Whenever I finish building a massive workbench in oak, I think: This thing is going to last a long, long time.
Hubris.
For proof, just ask Ryan Bowen, of Charlotte, North Carolina. Ryan had built a “lightweight Roubo” workbench about five years ago. It was built using almost no glue. All the joints are pegged and without adhesive.
The bench lived in his shop, a green outbuilding, along with his great grandfather’s tool chest. The bench was, according to Ryan, “easily my favorite tool.”
Last week a giant oak decided to fall on Ryan’s shop, destroying the entire structure. Then it rained on the interior contents for two hours. No one was hurt.
Check out the photos to see how the bench failed. “All in all I was not too upset,” Ryan wrote in an email, “and plan to rebuild with a new top.”
The top, splintered by the impact.Another shattered joint.The remains of the benchtop.Remains of the base.Hey. The shelf still works!
Ryan had some things to say about the damage:
“Assembling base joinery without glue has advantages. You can see how things broke apart cleanly – I would expect a lot more shearing and splintering with glued joints. Or perhaps it all would have held together…we’ll hopefully never know.
“I definitely should have done a through-mortise to the top and made a beefier top. But (I was) young and poor with limited access to oak….”
There’s one more important lesson to share, and that relates to Ryan’s tool chest. I’m waiting on a photo and then we can discuss that.
During the last 20 years, I’ve experimented with a lot of alternative (or odd) materials to build workbenches. Most worked fine. I think the raw materials are less important than their dimensions and the bench’s design.
Megan Fitzpatrick and I encountered laminated veneer lumber (in the video I erroneously call it LVL) used as a worksurface at a noodle restaurant near the Popular Woodworking offices. Of course, I’d seen LVL before in commercial construction. But the person who made these tables had cut slices of the stuff, rotated them 90° and glued them together. Basically, they had created a surface composed entirely of the edges of plywood.
So I helped Megan build a workbench using the stuff. It was featured on the cover of the November 2009 issue.
The benchtop has held up great during the last 11 years. It’s still as flat as the day we finished it. And it takes a beating, despite the fact that it’s only 2-1/2” thick. I wish we had time to rebuild the base. The video discusses the other modifications we’ve made to it over the years.
Some of the items shown in the video (these are not affiliate links)
The only good thing I can say about the stupidness of venture capital is that it resulted in me obtaining this workbench.
This is a vintage Ulmia. I’m guessing it’s 1980s vintage based on what I know about the provenance of the bench (if you know for sure I’m wrong, please let me know). It was owned by American Woodworker magazine for years and then ended up in my hands via a series of binges and purges by the venture capital firm that owned F+W Media during its implosion.
One day the company vacated its bowels of a large amount of woodworking gear and projects that the American Woodworker staff had built. I was in the right place at the right time.
It’s a great bench. And the statement I make at the beginning of the video is 100 percent true (the statement about lasagne at the end of the video is also true). There are a few dumb things about the bench, but those are covered in the video (and are things I have fixed).
If you are ever offered one of these benches, and it’s in good shape (many are not), then go for it. Here in the Midwest, Ulmias tend to go for $800 to $1,500, depending on their condition. That’s a pretty good deal, all things considered.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know that the current company that owns Ulmia did not make this workbench. I haven’t seen any examples of Ulmias since the company was sold, so I don’t have any opinion on them. Sorry.
To be honest, the vintage Ulmia workbench in our shop is actually closer in design to Charles Holtzapffel’s workbench design than this bench. But I wanted to build a bench with a twin-screw face vise, and Holtzapffel’s bench was the closest analog to what I wanted.
But I wasn’t having Holtzapffel’s tool tray. Or the European tail vise. Or the drawer. Or the knockdown bolts.
And since building it in 2006, I’ve added a leg vise so we can swap back and forth between the twin-screw (for dovetailing) and the leg vise (for everything else).
In addition to adding the leg vise, we also added a Record planing stop, like the one on the Nicholson workbench. But other than that, the bench hasn’t been changed much.
It’s a great bench – a perfect size for our crowded workshop. And it’s usually the bench that most students grab first when they arrive (if they can’t get to my bench).
Editor’s note: This 1949 column from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” sums up two opinions about woodworking that don’t get much discussion. The first is one that I talk about all the time with woodworkers over a beer: We have a supply-side problem. One of the reasons that people don’t buy nice, handmade furniture is because there isn’t a lot of it around. Or, as Hayward puts it:
“Any revival must ultimately depend upon the work of the individual, and the more men there are turning out furniture of good quality and design, the more people are going to be influenced in the right direction. It must be remembered that although, as a nation, we have lost immeasurably, as individuals we have gained.”
