Thread: When I was a woodie....

Great bench! From the time before roubo walked the earth in vast herds!

Thank you Bill.

Bob.

Bob beaut looking bench at least you didn't turf it and its still being used.

Bob, yours & my benches were made at almost the same time, & they are strikingly similar, even to the front vice, which looks like you made it up from scratch, as I did mine. The obvious difference is that mine is made from (mostly) Sugar Maple (or 'hard' Maple) because I was living in Canada at the time.

Maple bench red.jpg

Funnily enough I could have bought Jarrah from a place that sold exotic timbers, not far from where I lived, but the price was about 20 times what the Maple cost me at a small Mennonite mill a friend sent me to. My bench was inspired by the Tage Frid design in a very early Fine Woodworking, and about the time I was building it, another bench article by Frank Klausz appeared in FWW, & I veered heavily toward his dimensions. I always thought the Frid bench was a bit dinky, but it was probably better for the small space I had at the time. Because of my cramped work space, I didn't make the European style shoulder vise, either, though I would have liked to. In retrospect, I think it was fortunate I didn't, because the vise I made has turned out to be much more useful to me than the shoulder-vise would have been. It looks like you have only a couple of widely-spaced dogs in the tail vise? I started out with dog spacings the same as on the bench, but found it a nuisance, so I soon (only took 25 years to get around to it ) fixed that by adding more dog holes, which involved partially re-making the vise

As for cupboards under - I've since added a small set of drawers and a cupboard for storing small things like my cordless drill & the bits & bobs that you use all the time. But they are a mixed blessing, marvellous how many times you'll decide you need something, but you have a board clamped squarely in front of the door that needs to be opened to get at it!

Cheers,

Hello Ian,

I reckon I must have been looking at the same copy of FFW. The weird shoulder vice favoured by the Euros, always seemed strange to me having grown up with conventional English style benches fitted with a vice that would hold long lengths of wood. The vice on mine has worked well. I had a bloke who made push bike frames over here, Carl Whetton, fabricate the metal gizzards which are sandwiched in the outer jaw and screwed to the bench. Both vices utilise Dawn bench screws.

Over in the metalwork forum there was a thread asking us what was the piece of equipment we had that provided the greatest satisfaction in use. Now I have some real nice stuff, but my woodie bench has a special place in my heart. It's something I made. It's something I have looked after for nearly three decades and still derive pleasure from looking at it. I never responded to that question because my favourite was made of wood .

Bob

Very nice