Who has the thickest benchtop?

[Pat Barry]

I am feeling a bit of workbench envy (not really), but please help me understand why a bench top needs to be 5 inches thick. What in the world is the real benefit of this much material? It seems like a huge waste to me. Seems to me that numerous threads are posted with the bench top in each one being slightly thicker and more massive than the next. Its like folks have Extenze for bench tops - thicker being better. OK, truth be told, so mine is an embarrassing and wimpy 2 1/8" = laugh all you want - So how big is yours??

[Scott T Smith]

Pat, don't feel bad; three years ago I milled a 14" thick red oak slab to be my personal benchtop (about 1,300 lbs worth), but I recently came to my senses and re-milled it into six 4" thick slabs!

My primary bench is 4" thick on the perimeter, and 2.5" thick in the middle.

[Niels Cosman]

Not me :(
Hahaha

[Jim Koepke]

Well, I do have a few work spots that are 12-16" thick. They are actually just stumps and pieces of tree on the ground. Mostly for use with a froe, ax or maul.

The extra thickness provides inertia. Inertia comes in handy when you want something to not move.

jtk

[Charlie Gummer]

Being one of those about to embark on a thick bench top I can throw my 2 cents out there.

My current bench consists of a top that is a row of 1x1's clamped together with threaded rod and hex nuts. The base is a trestle of 2x material and lag screws. I made this bench before I owned much in the way of tools, power or otherwise. It's not flat, it's not level. It rocks (not in a good way). Hand planing? Gotta brace it against the wall. I understand most benches aren't quite this bad but this is where I'm starting from.

I read Chris Schwarz's first workbench book and was struck by the Roubo bench. It was so massive and simple in form and I really appreciate the clamping versatility with no aprons. I have read the issue of popular woodworking with Chris' cherry Roubo several times and I absolutely love the combination dovetail and tenon in the leg joinery.

I'm hooked. I want a massive bench. May not be the best choice for everyone but that's the nice thing about doing this as a hobby; I get to do whatever I want ;)

[Mike Siemsen]

Pat,
The main function of a thick top in a Roubo style bench is the fact that the bench is built like a windsor chair, 4 legs stuck into a thick top. Since the center is unsupported down it's length it needs to be thick to support itself and the work required of it. The thickness also lends bracing to the legs. On a bench like a Nicholson where the strength is derived from it's torsion box-like construction with the top supported by cross bearers and long side aprons the top can be thinner. The thickness of the top is more a factor of getting the holdfasts to work. I typically do my pounding such as mortising near or over the legs on any bench as this is where the bench is the firmest. Any of these benches will weigh in at least 300 pounds which is enough to keep them from moving around.
I tend to look at the work that comes off of the bench rather than the bench itself.
Mike

[Zach England]

I would only trust clinical measurements. Most men over-report their bench top size.

[Jim Neeley]

Pat, the timing on your thread is great... I'm debating just how thick to make mine right now!

[Jim Fay]

If it helps, I built Chris'(Schwarz) plans for the Holtzapfel. What an amazing bench!! My top ended up at 2 7/8 thick and seems plenty capable (good clamping thickness) and stable for anything I throw at it.
Jim

[Jim Koepke]

OK, truth be told, so mine is an embarrassing and wimpy 2 1/8" = laugh all you want - So how big is yours??

I think mine is thinner over most of the top. It is a store bought bench. It also has skirts front and back that are a bit thicker.

My hopes are to soon build one out of Douglas Fir or what ever other wood I can get inexpensively around here. Currently my thoughts are to make it out of 2X3. It all depends on what can be found.

One thing that puzzles me is people always say they like a skirt free bench for clamping. It seems there are more clamping possibilities with a skirt than without. Is there something I am missing?

jtk

[Russell Sansom]

I'll throw in the mechanical engineer's simplified point of view.
First, since force = mass times acceleration (and of course, acceleration = force / mass ), it's exactly twice as hard to accelerate a bench that is twice as heavy.

Second, is the natural frequency of the system. The bench is a "low pass filter" in the sense that it will accept low frequency forces ( you can push it around the room ), but will not respond to higher frequencies. It's easy to wave a feather back and forth really fast, but it's almost impossible to wave a bowling ball at that same high rate. There's more to this ( aliases, natural frequencies ), but the bottom line is simply that a heavier bench will vibrate at a lower frequency when you strike it...it will filter out the highs. This phenomenon is easier to see in a saw vise or a dovetail vise. The stiffer and heavier the vise, the lower the cutoff frequency, thus less squealing and squeaking.
Cutting dovetails, the heavy bench "rings" less. It feels "better" to chop dovetails over the leg because more of your chopping energy goes to removing wood and less goes to setting the system into oscillation.

[Joerg Bullmann]

[...] three years ago I milled a 14" thick red oak slab to be my personal benchtop (about 1,300 lbs worth), but I recently came to my senses and re-milled it into six 4" thick slabs

How do you re-mill a thickness of 14" into 6 times 4"? Or maybe better keep that secret, it should make you a rich man very quickly... :-)

Another question: if you mill a slab of wood 14" thick, how do you get it to dry out OK? I heard of the rule of thumb of 1 centimetre thickness per year when leaving it out in the air to dry. Your slab would thus take about 35 years or thereabouts when drying it the traditional way, no? Can such a thick slab be kiln dried and are such services available easily?

