Vintage High School Wood Bench

[Mark Fox]

I'm looking at buying this old wood bench, It's 48 X 22 X about 33 in height. Old wooden screw vices. What do you think, is $250 fair?

Mark

[Steve Branam]

I'd say that's reasonable, not the greatest deal, but also not a bad one. The wooden screws are pretty cool, and the whole thing looks to have decent mass. So it should be very functional, with plenty of character. It definitely looks worth saving. The raw lumber to build something similar would probably be on the order of $100, and you'd have to put in the labor. Vise screws would easily be another $50.

[Joe A Faulkner]

... Vise screws would easily be another $50.

Steve, please send me your source for $50 wooden vise screws. :)

Mark, I think the price is fair. I agree with Steve, it is not a great deal, but certainly a fair one. The bench is a little short for my taste, but I guess it depends on how much space you have in your shop and what type of work you plan to do. It appears to be a solid little bench, and the face and tail vises give you some nice clamping options.

[george wilson]

That is an old "manual training" bench for boys. You may have to beef it up if you plan to plane on it. It is not particularly sturdy.

[Peter Scoma]

I love vintage benches but i'd pass on this one. Lacks the strength and mass necessary in any bench.

PJS

[george wilson]

$250.00 is not a lot for an old hardwood bench,don't let me discourage you. You could bolt its top to a wall to make it sturdier,or use it for an assembly bench,etc.. Lots of uses.

[Mark Fox]

George, i have heard the same about the manual training benches. being my first bench, i'm sure if and when I out grow this I shouldn't have a problem getting most of my money back and the wood screw vises do look cool...

[Steve Branam]

I may have been off a bit on the costs of things! At least $100 for lumber, and at least $50 for some kind of bench screw, not necessarily wooden, to built an equivalent bench!

Looking more closely at how the legs appear to attach to the top, I can see George's point about being sturdy enough for planing. If you didn't want to secure it to a wall, I think you could easily address that by adding diagonal cross-braces at the back. I built a portable workbench (http://www.closegrain.com/2010/08/portable-workbench.html) of similar dimensions from one of Roy Underhill's books. It uses hinged fold-down leg assemblies with cross-braces, and it holds up to the forces of planing just fine. You could also add some weight on the shelf to hold it down, like concrete blocks or sandbags. Personally, I don't like to use under-bench shelf for tool storage, because it piles up with shavings, but it's a great place for extra ballast.

[george wilson]

I don't think sandbags would do much good,but diagonal cross braces,possibly both front and back would be good. Probably bolting it's top to the wall would be the best.

[john brenton]

I think its a steal, personally. A little flattening, scraping and an oil treatment and it may be good as new. If you strengthen the legs somehow and weight it down it should be fine. I would go for it. I would try to get it for 150 though. I'd still buy it for the asaing price if they wouldn't budge.

[Jim Koepke]

I am sure if it doesn't work out for you, some upscale wine shop would buy it for twice the price.

jtk

[george wilson]

Or,maybe a Cracker Barrel? No,they couldn't hang it on their wall. The bench is considered a decorator item by some,though. Probably by those who never used tools!!

[Steve Branam]

You could list it for sale for $2500! We've seen those.

[Brad Pickens]

Beyond the structural issues with the legs, before you buy, check the vises for their ability to hold things square to the top. Also, check to see how badly the vises sag. Are the dog holes a uniform size? Will you have trouble getting it to hold dogs or will you have to build custom fit dogs for every hole? My first bench was similar, out of a high school and had seen plenty of abuse (some kid spent a profitable afternoon hammering a couple hundred brads into the top). I flattened the top, put a fair amount of work into restoration, and the vises just weren't up to it. It was ok, but ultimately not worth fooling with. If the tail vise sags anything like mine (which was a traditional tail vise), you won't be able to clamp a board between dogs without three hands to hold everything in place. Every dog hole was a different size and none of them were square. All those things have seen decades of wear, that wear is hard to correct and it has the potential to make the bench worse than useless. Finally, will it stand up to the kind of work you'll put to it? I outstripped mine with what I wanted to do pretty quickly--the more I worked and the harder I used it, the worse the vises got, the worse the other shortcomings became, and I finally had to build a proper bench. Given all that, the price seems a bit steep for the risk--I have fond thoughts of my old bench, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about the time I spent wrestling with it if I actually had any money invested in it.
I do agree, the wooden screws are cool, the age is cool, but a bench has to fill it's primary function first and the cool should probably come after that. As George said, it could be a great assembly bench--that's what my old bench is doing. As far as it being a first bench, if all the above checks out pretty well, it should get you by for a while until you're ready to move on to the next one.

[Mark Fox]

First off, Thanks for all your opinions. I won't see this bench till later this month (8/20) but at least I know what to look for before buying it. I did notice in the last picture the holes for the bench dogs didn't line up to the hole in the end vise. not sure if this is going to be an issue later. I'm sure if and when I buy this bench it will only make me wan't a bigger and better one. I have already begun the process of looking into plans and materials to build my own and if I could use this bench to build another then I think it would be worth the money.

Mark