Thread: Workbench histories

The first workbench I remember wood working at (I was about 5 years old) was a rough jarrah plank table, made by my dad, in our weatherboard garden shed in Pemberton. No vice and it had a shelf underneath which held a few hand tools that I could easily reach.

The Xmas of my 5th year I found a few pine cones on the way home from school (mum decided to get me out of the house early so I started school when I was 4 and a half) and decided to make some reindeer, small cone for the head, joined to a larger cone for a body by a nail for a neck, nails for legs antlers etc. I'd seen Dad use the brace bit and spying a bit already in the brace I put a cone between my legs and managed to poke the bit deep into my thigh. I screamed and dad came, removed the bit from the brace and took me off to hospital - it was just 100m down the road. Garden shed was sort of locked after that.

Fast forward to when I was 12 and we lived in Busselton, and a carpenter uncle who lived with us until he went to Europe and never came back and left me most of his hand tools and two ancient B&D power drills. Dad worked at a sawmill so I got him to bring home a dozen 2" x 6" x 8ft long rough sawn jarrah planks and I bolted them together into a behemoth of a bench - it had to be built in place because no one was going to be moving easily afterwards it. The following year I got a summer job and bought a vice (Joplin 4") with my first two weeks pay. We did everything on that bench, made large model aeroplanes, fixed bikes and made billy carts, replica weapons, explored electrical appliances, turned fire crackers into bombs etc I did my own over head electrical wiring stretching from the laundry to the shed using a fat rubber covered extension cord I found at the town rubbish tip. After 12 months in the sun the rubber went all gooey and had to be replaced.

A couple of years later we moved and the big bench had to remain behind but I brought the Joplin vice and uncle's tools with me - still have the vice and a few of the tools now more than 50 years later in my current shed. The vice gets used about every second day.

At out new place ,now in a the outer city suburbs, I built an under whelming 4ft long by 2ft bench out of scrap 3x2s and fence pickets. It had to be small as it had to fit into a 6 x 8ft garden shed. Again fitted the joplin and we (4 brothers and occasionally Dad) "repaired" more electrical appliances, fixed bicycles, scooters and motor bikes, ruined lots of good wood and went through dozens of hack saw blades.

The next place I had my next bench was the year I got married and we "Rented" our "in laws" beach shack while we saved for a house. The shack had a decent size shed on teh block which was almost full of beach shack detritus including old bed frames which together with some nice 50 x 200 mm jarrah beams I turned into a bench and mounted the Joplin vice on it. It was a small bench, 900 x 750 mm, and because the shed already had 2 other good size benches, including one with a proper WW vice, the new (bed bench) bench was used mainly for mechanical work and the odd spot of welding - with a bucket of water handy in case the top started to smoulder.

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Then things went back wards. We bought a house that had no shed! The bed bench with the Joplin vice sat in a laundry, and as the house "needed some work" I set up a second bench (2 cardboard boxes and an old door) in a spare bedroom and did the necessaries from there. A year later I built a 12 x 16 ft shed for the bed bench, and the "box and door" bench. The cardboard box legs eventually collapsed and replaced by couple of roughly made saw horses, and it was used to for endless house renos, electricals, make a cot for my son, several bookshelves, built in robes and cupboards etc,

After this was settled I went back to uni, changed jobs several times and travelled for work over seas, so for about 15 years not much happened shed or bench wise.

In 2005 I started getting back into wood work and one of my rationales to SWMBO for making a big new bench was to make her picture frames for certain prints etc we'd collected during our travels.
I ended up making this a solid 1800 x 900 bench from salvaged pine and jarrah with a 18 mm ply top and I still use this today.
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It's now pretty grubby as I use it for electrical and mechanical (eg chainsaw work) and chemistry experiments.
I have eventually also built about a dozen picture frames for SWMBO on this bench.

I then made a bench for my WW lathe from construction pine and 32 mm melamine salvaged from an office reno building site skip in the city.
SWMBO uses this now as her glass and stone jewellery bench.
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The bed bench was finally retired and after removing the Joplin was given away on Gumtree - picked up by an antique dealer from the ritzy side of town no less!

In 2011 I extended the shed and started making benches. The first one was assembly bench with a Tassie Oak top rescued from a piece of laboratory work bench found in a skip at work. The frame is 30 mm SHS and contains a large blue print draw cabinet underneath - fantastic storage in these cabinets. It also now contains the Joplin.
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New lathe bench - also using some of the same Tassie oak lab bench top and this time 40 mm SHS.
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All steel welding bench/spray painting booth/bench with dedicated extraction - this now has a 12mm thick steel top.
Teh 6" offset Dawn Vice was given to me free bt a forum ember I mpoiounted it on a 75x75 mm SHS post and is easily removed so that I can use the whole bench surface.
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2 side benches either side of the sink with storage underneath using old lab cupboards I scrounged from a skip oat work.
Tops are from a WA redgum from our back yard some 10 years earlier and still had the slabs under the house - this was all supposed to be temporary - 11 years later its all still there and unlikely to change.
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I've also been involved in some bench build for other people - both of these I also milled the timber for.

This in his Jarrah and is held together with 19 mm hand made jarrah dowels.
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This one is spotted gum made for a wood carver mate - just bolted together
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