Who here has the ugliest workbench?

Re: Who here has the ugliest workbench?

Dave OH


>I am afraid you are the only one wihout an inlayed ebony and rosewood bench. Excuse me now, as I was polishing the bench, now where did I put those coasters?

Actually , mine is imported 2x6 with overlayed masonite, and the finest 4x4 scrap legs money couldn't buy.

Dave

Re: Who here has the ugliest workbench?

Dale Lenz


>Below is the top of my work bench, circa 1982, SYP with a white-washed top. Note: in the back ground, 1970 elect. frying pan, aka; hot water heater, : ' >

Try this thought

Bill Houghton, finally Spring!! in Sebastopol, CA


>I won't have time for a pic - bro and sis-in-law coming tomorrow, and I've got a lot of cleanup chores - and anyway if I took a picture, you wouldn't see bench, you'd see clutter.

But picture this: painted (greenish blue, almost but not quite landlady green) masonite-skinned solid-core door, with the hinge edge as the front of the bench, sitting atop a plywood pigeonholes-to-put-tools-in box, and screwed to a ledger at the back that's bolted to the wall to provide stiffness (the plywood box turned out to be way more wobbly than I expected). Top has various tracks through the paint from errant tools.

My next bench will probably use the varnished birch solid core door that's currently seasoning in the barn. Maybe someday I'll have one of those 300 pound maple glue-ups. Maybe.

Stiffness, solidity, and versatility are WAY more important than awesome prettiness.

Re: Who here has the ugliest workbench?

Thom D


>I have two nice ones, under the clutter. and one sorta nice one, and one ugly one. That way I can work at whatever level I want. Maybe I can get a picture later.

Here's one...

Frank D. in Montreal


>but I love it. I built it as a temporary bench but I don,t see myself making another one any time soon. It's made from construction lumber, plywood and screws. No hardwood, no mortise and tenon, no dovetails. I've actually come to like the softwood top, the wood slides around less than on a maple top. It's also forgiving when you drop or bang something on it. It doesn't rack and with the storage on the bottom shelf it stays put most of the time (I have varnished floors in my shop, so I usually slide around before my bench does). Here's a pic I'll post another one with the plans.

Take care everyone (I'm off to France tomorrow for a month!)

Re: Here's one...

Frank D. in Montreal


>I didn't put the hardwood ply on top, nor the plywood panel on the back, but who follows plans anyway...The only mod I'd make is putting a few 2x4 joists under the plywood top for a little more support.

Re: Though...

Thom D


>If you think what the really pretty benches actually are, here is a run down:

- Start with some support. Trestle-like saw horse, etc...

- Leave a big hunk of wood on it for long enough that some other piece of work gets done on top of it.

- "Hey, this thing is pretty convenient", so you brace the legs.

- "I need a place for my junk" so a tool tray is attached, or a lower plank is deposited behind the first

(So far we have described the Japanese style workbench, but the sash maker in one of the Woodright books has the exact same set-up, and you will see it come in and out of focus in any timberframe shop.)

- Wait a few hundred or thousand years, and someone will invent the vise...

My point is that while the fancy benches look... fancy, they are at heart just a big honking slab of wood (these days not always that honkin), on some support. You can usually find a honkin piece at a wood store if you don't have access to free wood. And it often doesn't cost any more than a door (under 100 cana bucks. If your doors are free but your wood isn't, then maybe you should try diving in some different dumpsters).

Right here in Toronto there is a wood service that lumbers city trees and sells the wood. They came to the turning club. I bought some maple for 1 dollar a bft. Half the world is complaining about dwindling wood stocks or the high price. The other half is trying to burn it or give it away.

My ugly bench uses the lightweight Imai tressle, that is nailed together, and made of 2x2 dimensional, and some 1x4 (1rst FWW bench book).

So my thought is that before diving into some inferior expedient method of recycling some junk, dive into the right stream of junk, and make a real woodworker's bench. you can add to it as time goes by. I think too many folk are getting blinded by the glossy shine off what is really a very basic device. Even the real vises don't need to be all that expensive. A great front vise can be made with nothig more than the screw bit. A good tail vise can be made out of a veneer clamp.

Re: Here's one...

Thom D


>GONG!!! That's pretty nice. No cigar.

