My Workbench: a mighty thewed construction of wood and screws
My workbench has:-
- Six foot by three foot worktop, with left end surfaced in perforated hardboard to allow a dust collection capability. Under the perfboard the benchtop is drilled through to create a plenum which is connected to a dust collector.
- Veritas twin-screw vice with solid maple jaws.
- Front and rear rails of six inch by two inch hard maple, hand flattened and squared. Mucho sweat over about 6 weekends.
- Tee-slot extrusion in each rail for sliding clamps/stops/whatever.
- One inch peg holes along the rails & jaws for dowel pegs to clamp weird shapes and sizes.
- Four by Four clear Fir legs, stretchers and end rails. You don't have to use anything as expensive as clear fir, but when you're putting this much effort into something you might as well try to keep the standards up.
- GCFI protected electric outlets at each end.
- Five drawers of assorted sizes for easy access to main tools.
- Developed from the plans in Today's Woodworker issue 25. Back issues seem to be no longer available unfortunately.
I think it weighs about 250lbs and it is certainly solid. So far it appears to be a very successful design. Here is a very rough diagram
email me at tim@rowledge.org