I thought about what the ideal workbench for me would be and decided that the current workbench was exactly what I need with just a few modifications.
The original design came from Ken Vaughn in Lakewood Colorado. I saw a picture of his bench and liked it. I contacted him and he sent me a drawing of his bench. So that is why I call it the Lakewood design.
The base is made of construction lumber, 2x4, 2x6 and 4x4. The top is laminated with 3/4 plywood, 3/4 mdf and 1 inch tongue & groove maple for a total of 2 1/2 inches thick.
The sides are 5 1/2 wide and made from 1 3/4 oak. The top is mortised into the sides. This helps keep it flat.
The bench is 34 inches high which is the correct height for me. You can see I can put the palm of my hand on the top when standing next to it. The top is 6 foot 8 inches long and 30 inches deep which again works well for the type of work that I do.
It has two vises, a Lee Valley twin screw on the right end and a large single screw vise on the left face.
As you can see there are 9 drawers below for tool storage. There is also a shallow tool storage compartment in the back center with a lid. I keep bench dogs and hold fasts in there.
I start with the feet marking a radius on the corners and under it to make feet. I used a bandsaw to cut them out.
You can see that I rounded the corners and made feet by cutting out underneath .
Next I need to mortise the feet for the legs.
Looks like it fits now.
Both fit now and are square to the foot.
Now I need to add mortises for the cross braces. Once they were in I dry fitted the base and lined up the rear cross member. All I need to do is add a mortise for this piece and it will be time to glue up the base.
Glued up the base on top of the current bench. Now to start working on the top.
No comments:
Post a Comment