If you’ve read my book, my blog or my magazine, it’s easy to get the impression that I hate benches that have a lot of storage beneath the benchtop. I don’t know how many times I’ve written about how a bench that looks like a kitchen cabinet works about as well as a kitchen cabinet when you need to clamp something to its top.
But that’s not the whole story. I think that you can add some significant storage to a bench and still make it just as useful as a stripped-down Roubo workbench (the hulking French bench on the cover of the book).
If you have a lovely French model in your shop, add a shelf inside the bottom rails. Then add three drawers below that shelf, just as Andre Roubo shows in his illustration of a German workbench. Adding these drawers is on my to-do list, as is making the sliding leg vise shown in the same engraving.
If you have the English bench (or are thinking of building one), here are a couple suggestions. Audel’s Carpenter’s Guide suggests making a bench with a top board that can be removed so you can stow the tools in the cavity below.
That’s OK, but that middle board might jump around when you are planning panels. (Carpenters don’t plane as many panels as cabinetmakers. Heck, they don’t plane anything these days.) So I’d consider making only one half of that board removable. Pick the end of the bench where you don’t handplane panels.
Another option is to build a drawer into the front apron, as the ingenious airplane makers did in this shot from the Filton shop in England. That is how I would add storage to an English bench – plus I’d add drawers at the bottom below the apron as well, as shown in a drawing in George Ellis’s “Modern Practical Joinery.”
None of these solutions will change the way the bench functions, but they sure will give you a place to store your bench chisels and layout tools.
— Christopher Schwarz
Thanks for sharing this with us, especially the pictures. The storage ideas are neat, but I just love the look of that sliding leg vise. And how about that frame clamp on the top of the last bench? Amazing.
The apron drawer looked a little daunting to as I thought of how to make the drawer flush to the front so as to not interfere with edge planing. Then I realized that the drawer must be on the OTHER side of the English bench as I don’t see the leg vice on that side. There looks to be a metal working vice or something similar there.
Roy Underhill just did a Roubo bench with tool storage in the shelf area. I’m not too keen on stooping for my gear, especially since I have most of my trim hanging in the window on shaker pegs or along the adjoining wall on a ledger board with pegs.
When I saw that sliding leg vice, I knew that was something cool to try. Hope it will pop up on the blog.
Actually, that drawer on the right is on the face side of the bench. But the bench is more than 14′ long. And you can work on both sides of it.
A big bench.
Also, you could make the drawer an inset drawer (as opposed to a lipped one) and remove any obstruction for edge work.
Chris
Hello, I would agree that the sliding leg vise is cool, as well as the under the shelf storage. I am putting the final touches on my "German Workbench" and have to say that the sliding leg vise offers so many new was to hold work. I can put a 2X4 in both vises and actually lift the bench off the ground (it weights about 300lbs) so you know your work is NOT going anywhere. One more thing if anyone decides to put in the 2nd vise I highly recommend the "Croix de St. Pierre" instead of a normal parallel guide, unless you don’t plan on keeping anything on that shelf.
Is there any info on the construction of that sliding leg vice?