The Bench, or What I did on my Christmas Vacation

Growing up surrounded by and working with woodworking machinery, one takes the humble workbench for granted. That said, when the time came to consider a proper joiner's bench for our cabinet shop, I reviewed the basic offerings from places like Lee Valley and Woodcraft and came away unimpressed. There seemed to be no middle ground between the $300 to $400 entry level models and the top of the line European benches, some of which cost as much as $2,500.

The 2003 Tools & Shops issue of Fine Woodworking had been floating around my office for over a year. The issue's cover feature was Lon Schleining's "Essential Workbench."

"Nice," I thought to myself, "but I'll never have time to build one." Or so I thought. Finally during the 2004 Christmas break I decided to engage in what I term any non-organ related project: recreational woodworking.

This was an extremely satisfying project, and my design was fairly true to the article's suggested plan. The trestle table, which is formed from substantial 3" x 3" members (laminated from 8/4

The top is made from laminated sections of 8/4 maple. After ripping the 8/4 stock to 3" sections, each piece was faced and milled to 2 3/4" thickness. I glued up the sections into three 5-piece slabs which were then scraped and planed. The final glue-up created the 28" wide bench top, which was dressed in the drum sander.

The 6" apron is also made from maple, and on one end forms one of the jaws for the Veritas Twin-Screw tail vise. I routed the ends of the benchtop to form tenons to mate with dadoes in the apron end-caps, which help keep the benchtop flat and true. The front apron is attached with lag screws, but is otherwise floating. Instead of conventional square bench dogs (which can sometimes unintentionally mar workpieces or nick the blades of tools) I drilled the top for the 3/4" round Veritas bench dogs.

(Click on the picture above to enlarge)