Bench materials question
Ned Bulken
>OK gang,
now that Ernie has introduced me to the magical sound of 'shhhhhk',(which is as close as I can come to the sound made when his gracious gift of a spokeshave was put to use),my shop partner says since I'm leaning more toward the neander side of the spectrum (I dunno about that, i just bought a really nice new DW734 doesn't that make me a nahmite?)
I'm doing my homework, have read and drooled over numerous fancy workbenches. My first woodworker's bench will probably just be a fairly basic affair, I have a vise already, not sure of the brand, but I picked it up used a year and a half ago, and never installed it on my current bench, which from what I'm reading is a little bit tall for hand planing etc... work. I'm 6'3" tall and my bench is a comfortable 42" high, which I arrived at by placing my hands out horizontally from my waist and measuring down from there, plus an inch or so.
We have a nice source for roughsawn Ash, which we can snag for 75c/bf. I don't know if he has any 8/4, but for that price I could glue up a bunch of 3/4 for a nice benchtop. Think that would work for a beginner's bench?