The Original Workbench of your dreams thread

I guess I will have to join in on this, I built my bench two years ago to the size that would best fit in my small 220sqft shop. It measures 63" by 20" and is 34" in height. the top is two layers of 3/4" OSB glued together then sandwiched between two layers of 1" MDF, which is then edged with 2" cherry to dress it up a bit. the base is straight up 4×4 and 2×4 construction with pegged half lap joints. there are 1 1/2" dowels in tops of the legs which slide into mortises in the bottom of the top to hold it in place. I wanted it to be removable in case it needed to be rehabed. the edge banding of two inch cherry is held together with condor tails on the corners so if I ever need to replace the MDF top I can remove the top and the edging and just slip in a new piece of MDF.
I have a Wilton end vise and a shop made leg vise. I bore dog holes in the side rail on the leg vise side so that I can stick a long dog in there to support long boards as they are being jointed. So far it has been all I have needed it to be, the top is holding up excellently, would like to add some support to the footprint as I can get it rocking a little if I am really bearing down with the planes. otherwise its works great.. here are a couple pics..




P.S. don't mind the mess, I am to busy building to worry about sweeping up the shavings under the bench.. that's what I tell my wife every time she comes in a says something about it.. just the sign of a busy furniture maker at work..

Well guys and gals it has been a while and i thought i would do an update here tonight and on my blog tomorrow. I just spent some time on Horizontal mikes website on his bench build and saw that even though we did our mortises differently we had some of the same issues when working with bob Lang's planes.Bob tells you that once you have a nice straight mortice all the way through the 8/4 stock to back bevel the mortise with a chisel this method is ok but can cause rough edges and less than perfect fit of the tenon bob says to fill the gaps with hard wood wedges hammered and glued in place. This makes the tenon more like a giant dovetailed tenon. Either you buy it or you don't I do know that tenons loosen up in the summer here when it is hot and dry and expand in the damp cool winter not the same as other parts of the country but hey its wood it moves so i decided to trust Mike and Bob I know Mikes bench is a couple of years old now and he used the wedges too. I finished all four leg frames and am ready to cut the rails tomorrow I have asked a few people I trust about this and will let you all know what feedback i get . the giant dovetails on Robert lang's bench were cut with a jig saw through 8/4 stock this concerns me I am worried about blade deflection on even a really nice jig saw which I am lucky to have the top of the line de walt. I still don't know if i should do it with a hand saw or a band saw the board is 65 inches long and the cut is offset 1/2 over its length so it is not a true rip and not a true crosscut so if i choose to do it with a hand saw what saw should i use. and that is a lot of board to try to feed on the band saw food for thought.

After gluing the legs into frames I cut the wedges and planed the ends smooth they look good and solid I am very pleased with the results

Sounds really super good!

You are learning something and improving your skills!

Those Giant dovetails, I think, would really be FUN, watching them just slide together without any hangups… The real payoff!

I'm looking forward to seeing if we can find your really "bad mistake"... glad it's not really BAD! LOL

I've been thinking about making test joints for my chairs to be sure I can do it 'for real'... just like you're doing.
... planning the wood to be used for them, etc.
I have never cut up large boards like this before… Like 2" x 12" x 8' monster boards.

There is a complete record of my Roubo build on my website. The index is on this page: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/index.html

Step-by-step through everything, including a wagon vise (tail vise) from Benchcrafted and a shopmade wooden screw leg vise.

Big dovetail:



Interesting tools trays:



Oak top and Jarrah base/leg vise (the pics are a little too large to fit here).



Regards from Perth

Derek