As it is 

Matti Kuikka

Re: temporary benches

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI


>One thing I kind of figured when I was building a bench is that if I take the time to do it, it might as well be done right. I had cheap and free wood for the base, which someone on this forum has lovingly referred to as a shaker vanity ;) The wood happened to be cherry, so the vanity looks pretty nice. A couple of things happened when I got to the bench top. One, I was running out of time, and two, running out of wood. So I figured I would make a temporary top out of layers of particle board banded with hickory, and attached a shoulder and tail vice to it, and covered it with a 1/4" hickory ply I had. The top looked pretty good when it was done, but is definitely not a work of art. The problem with temporary things is that if they are functional, they become permanent things. I do have a stack of lumber milled out of a maple tree that will get shaped into a new bench top "some day", but you should see my list of crap to do. Perhaps in a few years. So my suggestion is, think it through and do it right the first time, and you will be happy with the bench for a very long time. You certainly don't need fancy wood, you just need a very strong base with a good solid top on it and a way to hold boards while you work on them.

Hang On Pete

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.


>For the past hour I've been out in my shop snapping pics of my workbench. I completly cleared it off and everything. I'll post pics later this weekend--I hope---as for I don't have time to even download them off the camera to say nothing about trying to write up a comprehensive write up as I'm soon to be going to vist a fellow Galoot.

My bench is nothing special, made completely with recycled material and replete with home made shoulder and tail vise, but still it isn't two shabby either. There's some changes I'd make to it if and when I build another, which I intend on doing REAL soon. First and formost I'd make it LOWER! Right now I am in process of redesigning tool storage drawers, and once done, they will more or less dictate the length of my new bench, but not the height.

Now than, I have a muliple of pics, which I'd like to put into one post. From what little I comprehend about posting muliple pics I first need to send them to a Webpage of sorts, do the write up, than I can post it all in one shot. Does anybody have a Website I can use for this purpose AND walk me thru how to do it?

Todd O.

Workbench As A Work Of Art

Greg B�tit, Crown Point NY


>You're right to be concerned about building a workbench that's "too nice" to use. You may have seen Norm Vandal's Shaker style bench featured in The Workbench Book. While I was working in his shop with him when it was new Norm mentioned several times that he had a hard time thinking of and using it as a work-a-day tool.

I have the distinction of putting the first significant ding on the top of that bench. When it happened, you would have thought I had just deliberately put some French finish marks on one of his reproduction Queen Anne pieces. There was an uncomfortable silence for the rest of the day in the shop. A month or so later he apologized for his reaction and even thanked me for the prod he needed to start thinking of the workbench as a tool.

I learned something from the episode as well. I should have perhaps put down some scrap wood to protect the bench surface for the operation I was attempting. My present work bench has thousands of dings it acquired over it's ~150 years, but I now take reasonable precautions to not add to them.

Think of the work bench as you would any other tool. If you own a high end infill plane, would you be afraid to use it? I can only imagine such a tool would be a joy to work with. I cannot imagine not using such a wonderful tool as often as I could. But if I owned such a tool it would be treated a bit more carefully than, say, the scrub plane.

Assuming that you have no real immediate need, my recommendation is to make as nice a work bench that you have the time, resources and patience to make. You will never regret owning a "high end" work bench. I would venture to say that the vast majority of participants in this forum harbor some ideas that they want to put into their "next" work bench, whether they have actual plans to build it or not.

Greg

Darn right!!

Jerry Nicholson


>If I owned a Holtey plane, of course I would be afraid to use it. I might even hesitate to use a fancy workbench. My bench top is 5 layers (yeah I said 5) of MDF topped with Delta gray Formica. Glued up 2 x 4 s to make 4 x 4 legs, back edge fastened to a ledger lagged to a center wall in the basement. Chipped where I lost control of it trying to put it in position by myself, chipped again when it was moved to our current house. Stained, scratched, dinged, works just fine. My son and son-in-law really hated the thing when they got the job of moving it out of one basement and into another.

Jerry

Re: Darn right!!

Thom D


>Fair enough, but the reality is that the second most expensive thing I own, I regularly drive at 60 down our local 14 lane HWY, jamed to the roof with my family. The bench and all my tools including quite a few scaries, like solvents, forges and welders, are all in my most expensive fully paid up asset. Do I give a rat's about a Hotley plane in comparison? I don't think so.

Now dropping any iron on the floor and getting a big chip that I sometimes have to remove by hand, yeah, that would steam me. With a Hotley iron at least I could just take it over to the belt sander and grind it out.

The main reason not to get the bench all knocked to heck is that it's a tool and I don't want it messing up my work in return. But if it did get dinged, well I'm a woodworker and at least should know what to do about it.

