West Forge: Sub Roadbed and "Benchwork"

So I choose to do something I haven't seen done before for my bench work. Admittedly i was inspired by some bench work I saw that was built primarily from artist foam core mat board. I built my bench work completely from blue extruded foam. I took a piece of foam that I had in the basement (remember I'm trying to use what I have to build this) and I cut it down to a width of 24 inches. This left me with a none to straight 2x4 foot piece of foam. To make it more rigid and flat I cut halfway in 6 inches from each end and snapped the piece back until they layed flat connected only by the plastic wrapping to the main board. I cut out additional pieces to use as cross braces under the foam top (make sure that you use the same sheet or a sheet you know came from the same store at the same time as I have found different batches can be slightly different thicknesses). I then used yellow wood glue and sewing pins to hold it all together, and left it to dry for about 3 days with weight on the top.


Once it had sit for 3 days it was dry, flat and solid, but still very light. You can easily pick it up with just one finger. Below you can see how I layed out the supports. After the glue dried I removed the large pins (all I had at the time) and replaced them with some flat headed steel pins I picked up the store. I decided to leave the pins in place to keep the foam from shifting if it took a hit (something highly likely to happen in my house).


At this point it's rather nice as I was able to just slide the entire board behind my dresser to keep it away from the kids.