: I stopped by Home Depot today to look at sawhorses, and it looked
: like most of them would be, once a strongback and forms were
: added, too tall.

: What do you guys use as a platform to set your strongbacks on?

Here's some basic plans for building your own sawhorses. Each sawhorse uses 2 to 3 2x4s for legs, braces and the crossbeam.

This works out to about $14 for a pair of sawhorses, at January, 2010 prices for 2x4s and a pound of 12d or 16d nails. If you want to use 1x4 or 1x3 for some of the braces, go ahead, but check the prices before you buy the wood. Surprisingly, 8-foot-long 2x4s are frequently priced cheaper than 1x4s, and sometimes they are cheaper than 1x3s!

If you are using an internal strongback then just make the legs. The strongback itself is the crossbeam.

If you are using an external strongback, consider just making the sawhorse legs and bolting them directly to the strongback's beams. These legs can be uncomplicated, straight pieces of 2x4. If your external strongback is over 12"wide it will stand up fine on 4 legs--2 near each end. Add a few extra boards for braces so the thing doesn't wiggle, and you have turned the external strongback into a skeletal workbench.

Long strongbacks will sag in the middle. That is the nature of materials. You can make the strongback from very strong and rigid materials so the sag is very slight, or you can make them from reasonable, inexpensive, materials, and add additional supports (extra legs) at 3' to 5' intervals along the length of the strongback. You can get 3 legs of about 32" length from a single 8-foot 2x4 for under $3. That makes it a lot cheaper to use (well supported) 2x4's for a strongback than to use other materials.

The illustration assumes you are using a 2x4 strongback, but there are no numbers for it, as the same plans work for a home-made box beam, or a 2x6, 2x8, etc.

Hope this helps.

PGJ