Work Bench Heater

I recently replaced the top of my workbench after a friend broke off the corner wrenching on something in the vice.  I took some pictures of the process and a figured I would share this idea that I had a few years back that worked out really well.

I had a garage that wasn’t insulated so heating it with propane was ineffective and expensive.  I wanted to work out there in the winter without being insanely cold.  I had an electric baseboard heater that I’d picked up somewhere, (probably somebody’s garbage) and figured if I mounted it close to where I was working it would keep me warm enough to work out there for a while.  I mounted it to the front of my workbench, just under the edge of the bench top.

It worked out beautifully!  It was so much cheaper to run because it was only heating my immediate work area instead of the whole garage, which also meant that I didn’t have to wait for the whole garage to warm up to start getting warm.  As soon as I turned it on, I started warming up. When I mounted it there, I didn’t think about how it would keep my hands warm, which was especially amazing because it’s so hard to work with cold hands.  About the only issue I had was that my feet would get cold because the concrete was always freezing cold. 
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So if you spend a lot of time at your workbench and need a way to stay warm during the winter without breaking the bank, you might give this a shot.