your coffee cup on while you scratch your head and try to figure out what to build next.”
E
ven if you have all the tools in the world, woodworking is not much fun if you don’t have a comfortable place to work and a good surface to work on.Sure, you can always brush the sawdust off your tablesaw and do a stint of handplaning or glue up a drawer, but a cast-iron top is far from being an ideal work surface.
Ideal conditions depend, to a great extent, on the kind of woodworking you do and how and where you like to work. If you like to work outside on sunny days, a portable bench may be just right for you. Portability is essential if you often work at a job site
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• • •
142Workbenches
away from your shop, requiring a bench that’s easily transportable. If you have a woodworking specialty—such as carv-ing—you may need a work surface with special vises or holding devices.
This chapter discusses work surfaces and workbenches and the advantages of integrating them into the rest of your shop by creating workstations—special areas designed and equipped to put all the tools and supplies you need for a spe-cific job at finger’s reach.
Workbenches
Unless you learned woodworking in a part of Asia where craftsmen work on the floor, (see the photo at right), you’ll need an elevated workbench in your shop to help you perform such sundry tasks as trimming an edge with a hand-plane, routing an ogee on the edge of a board, and sanding a panel smooth. If for no other reason, you need a smooth, level surface to put your coffee cup on while you scratch your head and try to figure out what to build next.
If your shop is small, you might have room for only one workbench, which might have to fulfill multiple roles: work-bench, drafting table, assembly surface, and outfeed table for a tablesaw or plan-er. In that case, you’d do best to be very thoughtful about the design and features of the bench so that it will fulfill all your needs.
BEnCh dEsign
Woodworkers tend to be as divided and opinionated about the design of their workbenches as they are about the cars
they drive. It’s most important to focus on what’s best for your kind of wood-working:
• Do you need a large surface that will handle large panels for cabinetwork that can double as an assembly table?
• What kinds of vises do you need to hold workpieces securely during ma-chining or assembly operations?
• Do you need storage under the bench?
• How important is portability and ease of transport?
“Anatomy of a Traditional Workbench,”
on p. 145, shows some attributes of a good, basic workbench that you’ll want to consider before building or buying one. Your own bench need not have all the features shown; but if you’re cur-rently working on a simple bench (such
Unlike the Western practice of raising work up to the height of a workbench, craftsmen in Japan traditionally work wood at floor level. Here, master shoji-screen maker Toshio Odate saws a joint on the end of a frame member, supporting the work with on small sawhorses.
• • •
144A long built-in work table or counter built against the wall of a shop not only conserves valuable floor space but also provides plenty of space when working on large projects. By installing shelves above and cabinets below for tools and materials, a long counter becomes a very efficient work area.
With its versatile tail and face vises, a heavy, traditional-style workbench provides a sturdy means of supporting stock for sawing, planing, and more. Here California woodworker Om Anand is using his bench to scrape a panel, smoothing its surface.
as a door stretched across two sawhorses), you might want to consider adding things like a second vise or additional holes for bench dogs and hold-downs to make your bench more versatile.
If your current bench is rickety, the most important modification you may wish to add is bracing. Just a couple of wood struts, run diagonally in both directions and securely screwed at both ends, can prevent racking (back-and-forth motion) and restore the stability that’s necessary for comfortable and accurate benchwork.
LoCating thE BEnCh in thE shop
When deciding where to put your work-bench, it’s important to leave enough clearance around machines, cabinets, and so on to allow enough elbow room in which to work. But if your shop is small or crowded, your bench doesn’t necessar-ily have to occupy valuable space in the middle of the floor.
Workbenches or counters built along walls are practical and, because they can be anchored to the wall, are sturdy (see
the top photo on the facing page). In addition, having shelves or racks on adja-cent walls and cabinets or cubbies below the benchtop provides storage and ready access for tools and supplies.
a gEnEraL-purposE WorkBEnCh
There are many ways to create a good, solid work surface in woodshop. One so-lution is to buy a heavy, European-made workbench—the woodworking status equivalent of having a Mercedes-Benz®
parked in the driveway. It’s true that a well-built traditional bench with a large, flat top can provide a terrific place to
perform all kinds of woodworking tasks, from laying out cuts to planing or routing, to finish-sanding (see “Make Sure the Top Is Flat,” on p. 154). Unfortunately, such benches are costly to buy and, with the price of maple being what it is, are even expensive to build yourself. What’s worse, many beginners end up with carver’s-style benches, which have nar-row tops and tool trays designed and sized to better fit the needs of a tradi-tional hand-tool user than a modern power-tool woodworker.
A practical and economical alterna-tive to traditional benches is a shop-built general-purpose bench, such as the one
Workbenches