Nice story about Vandal.

Post 'em if you have 'em *LINK*

David Barnett - SW Florida


>"I've been looking around the internet and in books on benches and have seen plenty that are absolute works of art. I'd be afraid to use them myself. I started thinking that there must be some benches out there that are more "mortal." I'd be interested in seeing your workbenches that are not museum pieces OR real nice benches that have seen better days."

A similar question was posed to the Orchid forum, a website dedicated to jewelry and those who make it. The poster wondered how other art jeweler benchtops looked in everyday disarray, uploaded a picture of his own disheveled workspace and invited others to do likewise. This grew into fourteen pages of personal workbenches and workspaces and is appended as new pictures are submitted.

Workbenches for goldsmithing are as idiosyncratic as their owners and as varied as the full range of jewelrymaking techniques demands. Just as in woodworking, a standard sort of workbench exits and standard fixtures exist, such as a cutout fitted with a bench pin for sawing, filing, and so on, and either a suspended skin or 'sweeps' drawer for catching filings and bits of precious materials. I find it highly instructive and intensely interesting to see how other craftsman do things, what tools they use, where they position them, and so on, no matter in which craft one is engaged.

I'm always pleased to see different shops and workbenches on WoodCentral and would like to see still more -- ugly or otherwise. As soon as I finish this *$&#% move and (hopefully) make it through another hurricane season, I'll post a pic of my bench 'in situ' -- in all it's natural clutter, which will be a shocking departure from my previously posted pristine venue. Although our Shop Shots shows a lot of WW workshops and benches, it might be nice to have some sort of workbench page for those who primarily use handtools. Just a thought.


Orchid BenchExchange

Re: Workbench As A Work Of Art

Pete Ducklow


>Wow! You put a ding in Norm Vandal's new bench? That's like dropping Eric Clapton's guitar!

The bench I am now making is being made out of cheap wood (pine 2X4s) but I'm using good techniques like laminating the top and mortice & tenon joinery. It should be good enough for me (I'm no Norm Vandal)

Re: Workbench As A Work Of Art

Deirdre Saoirse Moen


>Great story about the bench.

Yesterday, I was at the lumberyard to purchase lumber for my shaving horse. Because I had some scraps, I opted to make a few pieces out of teak, and was looking for the wood for the rest.

(I grew up with teak furniture indoors and building boats for the family where we used a lot of teak, so I don't think of it as a prissy "too good" wood, though many might.)

I'd narrowed it down to hard maple and hickory, both of which were within spitting distance of each other price-wise, though maple was slightly higher.

I opted for hickory for three reasons:

1) Maple is one of my favorite woods; I'm less attached to hickory and would be less likely to think of it as furniture rather than a tool;

2) 8/4 maple was on the 2nd floor and I'd have had to wait for a forklift;

3) 8/4 maple was 12' or longer and I'd have to pay for crosscutting it down to 8'.

The first was the most important, really. I briefly considered getting some gaboon ebony for some little decorative elements, but decided against it. ;)

Ugly but effective

Angus Barclay, in New Zealand


>Hello Pete,

my bench is easily one of the ugliest in the world. Every now and then I remind it just how ugly it is by visiting all sorts of insults on it. Just today I screwed two battens to the benchtop when thickness planing a panel. I sure wouldn�t do that to some of the fine furniture I�ve seen displayed here.

As you can see in this photo, there are plenty of scratches and dings in the benchtop. You can also quite plainly see evidence of where I did something stupid with an electric router.

The top is 4in thick and laminated from 2in x 8in Monterey pine (pinus radiata). The slot at bottom of the photo is a sliding dog system made from a cheap quick-action clamp. Ugly but effective. The dog is a scrap of oak with a pine "spring" glued on. The painter's masking tape held the "spring" while the glue dried but I never bothered peeling it off and it helps keep the dog snug in the dog holes. Again, ugly but effective.

regards

Angus Barclay

Free 50's kitchen cab and MDF.

John K in Hastings, MN


>Bench dogs were added later.

Yer dogs

jim reed @ tallahassee


>seem somewhat mo-BILE. But they do dress up the bench.

My bench

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.


>O.K., I just spent almost 30 minutes trying to post one pic of 7 of my workbench, so I'm going to give it another shot, but only post a pic, and than after all 7 are posted try to write in some descriptive info.

Todd O.

Re: My bench 

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.

Re: My bench 3 of 7 

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.

Re: My bench 4 of 7 

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.