on. I’m functionally literate. I happily use the written word to glean information. I can follow that knowledge and do things. It’s as easy to me as shifting a manual transmission to get down the road; pretty much subconscious.

I’m not special but this time is. Reading has been the “go to” knowledge method among learned men since Ancient Greece until what feels like just the last few years. Think about it; a few lucky rich bastards got to listen to Plato’s airy philosophy or Diogenes’ bitching in person. Only a few dozen or hundreds among all of humanity got to meet the brainiacs in person. For the next 2,400 years humanity could only read about it. (If nobody had written their shit down, we wouldn’t know about it. One assumes there were equals to Plato in non-literate societies. Aside from carvings and a legend or two: All those moments were lost in time, like tears in rain.)

It takes a lot of training to read a book and then do the thing. Everyone can do it in theory. Very few do it in practice.

Americans have 12 years of public school and a smattering of whatever follows. That’s more than enough. Sadly, it was invested so deeply in indoctrination that all that schooling usually amounts to jack shit.

If you’re young, say under 30 or so, you’re born to a world where the library has devolved from “repository of knowledge” to “where homeless people shoot up”. So why read? The brightest humans of any era learn from written instructions; often landing somewhere on a spectrum from complicated scientific theories, through garden plant pest identification, to cake recipes. But it’s probably not common to an average person. Maybe it never was?

Without intending to be rude, I suspect the average person tops out at “monkey see, monkey do”. They need to see the thing, not read it. Youth readily do what the cell phone tells them, but they clearly prefer “visual pantomimes” to an essay.

(As an aside, people seem to prefer stories wrapped up in emotion to straight data. Possibly that’s normal for all eras too. I think again about politics where one side will call the others racist, Nazi, shitheads and the other will respond about tree-hugging, Commie, fuckwits. Neither will ponder GDP or capital gains taxes or whatever; because that’s actual facts and nobody wants that. It seems the same thing as one sports team being “bastards” and another being “heroes” when they both play the same sport.)

I not trying to “punch down”. My world wasn’t perfect and no era is flawless. Nobody’s responsible for the era into which they’re born. A 30 year old is unlikely to read and work from that skill as they are to manually shift a 5 speed. Why would they?

As it was when the illuminated manuscript was steamrolled by Gutenberg, it is my task to live within the avalanche Zuckerberg (and others) unleashed. Thus, I had to wade through a 20 minute video to get what I could read in 5 minutes. (It’s a very pleasant 20 minute video. I highly recommend it for pure entertainment.)

I thought about this a lot.

I had to hit pause and rewind a bunch of times to hear the dimensions of 5 pieces of wood (including two angles). I scribbled the details on a Post-It Note, turned off YouTube, and built a sawhorse. It is not that my way of thinking is better, it is that it’s different. Knowing I’d lose the Post-It Note, I made myself a jig that has all the information I could ever want. It has the dimensions of everything, both angles, etc… It’s printed in yellow PLA. I like it.

If it were for sale at the local box store I’d gladly buy. (The only thing I forgot to add to my design is a hole to hang it on the wall.)

I like my jig. I built it entirely myself. I’m thinking thinking about selling a copy to anyone who wants one. If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail. I’m not trying to get rich. It just feels like a good thing to share the word about making super-sweet sawhorses at $20 a pop.

Below you’ll see my costs for 6 studs and a pound of screws, plenty to make a TWO sawhorses and have some screws left over. You’ll probably get better prices if you live near “civilization”.

If enough people are interested in the jig I’ll see what I can do.

I was going to post a photo of the jig here but my phone is being obstreperous. I’ll post photos later. Does that prove I’m an “old guy”? Shit!

Update: Photos managed.

Don’t freak out over the uneven base. Since it was just a “prototype” I made it with absurdly sparse infill. I’ll add more infill to make a better print if anyone is interested.

Some inside details about 3d printing; there are many ways to embed text into a print but each one is a hassle in its own special way. I tried adding text to the Fusion 360 model and importing the object into Bambu Studio. Bambu Studio uploaded the object and then inexplicably flaked out. As an alternative, I added text using Bambu Studio. That worked but you can’t add two lines to a single Studio object. So what you’re looking at is four objects all lined up.

The moral of the story is that I’m being a dumbass. Trying to embed too much text probably means I’m barking up the wrong tree. (Wait for my next step!)

Regardless, I love my jig. If it had a hole to hang on the wall it’d be perfect… for me. The next step will try to improve it for other folks. Wish me luck.

If it were all about me, the story would end with the jig. However, I began to think even deeper about the idea of “sub-literate” or “voluntarily non-literate”. As a big bad 3D printer guy, why not embrace the idea?

I looked again at my jig. All that text is almost pure math. For people can read but don’t want to, they’re going to lose their shit over a jig that has that much text! What I made looks like the simultaneous equation math problems that nobody liked in high school. Count on me to go several degrees of abstraction deep without thinking about it. It doesn’t look like a sawhorse, it doesn’t smell like a sawhorse, it looks like equations, and it’s fuckin yellow!

Can I communicate “sawhorse” without language at all? I think so.

Stay tuned as I turn the world’s simplest shop project into a three level, 3d printed, thought experiment. (If/when I finally figure it out, I’ll offer one for sale. I humbly think my idea is pretty neat.)

