Workbenches

Dave Richards

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I was killing some time this morning while I was waiting for the family to get up and pulled together a bunch of the workbenches I've modeled over the years. These were all done for plans for Fine Woodworking Magazine. I didn't bother getting the others involved. I've always thought I should build one of these but I can't decide which.

 
I dunno, ask two people what the "best" workbench design is and you're get twenty opinions.

I think the first decision is drawers underneath or not. I started my woodworking adventure back in high school with the ubiquitous heavy maple topped metal cabinet design (real close to the rear left model). It certainly had it's advantages in that you can store stuff close by. OTOH drawers under the bench also tend to gather dust. My current bench doesn't have them and given the space constraints I have I sometimes wish I had more storage there. On the flip side I've also gotten to REALLY like using holdfasts and those require quite a bit of under bench clearance so on the whole I think that kind of works out. I could see adding a smaller chest on the underside at some point (I said that 10 years ago to and haven't done it so... yeah..).
 
You're right, Ryan. There are sorts of features one can add to a workbench. I imagine if I was going to build one right now, I'd work with these designs and others and make a sort of amalgam of them.
 
I really like your video, Dave. :thumb:

One of the things on my shelter at home to-do list is to get my recording gear set up and start recording some little ditties for background music on videos. The drummer in my band is also a drone pilot, and he's always on the hunt for royalty-free music for his videos.
 
Thanks Vaughn.

Sounds like you have some good stuff to do. I keep thinking I need to go out and do some cleaning in my shop. Then I start wondering about making stupid videos from my old SketchUp models. :D
 
Fun video!

So I see you have most of the vises on the left side of the bench. This in fact appears to be the common orientation for most benches. I've been contrary to that in that I like to be able to work some with pieces hanging out in space (think clamping a tool handle to shave to fit or cutting off a small bit of this or that) and being right handed it seemed more reasonable to have the "open" end hanging off to the right.

However I've also wondered if I'm missing some obvious advantage to the other orientation. The one obvious one is perhaps planing towards the vise, but in that case I might prefer a removable crochet with a vise on the opposite corner, although maybe a leg vise on the left and an end vise open on the right would be also an option?

Interested in others thoughts on that.
 
Ryan, I only modeled them the way the authors built them. Being left handed I've often wondered if it would make sense for me to reverse the bench and put the vises on the opposite ends. I probably would just leave them as in the original design, though.
 
The one I currently have from my wife's GG-grandpa is most like #4 in the video, nice job btw!

If it gets warm enough this week. I may get the power sprayer out and clean it up a bit to see what all needs fixing on it.
 
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