English workbench finished!

Well, it has been a long haul. I think I started this project sometime around the first of this year. It has been an excercise in frustration, patience, fun, and about every other kind of excercise you can think of.

                                                                                                        
Along the way, I have had to rehabilitate newly aquired tools, deal with working without a workbench, move all of the wood for this project every week out of our carport for church services on Sunday, and deal with life in general.

                                                                                                        
I will confess that not all of the work was done with hand tools. In fact, a good part of the ripping (maybe 80%) was done with a portable circular saw as was cutting some of the boards to length. Also, a lot of the drilling was done with a small 3/8 inch electric drill. Oh, and I used an electric fan to keep me cool and an electric light bulb to see at night.

                                                                                                        
All in all, I am really pleased with how it came out. It is solid, sturdy, doesn't rack, feels like you could park a tank on it, blow up the tank with a missile, and still have a flat worktable. Also, it wasn't that expensive since it was made out of southern yellow pine that I bought for about US$1 board foot.

                                                                                                        
I did skimp a bit on the leg vise, and used pine instead of hardwood, but it was a LOT cheaper. If I ever break it, I will probably replace it with thicker pine or else hardwood.

This bench was made 6' long and about 32" high. The main reason for the choice of length is that we are renting the house we are in. That is, if we ever have to move (and we will at some point), I don't know what the new house will look like, so I made this bench so it could easily fit through a standard doorway and get through most twists and turns in a house by standing it on end and maneuvering it that way. As far as cost goes, there isn't that much difference between a 6' and 8' bench since the legs are the same. If I were to build a second bench, I think I would build a French workbench like Chris Schwarz describes in his book and make it 8' or 10' long.

Oh, and a special thank you to Chris Schwarz for his awesome workbench book. I have wanted to do a review for a long time on this book, but since it is such an important book for hand tool woodworkers, I wanted to wait until after I had finished my bench in order to be able to be more thorough (think critical) in my review. It will be coming up soon.

You will notice that there is no end vise. Originally one was planned and I even bought the screw for it, but the fact is that I got tired of building a workbench withough having a workbench to work on and decided to just shortcut the process and get it done. Since the bench is shorter, it is of less utility than it would have been on a longer bench anyway. I may eventually add it.

Also, I have not added a planing stop yet. I am still mulling it over. Since my shop has cement block walls, I always have something to push against, so it really isn't that critical anyway.

Some of you are still scratching your head wondering what the wheels are doing on the left end. They wouldn't be appropriate for a longer bench, and wouldn't be appropriate for a lot of people and may interfere with a planing stop, so don't think you need them.

The idea of the wheels goes along with being able to get this bench through a normal door. With the wheels, I can take off the leg vise (to make the bench narrower), flip the bench up on the end and wheel it anywhere in my house without help. I was worried that it might seem unstable or difficult to handle when stood on its end, but it seems to be pretty stable although it is a lot of weight to pick up since I used 1 3/4" southern yellow pine stock throughout.

The total weight of this bench must surely be north of 200 pounds perhaps approaching 300.

I was afraid that the bench would move along my slick tile floors when doing heavy planing, but it doesn't. I can still slide the bench around to move it if necessary, but I really have to put some effort into it.

All in all, I am really happy with this bench and have really enjoyed using it for the last week or so.

I have to say that it beats a plastic folding table to pieces as a workbench.