Category: Workbenches

The title above is a joke about workbench height. I think workbenches can be almost any height – even 38” – depending on what you are doing at the bench and your tool set.

Here’s a confession: My back sucks. My dad’s back isn’t so good, either. But one of the most important and vibrant memories from my childhood is of my father. He was confined to bed so his back would heal, but yet he built, painted and finished an end table while in bed. That table is one of my most prized possessions.

In other words, don’t let your back alone dictate your work. You can work while flat on your back if necessary.

I like a low-ish workbench (28” to 34”). I find that it makes planing easier. When sawing, I use a Moxon/Felebien vise to raise the work to a comfortable level (a 17th-century trick). And whenever possible, I sit on a shop stool to work. I have an old Chinese stool that I sit on when I am chopping stuff that requires precision. Also when carving. Or when doing close-up work.

If you think this is a modern idea, then maybe you are a caveman. Early workbenches showed Romans working while sitting on shop stools. Why stand and bend over when you can sit?

— Christopher Schwarz

John Hoffman and I are at Mike Siemsen’s School of Woodworking this weekend to film the first ever Lost Art Press DVD. This project, which yet to have a title, is basically “Fear and Loathing in Minnesota.”

There has been semi-automatic gunfire, some alcohol and peanut butter on hamburgers.

On Saturday, we took a wad of cash to the Mid-west Tool Collectors Association meet in Medina, Minn., and purchased almost all the tools we needed to build a workbench and a sawbench (we had to buy a couple buckets, a framing square and two clamps at a hardware store). Saturday afternoon we fixed up all the tools to get them into working order – including filing the saws, restoring the planes and sharpening the chisels.

Today, on Mike’s birthday, we filmed him building a sawbench and a 7’-long Nicholson workbench. Mike has figured out some really great tricks to get started with little money, few tools and almost no skills. The bench is almost building itself. I think Mike’s philosophy is going to help a lot of people get started building a bench entirely by hand.

Here’s a quick timeline of the morning and afternoon.

— Christopher Schwarz

In all my years of messing about with old workbenches and their holding devices, I haven’t had much experience with the “bench knife.”

In its original form, the bench knife is nothing more than a broken piece of a dinner knife. It is used to secure boards on the benchtop for planing their broad faces. You first butt one end of your work against a stop of some kind. To secure the hind end of the board, you hammer the bench knife into both the benchtop and the end grain of the work.

Edward H. Crussell’s fantastic curmudgeonly “Jobbing Work for the Carpenter” (1914) describes it thus:

The bench knife is a tool of every-day use in Europe, but is not so well known or used in America. It is nothing but a piece of the blade of an old dinner knife about 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 in. long, and is used in lieu of a nail for holding material on the bench. It is used at the opposite end to the bench stop, being driven partly into the bench and partly into the material, as shown in Fig. 257.

For thinner stuff it is driven deeper into the bench. It is easy to apply, can be readily removed with a claw hammer, and does not mar the bench or material so badly as other forms of fastening. It is a good idea to have two or three of these bench knives because it is so easy to mislay them in the shavings.

Thanks to the worldwide butter knife shortage of 1915, ironmongers had to come up with a replacement to the simple broken knife. Most of the solutions that I see in books are a contrivance that drops into a row of bench dogs at the rear of the bench (who has a row of dogs on the rear of the bench?). Then you pull a lever that slides a thin piece of metal across the benchtop and into the end grain of the work.

I think there’s a reason that I have yet to see one of these devices in the wild: They were stupid. If you have a row of bench dogs, you could probably come up with a better way to hold the work than a mechanical doo-dad like the bench knife.

But today I saw a bench knife that I would buy and try.

Advertised in a late 19th-century magazine, this bench knife clamps to the front edge of your workbench and is infinitely adjustable. The obvious downside to this thing is that benchtop thicknesses vary a lot (1-1/2” to 4” being typical). But beyond that detail, I think the thing looks pretty smart.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several weeks ago I commented on a stick that changed my workshop habits. I have posted a video and explanation of that stick on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine.

— Christopher Schwarz