My Bench - Version 1.0
Fast, Cheap and Easy to Build
If you're getting into woodworking and thinking about building a workbench, here's a tip for you: just build it. We basement/garage weekend woodworkers/tool tinkerers tend to spend more time planning and agonizing over project than actually building them. When it comes to a bench, just build it. Then use it, and wonder why the hell you didn't build it sooner. After using it for a while, you can decide whether it still serves your needs, or what features you like or don't like. Then you can modify it or build a completely new one. But the best thing to do is just build one! Don't try to make it the "perfect" bench that will always fit your every need and want. Mine has been an evolving work in progress for nearly 10 years now and I'm still working on it.
A woodworking bench needs to be solid, strong, and stable and provide various ways to hold the work. As with everything, there are many ways to get there, and different styles of benches and vises to suit different types of work.
This page shows how I originally built mine. I came up with the design on my own. Subsequent modifications are shown at My Bench - Version 2.0 and My Bench - Version 3.0.
You can also see how I built the base, with Google Sketchup drawings, here.
The Base
I built the base first, with standard big box home center lumber. I made it in one weekend, but I was going slowly because I was kind of making it up as I went. I'm confident that if I were to do it again today, I could make it in a day. I apologize for the lousy photo quality; these are old digital photos that have been resized and so have lost resolution.
The main members are 2x6 douglas fir, ripped down both sides to an actual size of 1.5" x 5". This gives a much nicer appearance with a crisp square edge, and provides a square edge to use for joining frame members. For "joinery," such as it is, I used 3/8" lag screws, decking screws, and glue.
I enclosed the base on three sides with 3/4” birch plywood. This completely eliminates any wracking and also provides storage space underneath. I also installed a shelf in the middle, for plane storage.
The completed base weighs about 130 lbs.
The Original Top
I made the top of four layers of sheet goods, laminated together with yellow wood glue, like a big sandwich. One layer of 3/4" pine plywood on the bottom, two layers of 3/4" particleboard subfloor in the middle and one layer of 3/4" pine plywood on the top, for a total thickness of 3".
When I dropped the top onto the base, I discovered it had a very slight, but measurable dish, maybe about 1/8" or less in the middle. Fortunately, the top lamination of the top layer of plywood was thick enough that I could plane it out.
I covered the top with 1/4" tempered Masonite hardboard, and then wrapped the whole thing in an oak skirt, 4-1/2" tall.
The top is held onto the base by gravity. I put two 5/8" dowels, one in each end stretcher of the base, aligned with holes in the underside of the top, to keep it from moving around under heavy planing.
These pictures show the original vises I put on it, which I acquired at a flea market. They were pretty crude, shop-made things, and they wracked terribly. But they were pretty cheap and they worked well enough for a while.
I later cut a row of square dog holes in the top, just inside of the apron, sized to fit a pair of metal bench dogs that Scott Grandstaff was nice enough to make for me.
The top as originally made weighs about 180 lbs.
The Finished Product - Version 1.0
I applied two coats of linseed oil to the whole thing and that was that.
It's a pretty satisfying bench, and meets the criteria I had set out when I started it:
- It's heavy and extremely solid. It simply does not shimmy, wobble, squeak, wrack or move at all, even under the most strenuous planing.
- It's reasonably aesthetically pleasing. Although it's not like a piece of fine furniture, like Frank Klausz's bench, it's not an ugly assortment of whacked-together scrap lumber. And my later and ongoing modifications are making it more attractive.
- You can build the entire thing in a weekend.
- And, not insignificantly, the raw materials are inexpensive. The whole thing as originally built cost slightly over $100, including the original vises. Of course, with better vises, which really are necessary, it would cost more.
I later modified the top and vises; see My Bench - Version 2.0 and My Bench - Version 3.0.