I just moved into a new home with enough room to finally build a dedicated 16’ x 13’ workshop which was a welcomed change from my small 6’x8’ unpowered shed – especially during the frost Canadian winters. Seeing the price of lumber I decided to build an English Workbench to save $$ for projects. I read and watched every bit of information I could find from Richard Maguire, Rex Krueger, Chris Schwarz, and any blog post I could find. I worked out that I wanted a shorter 72” bench to be around 35.5” high and 24” deep. I was planning on building a leg vice but my wife surprised me with a Veritas Twin Screw for my birthday – so my plans changed slightly as I redesigned my bench to accommodate it.
Bench in it the final form is constructed from SPF and 72” x 24” x 35.5” with a 33” vice which allows a 24” board to fit between the screws. The front jaw of the vice is a lamination of some cherry and poplar – they just happened to be the hardwoods I had that met my needs.
I ended up using eight 2” x 12” x 16” boards that I broke down into components and allowed to dry in my basement. Just wanted to share some photos, I’m not particularly good at writing blogs or how-tos but only one way to learn. I should note that everything was cut and dimensioned by hand, only using powered drills to drive in screws etc simply because I don’t own a bit and brace.
I needed a planning stop and some bench dogs so I went to the local home depot to comb through their culled lumber pile where I found a stip of oak flooring transition as well as a couple of broken pieces of 3/4” dowel – lucky me!
Bench structure without center or end supports in place
Finished bench with vice installed
Planing stop
Vice, stops, and bench dogs in action
Thought I would share and hopefully inspire newcomers to start building and worry about the fine details later on. I was definitely overcome with analysis-paralysis going between every style of bench. Glad I decided on this because building a bench without a bench is certainly a task in creativity.
Cheers!
3 comments so far
Eric
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5736 posts in 1365 days
#1 posted 03-23-2022 12:26 AM
Looks good, a very good build. More so when one does not have a bench to start with. Well done.
Saw horses and plywood was my temporary bench.
-- Eric, building the dream. the "Loft"
BigAl98
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311 posts in 4531 days
#2 posted 03-23-2022 02:36 AM
I built my shop up from a cabinet saw first. Then I built a cutoff table 4×8 behind it. Then I built the workbench 96” long 21st-Century Workbench designed Robert W. Lang. I don’t recall using any saw horses to build the under carraige of the table since the legs where essentially flat top A structures and I could put them together on my saw table cutoff table. Then you connect the two flat top A structures with a cross beam either side, tusk tennon the cross beams into the A structures Then you use the cross beam connected A constructs to support the table top….easy peasy.
-- Al,Midwest -To thine own self be true
Dave Polaschek
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10487 posts in 2074 days
#3 posted 03-25-2022 01:24 AM
Looks nice. Might want a couple dog-holes in the top of the vice for clamping boards from the side. I do that a lot, both for long stuff where I’m working on one end of it, as well as for short little pieces that I plane towards the back.
-- Dave - Santa Fe
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