My Bench - Version 3.0

You can see the origin of my main woodworking bench here, and the first round of revisions I made to it a few years later here.

After a few more years of use, and after drooling over the pictures of Norm Vandal's bench and the Hancock Shaker Village bench in Scott Landis' "The Workbench Book," I decided that I really wanted a traditional Shaker-style bench.  And I really need the storage space that a bunch of drawers would provide.  I also realized that oak tongue and groove flooring is not at all an ideal material for a bench top. I would not make a bench top out of oak at all.  The grain is too coarse and open and traps dirt.  You want a nice, tight-grained hardwood for a bench top, like maple, ash, or hard birch.  And finally, the tail vise I had built works ok, but it sags a bit and is not ideal.  So the plan for My Bench - Version 3.0 is:

• Paint the base.
• Build a set of drawers inside the base.
• Make a new, thick top of solid wood.
• Make or buy new vises.

The easiest thing to do first was to paint the base, which I did in 2008.  While I was at it, I also tore out the middle shelf.

I also bought a bunch of nice big birch planks to make a new solid wood top to replace the original top, which I had made of laminated sheet goods and covered with recycled oak tongue and groove flooring.

As of October 4, 2009, that is as far as I've gotten.