Hacker bench

[Aaron Kline]

For those thinking of building a hacker bench, I thought I'd show mine to give some ideas. Frame is AD red oak mortise and tenon(handcut of course{with large gaps of course:rolleyes: }). Anyway, the oak probably cost me about $20 and the ash top was about $17 (local sawyers with portable bandmills RULE:D ). I got two vises on the way for the front and end. Also coming up soon, mahogany, maple and brass plow plane, should be done in a few days, weeks, years, sometime around there:) .

http://www.freepichosting.com/Albums/421585159.html

The piece of oak at the end is a bench hook for planing.

[Dan Moening]

So, you still just thinking about showing the bench? :p

Can't wait to see the plane.... either :D

[Aaron Kline]

Dan,
I'd love to show the bench, but apparently when I load the pictures, they don't show. Got some tinkering to do. I'll figure it out sometime soon. Maybe.
Aaron, who gets stupider by the minute

[Dan Moening]

Is that a planing stop at the left end of the bench?
Handy idea there, Aaron.

BTW if have you taken the complete neander approach to woodworking by doing so via candlelight it might be more convincing if you remove the telephone from view :D

I'm not a whiz a posting pics on this site but I think if you wrap the entire URL between image tags it will work. Like this:
"[" img "]" "the entire URL including http" "[" /img "]"

remove all the quotes of course...the spaces shouldn't matter.

As I recall when you upload the pictures they do not appear in the post until it is submitted.

[Aaron Kline]

Dan,
Thanks, I'll try that next time I post pics. Thats not a phone, its actually a fancy tin can with no string:cool:

[Jerry Crawford]

It appears to my eyes that you could benifit from spending time in your photo editor and simply lighten up the contrast of the picture you took. I have MS Picture-it and it does a great job of helping me edit the photographs I take for my web site.

[Louis Bois]

Hi Aaron,

I only have one suggestion to improve your "hacker bench"...add some weight to that puppy! It seems a little light in the loafers to me...I could be mistaken, but it could benefit from a bit of added heft, such as a few old garage sale weights or sandbags, etc...just put a few boards across your stretchers and pile on the pounds.

I guess I should have asked if you do much handplaning before espousing the virtues of a heavy bench...so here goes...do you do much handplaning?!? or is this going to mostly be a utilitarian "jack of all trades" bench? It's looking great so far...keep us posted!

Cheers,

[Aaron Kline]

Louis,
You're right on with the suspicions, it is very light. I made it this way for easy portability because it will be getting moved often. I do hand planing now and then but mostly just use the planer. I'm working on a setup to hold up boards for jointing them. I'll put a picture up when I get that done.

[Jerry Crawford]

yeah - agree about the wieght thing. Another way to add mass is to screw the bench to the wall or floor (or both). My bench use to dance around when I had osme heavy handed work to do & finally I just bolted it to the wall with a few lag bolts and that took care of things nicly.