About a year after I built The $175 Workbench, I built The Power Tool Workbench for the August 2002 issue of Popular Woodworking magazine. The issue featuring The $175 Workbench had done particularly well on the newsstands (the bench had been on the cover), and so my fellow editors were willing to let me stick my neck out again.
This bench’s structure is similar to The $175 Workbench, but it has a bank of drawers below (not a fan of that) and it is sized to fit behind a table saw. Also, it features a Veritas Twin-screw Vise on one end.
All of my benches have had a hard life, but this one especially. I gave it to my father. He had it in his garage in Charleston, S.C., where it weathered a couple hurricanes and storm surges. After the last storm surge, my dad found it floating in about 6’ of water.
It survived quite well. The only repair I had to make was to lubricate the drawer slides to get them unstuck from rust.
The benchtop is a little small for handwork, but I’m not going to ever let it go. After my father died in 2018, it was one of the few things I took with me from his house.
That doesn’t mean it’s a perfect bench – far from it. The video explains it.
After I told Suzanne Ellison that we had 11 different workbenches here at the storefront, she (perhaps calling me out as a liar) suggested we do quick video tours of them. So, with the help of my daughter Katherine, here’s the first one.
This is the so-called $175 Workbench I built for a 2001 issue of Popular Woodworking. This poor bench has seen so many alterations and experiments, I feel bad for it. But the bench has remained a champ, and I still love working on it.
These short videos are a quick tour with my current thoughts on each particular bench. All the benches are in our shop for one reason: They work. People regularly ask me to rank-order the benches I’ve built, from my favorite to the black sheep. That’s not possible because each one of these benches was built to deal with a certain set of circumstances.
The $175 Workbench was built to see how little money it took to make a functioning bench. And to prove that construction timbers are an excellent bench-building material.
Here are some links to items discussed in the video:
The single-point planing stop is one of my most useful bench workholding appliances (the other two are a holdfast and my leg vise). There are lots of commercial ones available, including those from Tools for Working Wood and Benchcrafted. I like blacksmith-made ones. Not because they function better (they don’t) but because I like the way they look.
Many woodworkers are terrified of cutting a huge mortise in their benchtop. Don’t be. It’s easy work and is worth the trouble. Here’s how I do it.
The wooden section of my planing stop is 3” x 3” x 12”, a historical size. So I lay out the location of the mortise with knife lines and blue tape. Then I chop the perimeter with a wide chisel to keep my opening crisp during the whole process.
I try to drill out as much waste as possible. Here I’m using a 3/4” WoodOwl bit. These chew through benchtops better than any bit I’ve used.
Then I use a jigsaw to remove the big chunks.
Then I nibble up to my chisel line all around the mortise. This is a key step. The saw kerfs break up the waste, allowing it to be easily pared away. And the kerfs serve as a guide to being 90°. When the kerfs disappear, the mortise wall is 90°.
Then I pare away the corduroy-like bits of wooden waste on the walls.
I don’t have any 3”-thick stock. So I glued up the planing stop from two pieces of 8/4 oak. Then I sawed and planed the blank until it was a tight fit in the mortise.
Fitting a blacksmith planing stop looks harder than it really is. The tapered shaft calls for a tapered hole (that is, if you cannot heat up the shaft in a forge and burn it into the block). Measure across the corners of the tapered shaft – that’s the largest dimension.
The biggest dimension is at the top of the planing stop. In my case it was 1”. So I first drilled a 1” hole that was about two-thirds the length of the shaft. Then I measured the shaft at the bottom, corner to corner. And I chose a bit that was about .01” smaller.
If you don’t have a bit that suits the shaft, grind down the corners to match an existing bit.
The goal is that the tapered shaft should wedge in the bottom of the hole. Yet it won’t split the wood. Too loose is better than too tight. That’s because “too loose” can be fixed with epoxy.
Hammer the planing stop into its hole. Then knock the whole thing into your benchtop.
If it gets loose over time, shim the mortise or planing stop with veneer. If it’s too tight, remove the stop (you might need a sledge) and plane it down. After a year or so, it will be tuned up and things won’t move too much.
One of the things we strive to do at Lost Art Press is give away as much information as we possibly can, whilst still eating, sheltering and being (you’re welcome) fully clothed.
And so today we are offering my 2017 book “Roman Workbenches” as a free download. You don’t have to register, give us your email or type in some code at checkout. Heck, you don’t even have to prove you’re not a robot. Robots are welcome to download it as many times as they like (poor misbegotten robots).
All you have to do is click the link below, and the pdf will download to your computer or phone.
“Roman Workbenches” was the precursor to “Ingenious Mechanicks,” my most recent book. “Roman Workbenches” explores the origins of the first-known Western workbench. “Ingenious Mechanicks” traces the development of the workbench through the 1600s.
We printed “Roman Workbenches” via letterpress, which was a crazy and fun experiment. It was a short press run. And the letterpress company, Steamwhistle, closed its doors shortly after publication. (It was not our fault, promise.) After we published “Ingenious Mechanicks,” the Roman book became somewhat of an orphan.
So we are inviting you to adopt it today – free of charge. It has its shots and is ready to go home with you.
I get a lot of odd email through my personal website, and most isn’t worth mentioning. But there’s one email I get every week that I want to put to bed. It goes like this:
Someone told me you host classes where people build a roubo bench for a week with you and take it home is that true
Sorry, no. It’s not true. We hold some classes at our storefront (complete list here), but I don’t teach much these days. And we don’t have the facilities to teach a workbench class.
I still love to build workbenches and research their history. But there’s no way I could manage a class like that in our little storefront. So if you see this rumor repeated out on the internet, would you mind stabbing it in the eyeball for me? I feel bad for the people who keep asking me with high hopes.
There are lots of people who teach workbench classes. You might ping Mark Hicks at Plate 11, who teaches some classes in his shop along those lines.
I’m flattered to be asked. But like I said, it ain’t me.