A close examination of our beer culture is analogous. People had to taste the difference between a $4 beer and a $1 beer to understand why someone sane would charge $4 for a beer (this is in the 1990s). Dedicated brewers made beer even if the money wasn’t there. And lots went out of business in the 1990s. But eventually….
The second point Hayward makes in this column is that we are all too soon to rush to complete a piece of work. When doing our best work, the last 5 percent takes almost as much effort as the first 95 percent. But that is what differentiates good work from excellent work. I cannot always push myself to the limit. I have to eat. But when I can afford to do it, I always sleep with a smile on my face.
— Christopher Schwarz
The Will and the Deed
It looks as though to-day we are at the beginning of a new era. Values are shifting and changing, in many ways coming nearer to an ancient order of things than once we would have thought possible. Work in farm and field has become once more of prime importance, so has the skill of the technician, the man with the trained hands. We are being compelled to live more realistically, to see money as of less importance than things, a token of barter of little worth unless there are the goods available for barter. We may feel indeed that the time is ripe for the revival of craftsmanship, for the craftsman can only be truly valued when things are truly valued, and when productive, creative work is put first in the scheme of things.
***
We may feel that much of our old tradition of craftsmanship has been lost, that fine tradition which has been described as “the fearless, faithful, inherited energies that worked on and down from death to death, generation after generation.” As a nation we flung it recklessly away, too pleased with our new prosperity to realise that we had flung away the baby with the bathwater and that it had been a very lusty child. Nowadays we can realise something of what we have lost, shocked into realisation by the prevalence of low standards of workmanship against which a robust, inherited tradition is the best kind of safeguard.
***
Nevertheless, signs of revival are all about us. The need for good quality and design is entering more consciously into industry, and every effort is being made to interest the public in it. The public, that is to say, the purchaser, is in the last resort the judge, and as the general level of taste rises so will the quality of the goods that are offered to meet it. The woodworker, whether he be a home craftsman or professional cabinetmaker, can be an influence all for the good. Any revival must ultimately depend upon the work of the individual, and the more men there are turning out furniture of good quality and design, the more people are going to be influenced in the right direction. It must be remembered that although, as a nation, we have lost immeasurably, as individuals we have gained. The potential craftsman of to-day may indeed be out of touch with his traditional inheritance, but he has hopes and opportunities which his forbears never knew. Lose touch with it altogether he cannot because the instinct for creation is in every man’s blood. And if with fidelity and honesty of purpose he makes use of the wider opportunities which now every citizen takes for granted, then he will be among those who are helping to forge a new tradition in every way worthy of the old.
***
Ruskin, who sprinkled many a homely truth among his art teachings, said that, “The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race for ever.” In how many of us, I wonder, does the gift lie dormant? It is like a seed which must be fed and watered before it can yield its fruit, and wether it will be a weakly or a sturdy plant depends mainly on just how much attention we are prepared to give it. Honest, persevering work is the first requirement, and with it goes the courage to battle with any defect of our own temperament, whether of impatience or carelessness or laziness, that will hinder and thwart our progress. In this way a man may become a competent handicraftsman, turning out work which will not shame him.
***
But say he wants more than this. He has seen examples of fine craftsmanship and is ambitious to become a really fine craftsman. It means still deeper cultivation, not only by still further increasing the skill of his hands but by feeding his intelligence as well. He has to train his eye to recognise beauty of form and to teach his heart to love it, so infecting his judgment that it becomes intuitively fine, expressing itself in the smallest part of whatever thing he is making. To the craftsman of old much of this came by inherited instinct, fed by the example of the older men and the examples of fine work all about him. We have consciously to acquire it and go out to seek examples for ourselves. Time and opportunity are on our side. What we most need is the will.
***
And that I fancy is the crux of the whole matter. In our wisest moments we see the good we strive to follow, but we are not always wise. Other things come in to distract and deter us, it is so easy to drift along, always intending to do this thing but somehow never quite succeeding. We hold part of ourselves back, that last ounce it hurts us to give, because to give it we have really to live actively in every fibre of our being and give up some of the easier, indolent pleasures. Is it worth the sacrifice? We know, in our best moments, how greatly it is worth it. When we have achieved a piece of work which we know is really good, when our whole being thrills with the satisfaction of it, we are touching a kind of happiness which nothing else yields, a happiness which alone satisfies the deepest craving of our nature. We need the strength and courage so to work that the things we fashion with our hands express the best that is in us. Our purpose is there, our knowledge, these things we can compass. But to express them at their highest takes the staunch will, the integrity of purpose that does not count the cost. Enough that in so doing we find our own highest fulfillment.
Editor’s note: This 1949 column from “