Thread: Evolution of a retirement workbench

For about 35 years I worked from a European/Scandinavian style L-shaped bench. Pushed a fair amount of wood over it. But it was a little smaller than I wanted. Plus, several years ago I bought a large pattern makers vise and wanted a bench on which to mount it. Then I retired and moved house and shop and found myself with an opportunity to "go big."

I found several bench designs that seemed to have parts of what I was after so I cobbled them together and came up with this a couple of years ago. It is made mostly from European beech with a few NA hardwoods (big leaf maple (Acer macrophylum) side panels and drawer fronts, Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) drawer sides, hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) for runners in the tail vise. And a bit of ebony accents. The drawers slide open from both front and back of the bench.

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I put a European style tail vise on one end.
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The other end is a USA made Emmert pattern maker's vise. Probably made in the 1930's. It weighs about 90 pounds/40 kg and is a beast. Mounting it required some careful excavation of the laminated top. But worth it. It tilts, rotates, opens to about 450 mm and the jaws cant fore and aft to accommodate tapered pieces. I admit for 98% of the things I have made with it so far I have rarely used and sometimes even forget about all of those features but it sure is fun knowing they are there.

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After using the bench for awhile I would change two things. I would have made three shallower drawers instead of two taller drawers. And I would have made it easier to clamp/cramp along the back edge of the table. I might also add holes for holdfasts. I actually bought some holdfasts and still could do but also still hesitate to drill extra holes into the top.

In the past couple of years I have also moved toward Japanese approaches to woodworking that use more pull strokes than push strokes. That required re-thinking my bench a bit. Last week I added a simple planing stop on one end to accommodate that use.

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And a small Japanese planing bench (atedai) to sit on top as an experiment. I don't know yet whether I will like this or not but the idea was to use it for planing, sawing and shooting.


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