My workbench is one of my favorite pieces of furniture I’ve built. It’s well made, works great, and (I think) looks pretty awesome. I’ve been using it for almost a decade and it’s built up some excellent battle scars.
It’s made from 8/4 white pine, which I bought from a local sawmill. They had these enormous 12″ square pine beams in their yard and ran one through the bandsaw mill right in front of me. I took it all home, broke it down to size, and let it sit for a week or two to acclimate.
It’s made using Chris Schwarz’s Knockdown Nicholson plans. At the time, I was working out of my home garage, so I wanted something I could take apart for cleaning up or to free up some garage space. It turned out to be a nice decision since I’ve moved the bench entirely several times, as I’ve changed work spaces.
The top is made from two pieces of the pine laminated together, so it is massive and rigid. The top fits in between the two leg assemblies and the front aprons, and it’s all connected together with bolts. For disassembly, you just remove the bolts, lift the top off, and it all comes apart from there.
On the left edge is the planing stop. I had a local blacksmith make the toothed planing stop for me. It’s set into a big block of wood passed into a square mortise through the top. I keep a big yard waste bag off the left end of the bench, where plane shavings mostly go straight into the bag as I’m working.
Instead of any kind of vise, Chris’s plans call for a “crochet hook.” Having followed this plan at first, I don’t recommend it. Just build in a leg vise from the start. I retrofit my leg vise on, using a nice big block of maple I got from a lumber yard’s offcut section for the chop. You can see some of the battle scars in the top from ripping pieces held in the vise.
Around the right edge is the storage for my holdfasts. The top is drilled with a pattern for holdfast holes that give me access to hold work on almost any point in the bench top. I’ve also got a moveable bench light mounted over here. This is a recent addition that I inherited from my father. It’s great for lighting up fine work and getting raking light to show up plane tracks and the like.
