Make a Workbench Class

Hi all,
Thought some of you might find this interesting. I'm taking a class at Santa Fe Community College on how to make a workbench. The class meets 9-5 every day for two weeks (so most of the students are retired old farts like me). At the end of the class we will have built a workbench for each of the ten students. Basically everyone is building the same workbench except you get to chose lefty or righty, tool tray or not, height of the bench, and you pick your own vises.
Its my first experience in "production" woodworking. Everyone takes a small task and does it for all ten workbenches. Yesterday I chopped 40 mortises to connect the legs to the stretchers and glued up ten rails with dog holes. Frankly it feels a little disconnected, after getting used to doing projects from start to finish by myself. The other weird part is that I, like most of the students, haven't done a 40 hour week of physical labor in a long time (about 30 years for me).
It is exciting, though to see the benches coming together. We will be finished next Friday, so this weekend I gotta figure out where in the heck I'm gonna put it:eek: :eek:
OK, here's some pics. One shows the legs/bottom/top of the trestle assembly - 80 components. We are using floating tenons 3 1/2 inches long, 3/4 inch thick,and 2 inches wide. The next pic shows the glueup of the 72 inch long dog rail. We dado dog holes into one face and then laminate the other face to that. Each piece takes about 30 clamps - yes, you can never have enough clamps:p

I'll post pics of the finished products next week.
 

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Cool stuff Jesse. We'll be looking forward to more progress pics. I'll bet it is quite an adjustment getting used to production line work. And since you're going to own one of the finished benches, you've got to put your faith in the other guys' abilities as well.
 
Wow... imagine *running* that class! You'd have to have everything together, parse out the work, time it all perfectly, and all with workers of varying skill levels, who you have to motivate and coach, instead of just telling them what to do...

On the other hand, imagine, toward the end of the second week, watching them all come together! That would be cool. And each succesive class would be a different story.

Way cool stuff! Enjoy the ride! ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
What would you say is the trickiest operation thus far? I've been stalling on assembling my bench. I've got the lumber, had the lumber dealer glue-laminate the Euro Beech top and plane it flat. Legs and stretchers wil be Maple.

Gary Curtis

Hey Gary,
What was the trickiest operation? Well, I think Bill nailed it when he said, "can you imagine running that class?" The teacher is definitely earning his pay, keeping us all safe and productive. He seems to have an uncanny sense of knowing when each of us has had a little too much teamwork and would enjoy doing a task all by themselves.

The trickiest part for the students so far is fitting the mortises and tenons. One student got a little distracted and didn't notice that a stop on the mortiser table was loose, so the mortises kept getting longer. We still made strong joints (the thickness part of the fit was right on), but we had a devil of a time getting the legs and top/bottoms of the trestle square. We had to dry fit on center, futz with it till it was square, then mark the new locations, then glue up. It taught us a good lesson though. Everyone started building in periodic QA checks to make sure nothing got sloppy.
 
Jesse,

I have never done production work. I think it would be difficult going from being use to building something from the beginning to the end, to only make a small part of a project repeatedly.

QA is always a good idea, especially when may sets of hands are involved.

Looking forward to more pictures as the benches progress.:thumb:
 
Sounds nice...I've been taking a class on building a workbench for a year or more, right in my very own garage/shop!:rofl:

One day I hope to complete the class...:doh:
 
Hi Jesse.

Sounds like a lot of fun, so many woodworkers alltogether, shavings and woodust flying around:).

Smell ( I'd rather say aroma) of freshly cut wood, the thrill of seeing joints getting together tightly:thumb: .

Enjoy it as much as you can, I envy you.

BTW. I look forward to see you finished bench, because I'm tinkering with the idea of making a new one for myself.
 
Jesse,

That's amazing. I live in Santa Fe and almost took that class last year but my work schedule conflicted with the school schedule so I ended up buying a bench. Anyway, I needed a bench sooner than the time that was required to complete the bench. They have other classes at the college that I plan on taking after I retire next year.
 
Jesse,

That's amazing. I live in Santa Fe and almost took that class last year but my work schedule conflicted with the school schedule so I ended up buying a bench. Anyway, I needed a bench sooner than the time that was required to complete the bench. They have other classes at the college that I plan on taking after I retire next year.
Never knew you were in Santa Fe, Rick. (I'm a former ABQ kid.) :wave:

If you're ever been to the Baskin-Robbins on Cerrillos Road, you've probably met my Uncle Cookie. Or one of my many cousins. ;)
 
Vaughn,

That's also amazing! I'm a former LA kid and now permanently in Santa Fe. I haven't been to the BR here but I will now.
 
Rick, if there's an old guy behind the counter, that'll be Cookie (he's semi-retired, so he's not there 12 hours a day like he used to be). I think one of my cousins is handling the day-to-day management. I believe the Santa Fe store is the oldest B-R franchise still owned by the original owner...he opened the store about 40 years ago. In either case, tell whoever is behind the counter that I said Hi. Chances are they'll know me.

Sorry for the threadjack Jesse. :eek: When are we gonna see some new bench pics?
 
Almost there

Well,
Class is over. We made ten benches. There was a lot of drama. One of the students announced that he had been diagnosed with leukemia and his doctor wanted him to drop the class and start chemo ASAP. We finished his bench, and hope that he gets to use it for many years. Another student let his mind wander while using the slot mortiser and reached with a gloved (big NO NO) hand to flick away some debris near the bit. Well, you guessed it, the bit caught the glove, tore it to shreds and took a bit of two fingers. Luckily, just surface wounds - he was back in class the next day.

So, last pics showed piles of leg assemblies and stretchers. We wrapped maple aprons (one apron with dog holes) around a store bought top, assembled the stretchers, and came up with this forest of almost assembled benches.
forest.jpg

Next step was to plan spacer blocks, lags screws and t-nuts for attaching top to bottom. This was done in conjunction with cutting out areas for the vises to move through. As the teacher let us pick our own vises, we each had to figure out where and how to mount them.
bottomdetails.jpg

The benches are starting to get heavy. We figure the whole enchilada will weight about 300 pounds.
heaveho.jpg

Here's mine, next to the old Sjoberg.
almostthere.jpg
The new one is much sturdier. As you can see, it still needs some work. The prefinished top (in my opinion) clashes with the unfinished aprons and base. It also needs some leveling. My plan is to run a router on a sled over the top and take off maybe 1/64 inch to lose the finish and level it out. Then I'll attach the patternmaker's vise, which needs a mortise on the top, and finish the whole thing.

And, oh yeah, I'm sleeping late for a few days until the sore muscles stop complaining.
 
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Wow Jessie, that looks nice. I wish I could make the time to do one (also find a good prefabbed top like I want) and maybe I will after the other projects get done.
 
Very nice, Jesse. It's going to look great when it gets a bit broken in. ;) I hope to have a bench comparable to that someday.
 
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