Thread: My first woodworking bench

Hi all,

Have been off the site, and out of woodwork, for about 3 years due to a turbulent period in my life. This culminated in January this year in selling my home of 40 years, and moving into a 2 bed rental. I was able to store some of my gear in a friends garage, but sold off several items due to lack of space.

In May I bought a new home which has a large double garage, and which would allow me room to park the car and space to have a workshop with a proper workbench. Unfortunately, with the restrictions in place in Melbourne, things got put on hold as I couldn't get the materials. But things opened up again, and I spent a month on the bench project, which I finished last week.

There's no fine carpentry in this build, but it has produced a solid a solid, and versatile, tool. It wasn't designed, but started as and an idea and evolved as I went. Looking forward to getting back into woodwork.

pic 1. The bench top glue up. 19mm x 42mm DAR pine from Bunnings, and hand picked the 30 pieces used. I bought 2 sets of 4 way clamping hardware from Timbecon, and added extra clamps. Used Titebond for the glue up.

pic 2. Made up a simple router surfacing sled to flatten both sides. My knees hated this process, but what is one going to do when you don't have a workbench to make the workbench on.When the ends were squared up, the top ended up as about 1765mm x 575mm. I lost more on the thickness than I anticipated during the flattening process, so glued/screwed 185mm x 19mm pine board to the underside. Hindsight says I should have started off with thicker material, but at this point I really didn't have any way to dress rough sawn timber.

pic 3. At this stage the top went onto a couple of saw horses, where I fitted the end vice and drilled the dog holes.

pic 4. Installed the top onto the base. I never actually took any pics of the base construction, but it is built with Bunnings material. 90 x 90 DAR pine legs, and all the rails are screwed with bugle head screws, and doweled with 19mm oak.

pic 5. Front vice fitted, and edge trim installed.

pic 6. This rolls along on pieces of U profile aluminium, by means of rollers intended for sliding doors. Means I can handle long lengths, and sheet goods, in the front vice. As it's movable, I move it to access each of the drawer units installed under the bench, and handle different lengths of stock.

pic 7. First cabinet made and installed. note, my bench making abilities are far better than my cabinet making ones. But it is functional. lol

pic 8. 2nd cabinet built, and an improvement from the first. Seems practice does improve things.

pic 9. Bench complete.

pic 10. Making hold downs, based on something I saw on the internet.

pic 11. Hold downs were used in the drawer making process.

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