Bill's First Workbench

See Bill's new workbench here: http://hrothgar.cwru.edu/bench.html

	Inspired by several web pages depicting the construction of a traditional woodworker's bench, I set to building my own in August, 2000. The incentive was my first real furniture project of any size, a pair of stackable twin beds for my two daughters. I have plenty of experience in practical carpentry, and have built an array of shelves, drawers and even a cupboard or two, but the beds will be my first attempt at furniture. Building this bench gave me practice in joinery, and will give me a stable (and good looking!) place on which to build the beds, and other future projects.
I built the bench with commonly available pine 2x stock, 2x4's for the legs and top and 2x8's for the stretchers and tool tray. The lumber is laminated (glued) to create the thick legs, stretchers, and top. The laminated stock was jointed by hand using vintage Stanley handplanes: a #5 jack plane and the hefty #8 jointer. Finish planing of the top was done using a handmade Knight smoother.
	The base was built using wedged mortise and tenon joinery. The joints were cut by hand using a back saw and chisels for the tenons, and using a brace and bit and chisel for the mortises. The tenon shoulders on the 2x8 stretchers were cut on my Jet contractor's table saw using a shop-built cross cut box. The wedges were made from thin walnut that I had in my lumber pile, which makes for a nice contrast on the face of the finished joint.
The dog holes (or, more specifically, slots) were milled using an electric router and jig. The jig was set such that the router would cut the holes at roughly 87 degrees, leaning towards the end vise. This keeps the dogs from popping out of their holes when a piece of wood is clamped down. The rectangular dogs were shop built using white oak with spring strips of walnut.
The vises were built using front vise hardware from Woodcraft. The vise faces are soft maple. The tail vise has a pop-up bench dog of my own design, made from red oak.
To compliment the bench, I also built a bench slave from more left over soft maple. The bench slave supports longer boards while the edges are jointed. I opted for a simple design. The holes accept a 1 inch diameter hardwood dowel peg which can be raised or lowered depending on the width of the board that needs to be jointed. The base was built with a half-lap joint and the post has a tenon on the bottom that fits into a mortise in the base.
	The bench is finished with six coats of dewaxed orange shellac and wax.

Links:

• My bench was clearly inspired by Bob Key's Good, Fast, and Cheap Bench. Bob has built enough benches to know what he is talking about. My bench differs from his only in the overall size (mine is 60 inches long) and vise hardware. I also plan to add trestle feet, partially for added stability on my not-level basement floor, but also because the bench is a tad low without them. (See also Bob's Ultimate Bench.)
• On the other end of the spectrum is Peter Berglund's gorgeous bench
• Another beautiful bench, exhaustively documented, is Keith Rucker's bench.
• Other useful links:
  • The Electronic Neanderthal Woodworker
  • Fine Woodworking magazine
  • Newsgroup rec.woodworking

Back to Top

Back to Bill's wood shop.