I mentioned here that I was messing around building sawhorses. I didn’t reinvent the wheel, I watched a YouTube video.

I got to use my new miter saw. First to cut everything to length (it takes three 8′ studs).

Then I set the miter at angles to cut the leg spreaders.

Then I marked the “wedge” to remove from each leg (obviously there are four). This wasn’t something I could just dial into the miter saw.

It was a bit of a PITA marking the wedge. I started making a 3d printed “jig”. You can see 3 different hastily designed “prototypes” in the background.

My old bandsaw with it’s fresh new blade was perfect for cutting the “wedge” on each leg. There’s hardly any waste; just a few wedges (which wound up burned in Betsy).

Following the video’s sound advice I put it together with a few tacks from the nailgun before I screwed it down tight with Torx screws. I drilled a pilot hole for every Torx screw I planned to use. Pilot holes is probably overkill but it worked for me.

In fact I think it’s a pretty handsome sawhorse.

I found measuring out the wedge to be a PITA, so I created a “jig” on my 3d printer. Now all I have to do is trace the jig.

Since it was just a “test” object, I experimented with the world’s sparsest infill. (I don’t recommend that much “void” in any object, it was pretty flimsy.)

After some testing I realized I needed a “top bar” to trace a line on the top (wider dimension) of the “leg”. Things always cascade so now I needed supports.

It works exactly as planned.

I tested my silly little jig by making a second sawhorse. Works great.

I had far too much fun making the jig. Pretty soon I was going down the rabbit hole with ideas. I’d improved it (?) way beyond a simple jig. I’ll probably show that in a future post.

I have a few sawhorses. They all suck. Also, I put stuff on sawhorses (usually hoping to keep them above the snow, with mixed success). Thus, all my crappy sawhorses are consumed as redneck storage. I guess I don’t really have sawhorses at all.*

I considered some options to address my sawhorse situation. Expensive ones cost too much. Cheap plastic fittings into which you slot hunks of 2″x4″ are annoying and always off kilter. Mid-tier ones are aluminum folding contraptions that piss me. My least favored sawhorses are made of plastic. They store nice and flat but they’re sketchy at a sawhorse’s core task; holding heavy things. I’ve sprung for some cheap stacking sawhorses at the box store. They’re made of low-rent plywood and the shittiest possible wood. They’re narrow and degrade over time. Mine are shot.

In keeping with my whole “autodidact vibe”, I decided to see what YouTube had to say about building your own sawhorse.

I was pleased to see dozens (maybe hundreds!) of sawhorse designs. I rejected many out of hand. Most are too complex. They annoy me. A sawhorse is a working man’s tool. It should be simple, tough, and cheap. The last thing I want is a sawhorse that’s a marvel of woodworking prowess. That defeats the purpose.

I found a video. It’s linked below. Watch it and you’ll know where I’m going with this.

It’s like they made the video just for me!

At about 3:00 they say: “Sherman used to say when… he interviewed carpenters he would say ‘build me a set of saw horses I’ll come back in a few minutes and if I like them and you did a good job you’ll get hired. If they’re terrible it’s a no-go’.” Holy job interview Batman! I want to live in that world!

Imagine a world before HR! You may laugh but any job seeker will tell you that getting hired and doing the job are almost completely unrelated. Thanks HR!

I ponder the logical consistency of hiring a carpenter based on his ability to make a simple sawhorse! It sounds nice. I pine for glorious simplicities that were rashly disposed in the creation of our current topsy-turvy world.

The evil eye of HR is hell on the productive. It basically eliminated “ability” as a selective factor in any jobsite with more than a few employees. It did it long before I was in the workforce. (Add to that I’m thinking about old-timey “carpenters” when most of the modern economy is thinking “illegal alien who can slap up drywall fast”. A portion of the world is long gone and I’m getting all misty eyed about it. But I digress…)

The video’s silly little story motivated me. Suddenly I really wanted to make sawhorses. I wanted them to come out good enough that in a long gone time I’d have been hired as an apprentice n00b carpenter. (Except I’m just starting out. Any old time, sepia toned, past world carpenter would sense my inexperience and kick me to the curb.)

At about 7:30 they say: “we finally reached irreducible complexity”. Holy shit! That’s a rhetorical kill shot for me. It’s exactly want I wanted! By now I had a man crush for these dudes!

I was searching for something and couldn’t define it. Irreducible complexity is what I’d wanted without even knowing it!

The design requires 3 studs and nothing more. There’s nothing superfluous in the design. If it doesn’t have to be there, it’s not! Adding details to make it “adjustable” or “foldable” or “fancy” would create something that’s more than a sawhorse and not what I wanted. (I may make something like that in the future… but it’ll be just me having fun and not a utilitarian first step.)

So I set out to make a sawhorse. How’d it go?

FABULOUS!

Stay tuned for photos of sawhorses and all sorts of happy thoughts!

A.C.

* Sadly, my homemade boat (upside down and suspended on sawhorses, but exposed to the elements) hasn’t moved in 2 years. It may be rotten or it may be in good shape. I just don’t know. It is what it is. I’ll deal with it in due time.