3 Attachment(s)
WIP - My second workbench
My original workbench is 30 years old and while I'm not overly active it's served to renovate 4 houses and I've managed to build a few interesting pieces along the way. Now I'm retired and looking at things I might make over the next 10 years or so and I'm starting a new bench.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/asset....0&d=1347607760
The raw materials are salvaged joists and beams left over from the rebuild of a 40 year old pool deck at our current house and various pieces of hardware collected from garage sales and auctions accumulated over the last 15 years or so.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...sts-joists.jpg
The current bench has a Dawn 175 (i.e. 7") vice and a single aluminium screw up bench stop. This has really worked quite well for me. I drilled a couple of holes in the apron and added a couple of M8 bolts many years ago which support long pieces for edge jointing. The main thing it seems to be missing for me are more holes for benchdogs.
Given the functionality of the current bench I am inclined to think the Kirby bench from the Workbench Book or a Phil Lowe style bench would be a sensible and functional upgrade.
In my pile of stuff I have a 9" Joplin quick release vice, a partially complete Veritas Scandinavian Bench kit with face and tail screws, another sloppy no name bench screw and a couple of Record bench hold downs. Given I already have this gear I feel disinclined to go out and purchase more hardware for a new bench. With the hardware available to me it also seems silly to opt for a minimalist bench design. I was originally going to just use the Veritas set and build a Frank Klausz style bench.
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The salvaged timbers however are suitable for building a much more substantial bench of the scale of the Schwarz Holtzapffel design.
While the double screw face vice is appealing and could possibly be accommodated using the tail vice bench screw from the Veritas set together with the other noname bench screw, for no particular reason I'm inclined to use the quick release vice as the face vice. Using the Joplin as the face vice means I'll probably need to add a deadman/helper for long support. I might also add a Moxon style vice for dovetailing, although my experience so far is that the Joplin should be good enough for most things I'm likely to attempt. For the tail vice I could either use the Dawn 175 similar to the Schwarz modified tail vice or on the other hand I think I can make a serviceable wagon type tail vice using the Veritas face vice screw, in which case the vice configuration is going to look more like the Fortune/Nelson bench from The Workbench book.
I expect the Record hold downs will perform somewhat differently to forged holddowns, but it hardly seems worthwhile chasing down something else when I already have the Records.