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Thread: YOUR workbench - optimum height?
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24th January 2021, 09:18 PM #16.
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I'm 1820 mm tall and 710 mm from floor to pinkie knuckle (I have short legs and long arms)
My regular work bench is 905 mm high and is adjustable between about 895 and 945mm high. It has two conventional WW vices, both are flush with the top of the bench. I've tried a number of different work heights but 905 was what I found best for hand tool work.
However I spend most of my time at this bench doing repairs and electrical work/testing while sitting on a stool.
My assembly bench (usually covered in crap) is 910 mm high - height is also adjustable but I have not tried different heights.
It has a 4" machine vice at one end that is mainly used for tapping and threading.
When I clear some of the crap it is used for mechanical work
My welding bench is currently a fixed 890mm high. Most welding is on workpieces held in a 6" fabricated steel vice that is quite tall and this means I don't have to bend down too far to weld which I do while standing although sometimes for really small stiff I do it sitting on a stool. The vice is attached to a 50 x 50 mm SHS post that fits into a SHS socket welding into the bench frame that can easily be removed if I want to weld large things camped to the table top. This means I can also weld sitting down. The vice can also be height adjusted if required although I have hardly ever done this and it usually sits at almost its lowest point. This bench was originally made in 2012? and meant to be ~900 mm including a 25mm thick steel top but after fabricating the frame I didn't proceed with such a thick top due to the cost of such thick plate so I temporarily placed some pieces of 6mm thick steel plate on it for a top. Only last month did I manage to pick up some 12mm thick steel plate for $0
There are also two side benches which are 910 mm high - one is used for things like electrolysis and Zinc Plating etc the other is covered in crap.
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25th January 2021, 04:18 AM #17GOLD MEMBER
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BobL: These are the two signs which hung my my professor's research lab (LaTrobe/Botany) for decades. I have them in my shop.
A CREATIVE MESS IS BETTER THAN TIDY IDLENESS
EXTRICATE THY DIGIT
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25th January 2021, 12:32 PM #18SENIOR MEMBER
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Have you got a copy of Chris Schwarz workbench book? If not, its an excellent read on various workbenches and the why including dimensions.
He does prefer a low bench, There's a couple of reasons why the first being due to modern handplanes raises the height of your hand by a couple of inches and secondly because he believes if you're hand planing you'll want to have a workbench that's low so you use your legs/core rather than your arms. He also recommends if you've never worked on a low workbench to knock together a platform to stand on to raise yourself above your existing bench to give you the feel of what its like to plane with a "low" bench.
I'll have to agree that planing with a low bench is definitely easier but given that i don't do much hand planing, so my bench is 86 cm and i'm 170cm tall. The height of workbench, with arms resting by my sides sits halfway between my wrist and elbow. This is higher than what's recommended in Chris' book, but works well for me as i'm more of a powertool woodworker than hand tools. I do have a small hand tool workbench that's 1m tall and is ideal for dovetails etc.
If i had the space i'd love to have an assembly table that sits around pinky finger knuckle height or lower, as there's been a few times when i've had to stand on a stool to see what i'm doing, but its a minor concern at this stage.
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25th January 2021, 03:40 PM #19
I find the works of Chris Schwarz to be a bit of an enigma. He gets so much right but he gets so much wrong as well. (This is a good point to say that this is my opinion and others may disagree and that's fine by me.) To me he is first and foremost a journalist and a historian. Second, he is a woodworker.
Things I like about Chris Schwarz -
Anarchist's toolchest
Sawbenches
Moxon Vise
Things I dislike about Chris Schwarz -
Roubo workbenches
Pinky-knuckle height workbenches
I commend the work Chris has done researching the old writings of Roubo, Moxon and others. However I think that on occasions he has missed the boat when converting his historical findings into recommendations for the 21st century woodworker.
Times have changed. There might be a few dedicated historical reproduction craftsmen who would stand at the workbench and plane up the stock for a whole houseful of furniture but there would not be many of them. Roubo lived in a world where timber was large and plentiful. Today it is a scarce resource that needs to be conserved.
He had a six-inch thick benchtop because timber was plentiful and he was probably working on slabs about six inches thick on top of his bench a lot of the time.Today we make furniture out of 3/4" stock and rarely anything thicker than 2". He would have been using a wooden-bodied plane a couple of inches higher than the modern metal bodied plane. So lets conservatively say that Roubo's 30" high workbench top should be raised up by 4" to account for the timber thickness and 2" for the height of the planes. That puts the new ideal height up to 36". And that's before we look at the differences in average heights of people of between Roubo's era and today when we have people like Chris Schwarz himself who made me feel incredibly short when I was standing next to him.
I agree that the Roubo is a very solid and capable bench but I cannot understand why Schwarz is touting it as the ideal bench for today.I got sick of sitting around doing nothing - so I took up meditation.
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26th January 2021, 09:44 AM #20GOLD MEMBER
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I have made all my benches with adjustable legs. 200mm travel seems to cover most requirements.
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26th January 2021, 12:12 PM #21GOLD MEMBER
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My assembly/outfeed bench is adjustable, from about 400 high for cabinet assembly, to over 1000 for flat panels and doors etc. it works well and is on wheels so it’s versatile. Adjustable height rolling bench - YouTube
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26th January 2021, 10:09 PM #22
I'm currently building my workbench after much research. I'm short (5'5") and if I followed what most were advocating, I would have ended up with a bench height of around 825mm. That just seemed much too low. Then I came across a video by Terry Gordon where he recommends holding your planing arm by your side with your elbow bent at 90 degrees, you put the other fist below the elbow and allow a couple of inches for the material, and whatever that height comes to is your ideal bench height. This made more sense to me but I didn't want to make a final decision without first trying it out, so when I built what I call my "practise bench", I installed levelling feet on all four legs so I could experiment with varying heights. Without the feet, the bench is 880mm high and I found this too low. And with the levelling feet, I tried 925mm and I was happy with this bench height. The bench I am currently building will have a finished height of around 920mm. Don't listen to conventional wisdom. Everyone is different, build whatever suits you best.
Cheers,
Mike
EDIT: Here's the video that I mentioned.
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27th January 2021, 01:23 PM #23SENIOR MEMBER
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This is key, consider what you're building, how you're building and your space.
For eg if you're building tall cabinets, having a lower workbench is more ideal. If you're doing alot of planing a lower bench is ideal. If you're using it as an outfeed table the height is dictated by your table saw. If you've got longer/shorter arms/legs then adjust accordingly.
Also build according to what you do most.
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