Cheers,
Joerg

[Scott T Smith]

How do you re-mill a thickness of 14" into 6 times 4"? Or maybe better keep that secret, it should make you a rich man very quickly... :-)

Another question: if you mill a slab of wood 14" thick, how do you get it to dry out OK? I heard of the rule of thumb of 1 centimetre thickness per year when leaving it out in the air to dry. Your slab would thus take about 35 years or thereabouts when drying it the traditional way, no? Can such a thick slab be kiln dried and are such services available easily?

Cheers,
Joerg

Hi Joerg, great questions! Here is a link to the SMC thread that I started recently about the milling: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?159647-Milling-QS-red-oak-slabs-for-quot-Roubo-quot-style-workbenches&highlight=

The raw slab was 14" thick, 48" wide, and 6' long. The first thing that we did was to split the 48" slab down the middle, so that we had two slabs that were about 24" wide apiece. Then, each one of these 14" thick, 24" wide slabs was milled into thirds, yielding three slabs about 4-1/2" thick (the remainder of thickness was lost due to the sawmill and chainsaw mill kerfs). Now if I could just figure out how to get rich from this I would be a happy guy! <grin>

Thick slabs will indeed require years to dry. The only commercially available kiln drying method suitable for thick slabs that I'm aware of would be a vacuum kiln; but they are few and far between and quite costly to purchase or build.

However, the slab bench tops of yesteryear were not dried in advance, but rather "tuned up" over time to address any movement that occurs. In my instance, I've been using the quartersawn technique to mill the slabs (vertical grain), which results in a more dimensionally stable slab during the drying process.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Greetings :

I am in the process of building a benchtop from two slabs of Alder that will end up being 4 inches thick x 22 inches x 80 inches.
Part way through flattening the back with my LN 7 1/2, will be re-using my LV twin screw vice and one of their new inset vices
on it.
Will try to post pictures when it comes together.

Dave Beauchesne

[Jerome Hanby]

Mine is just about 30" thick...or was until I tilted it upright.:D

[geoff wood]

i got a 3 3/8" thick DF top(22"wide7'long), sitting on 4"x8" SYP legs with 3 3/8 square DF stretchers. i think a thicker top would make my bench have nicer proportions but structurally it does take a beating quite well. DF does give some nice splinters.... i've gotten one over 6" long in my hand.

[Pat Barry]

Interesting idea about the mass and stiffness. With what I have coming together, 2 1/8" thick Ash, laminated benchtop (3/4" strips). Its going to be 24" wide and approx 54" long. The leg supports are just under 42" separation. I'm hoping its stiff enough (thats what she says) but not really planning to pound on it in the center anyway. We'll see how it works. I was mostly interested in it for clamping, planing, cutting, etc, but like others said to do pounding that would be over the legs for maximum support.

[John Sanford]

One thing that puzzles me is people always say they like a skirt free bench for clamping. It seems there are more clamping possibilities with a skirt than without. Is there something I am missing?
jtk
A skirt gives you the limited possibility of clamping something with the edge up, face to the skirt. Unfortunately, for almost any hand work, the downforce you'll exert moving the tool over the clamped object will tend to force it down, so support below is called for. In exchange for this occasional clamping scenario, you have the problem of using deep clamps on a bench that is thinner in the middle than it is on the edges. This is the same sort of problem that makes using a classical drill press table such a PITA. You can use "spacers" between the underside of the bench and the clamp-pad, but that's a hassle.

I have a semi-skirted bench (with a mere 1.75" thick top), and I assure you, my next bench will not have a skirt. 4" solid top, that's the ticket for moi.

[Gary Curtis]

My bench top laminated from 10/4 European Red Beach. After planing at the mill, it ended up just shy of 2 inches thick. It started out almost 9 feet long, and weighed about 300 lbs. I'm talking about the top only. I had 5 friends help me maneuver onto my saw and lopped off 18" of length. I was shocked to see how that cutoff bowed after two days. Thus the reason for Breadboard ends on bench tops.

People have already talked about the importance of mass on a top. But consider a bench a lifetime item. That wood will move and if you ever wondered what earthly use a Stanley No. 7 or 8 plan has, you will soon find out. You have to flatten and true the top. Tage Frid did an excellent DVD video showing how to accomplish this important maintenance. And, in the end you will be removing valuable thickness from your top, so starting out beefy is an advantage in the long run.

[Kevin Foley]

3 7/8" -- had to measure it. There was no plan. My experiment, which has worked so far, is to save some decent wood (and cash) by making most of the thickness and mass of the benchtop be plywood. I intended make bench with approximate dimensions of 2' x 7' with enough thickness to hold dogs well. I got 2 sheets of flooring ply in whatever thickness they're currently approximating 3/4" with. Ripped it down the middle, glued, cauled, clamped four thicknesses to my old flat bench top to laminate it. I then took a No.8 to flatten the mess -- yep, try planing flooring ply. I bought a selection of different local maple in 5/4 rough, try planed the glue side, jointed the boards and glued, cauled and clamped it to the core. Applied 3/4 front and back then went a the top with scrub - fore - try - smoother to flatten and finish. So in the end I've got significant thickness and mass but a lot of the mass is glue and I've got at least an inch of maple to plane away to make corrections over the years. I was 50 when I made it so you yougin's might benefit from more hardwood but that inch will last me. When i'm buying old planes I don't pay extra to get the one with the long iron either. I was worried about sag with so much of the thickness being ply. I made sure to leave a space between the stretchers where I could reinforce with angle iron if the "experiment" failed but so far so good.

Cheers,

Kevin