Thread: The World’s most expensive work bench?

Hi all,

Following are details on the $7410 work bench! (you could say things got a little carried away...)

The idea:

I’ve had the plan to build a good quality replacement for my first – dodgy - work bench for a number of years, but had to wait for a number of factors to work in my favour, before I attempted this. Only took 8 years to come to fruition in the end. Oh well…

I had a 2004 issue of American Woodworker with a great workbench plan in it. The bench had the combination of sturdiness and practicality with lots of internal storage, which were both attractive to me.

The bench:

I needed a planer / thicknesser that was up to the task of milling a great deal of red gum timber that I had salvaged from house frames, to use as the bench top. So my HSS portable 13” planer was replaced late last year by a nice 15” spiral head TC bladed model.

With the purchase of the planer, I was right to start. I’d already purchased some 19mm ply sheets from a closing down Magnet Mart store in the region a couple of years back, so it was a case of starting to cut up the various panels for the cabinet. I made the “mistake” of cutting all the cabinet panels before I started assembly. See my footnotes as to why this wasn’t the best thing to do.

The cabinet went together pretty well with a combination of purchased materials as well as some leftover scrap I had already. (Hence the dark trim on the cabinet face frames)

Then it came to the bench top. I’d specifically purchased the spiral head planer to tackle the redgum hardwood I intended for the top. I thought about this awhile and instead decided to use Vic Ash (E. Regnans). All benches I’ve seen lately rarely had a very dense timber like redgum for the top. The bench in the mag used hard maple, which is similar in hardness to the Vic Ash. So instead of timber I already had in abundance, I splashed out on some rough sawn 150x50 Vic Ash hardwood from a nearby wholesaler.

Having timber that needed to be dressed, I decided, I’d need a new jointer to do the task. So out came the card for a Carbatec long bed 150mm jointer… (This was not originally in the plan)

Once I had the timber dressed and sized, ready for laminating into the sections to make up the top, I had a bit of a conundrum on the best was to glue up the lengths without the pieces moving too much once clamped up. I considered dowels or biscuits, but then came upon the magnificent Festool Domino jointer. Got this through Axminster.co.uk as the exchange rate (at the time) and the price difference to buying locally, too good to pass up. This, although not in the original plan either, turned out to be a heaven sent for the glue up. I originally used it to glue up the excess offcuts of Vic Ash, to make up a couple more useable lengths for the top (end to end) and then used five dominos per length to keep each length reasonably aligned while I glued up groups of three or four at a time. With the dominos in place, I didn’t have too much need for cauls to keep the pieces from misaligning.

Now I started to get a little carried away.

With the domino’s inbuilt dust shute, I had to tape on my current Ryobi shop vac, as the fitting was an incompatible size. On the Festool website, the CT dust extractors were looking pretty attractive, especially with their overhead boom arm that gets the hose and cord in a convenient place. So back to Axminster.co.uk for one of these. Could only get the vac, and will need to get the arm later, but a good purchase.

The top was more or less planed and the three sub sections glued into the final completed top. I’d been umming and ahhing about panel / plunge saws for awhile, and thought that one of these would be perfect for trimming the ends of the bench. Some research and a bit of online enquiry, got me the bees knees of plunge saws. A Mafell MT55. This is the saw, that Festool plunge saw owners have even traded theirs for. Direct from Germany, where like the UK, they’re on 240V 50Hz. All I need is the plug adapter.

So after way too many toys for the workshop purchases, the bench was completed last week, about 7 months after I began. (Having a 2 year old daughter limits my time in the workshop atm) I’m really happy with the result. And start on its first official use soon. The construction of a bed for my daughter, to replace her cot.

Some thoughts about the project:

If, you’re thinking of building this design, take note of the following observations I made.

Happily, I was able to source a variation of every single component that was used in the AW design. Bunnings even carries the same type of hinge used for the doors!

• The plan uses a three inch – 75mm – top and bottom rail for the cabinet face frame. I made the top rail, 2 inches instead. This have me 1 extra inch of height to use for the things stored inside the cabinets.
  
  • As a result, I made the middle drawer, 1 inch higher, instead of the same height as the top drawer.
  • I added 1 extra slide out shelf on the right cabinet.
  • If you do this, ensure you add 1 inch to the height of the doors and face frame stiles.
  
  
• Only cut the long ply panels AFTER you’ve cut and assembled the boxes. This allows you to cut the length accurately. (after the boxes were joined up, my panels were short by a couple of mm)
• One of the “door” panels becomes the three drawer faces. Don’t cut it until you’ve added the trim. It simplifies things to cut it after! The instructions mention this, but I just cut all the panels first, making things a bit more time consuming afterward
• Measure the height of the front vice and its spacing to the bench top, as you may have clearance issues to the cabinet underneath. This is more the case if you use a quick release model that has a lot of extra space taken for the release mechanism.
• I had an imperial tape measure and dual scale on the table saw, so worked in inches, to save trying to convert every measurement. With so many parts and cuts, trying to convert, would be pretty certain to cause a miss-measure and wrong size.
• The design in the mag, uses all hardwood as well as one, “select grade” ply panel for construction. I just used CD ply all round and some pine for the door, end panel and drawer trim.
• The Groz vices both are welded a little bit out of square. As can be seen in one of the photos, I had to use a 1.5mm packer on one side to get the top of the vice parallel with the bench top.
• When I started getting carried away and making excuses for myself to buy the extra workshop power tools, I ended up buying direct from the UK (festool) and Germany (Mafell) as the price difference was just too good to look past. The purchases from Axminster in the UK took only 4 days to arrive too! Note, the exchange rate has dramatically dropped over the past couple of weeks, but you'd still save.

Materials and approximate costs:

Unless mentioned otherwise, hardware was sourced from Bunnings.

$300	19mm ply for cabinet	Magnet Mart
$55	Steel angle for benchtop
$30	screws for construction
$650	Vic Ash for bench top	Britton Timber
$36	Casters
$230	Groz vices 7” & 9”	Carbatec
$12	door hinges. ITW Proline brand
$50	glue
$255	45kg 600mm full extension drawer runners	Woodworks Book and Tool Co. Specialising in fine hand tools and wood working books - The Wood Works Book & Tool Co.
$72	Extra ply and hardwood for cabinet
$20	knobs for doors / drawers
$2300	Planer to initially start project	Carbatec
Many many $$	For the other machines I bought on impulse	UK, Germany