WIP - Kman's Traditional Work Bench
Over two years ago I started planning and decided to build a more traditional work bench. I took lots of advice, read some texts and made some sketches... I even acquired some timbers for the purpose. My eldest was only 10 months old at the time... he's now three and we've had a daughter since then. Where does the free time go?
I must qualify the word 'traditional' in context, because this one doesn't follow any strict traditional design, but rather features lots of elements of many benches with the aim of satisfying the needs of traditional craftsmanship. Front vice, tail vice, dog holes, planing stops, hold-downs and a sliding dead man will all feature, but there will be some modern elements too.
One of the keys features, as with any self respecting bench, will be shear mass. Perhaps not 1,200 lb (Groggy!?!), but respectable all the same. I'm estimating about 200kg without fittings.
So, I now have four legs; 120mm square x 900mm long! And they only took me about a month to laminate together :doh:
I have a feeling that this WIP will be less epic and probably more boring than Groggy's, but then he and Boz have both set the bar pretty high. I'm aiming for practical, functional and inexpensive. So far I've only used scrounged timber for the legs, the top will be laminated from recovered floor boards and the vice fittings are the inexpensive Carbatec variety. My search for decent cheap hold-downs leads me to the conclusion that they don't exist.
Here's hoping that the remaining work won't take two more years :B