apartment neader bench?

[Alex Stace]

I am pondering how to build an apartment friendly(ie Easy to move, and not bolted to the floor) bench that is solid enough to plane, chisel etc on...

Current thoughts are some kind of torsion box with solid areas for dogs, and some sort of panel on the bottom that I can put a few hundred pounds of books, or weight plates on to limit movement?

anyone done anything similiar?

[Harlan Barnhart]

Here is mine. I would change a few things though. The angle of the wedges is too "steep," ie. they need to be longer with less slope because they work loose with vigorous planing. I just tap them back once in a while. To stop it from sliding around, I made skinned the feet with an abandoned bike tire inner tube. I used hide glue and it seems to be holding pretty well. That was a major improvement. I'm sure people with a "real" sized bench would consider using this a hardship but it works for my small space. Set up or break down take about two minutes. It's actually heavier than it looks. The top is hard, dense, white oak. I've never weighed it but I imagine it's over 75 lb.

[John A. Callaway]

Highland has two benches that work well. The upper model would be the Hoffman and Hammer bench, the compact one.... I have it, and it is a fine bench. Good size, removable top, beefy construction.... just need to weigh it down to keep it from sliding when you plane on it.... The other one is the European bench.... havent seen it in person... think it weighs a little less, and is a little cheaper in cost.... from the video of it though, it seems like a great bench for 400 bucks.

[Simon Frez-Albrecht]

Have a look at this bench build:
http://www.closegrain.com/2010/08/portable-workbench.html

It is difficult to build a bench without a bench, ironically, but maybe you can do it Japanese style with a pair of horses and a planing beam. When I built my Roubo style bench I made the top first, then set it on horses and used it as a heavy duty work surface to build the rest of the bench.

[Jim Matthews]

You could just buy one from Blum (http://www.blumtool.com/pages/benchhorse2.htm) - and start making furniture, instead of tools.

The Closegrain bench build is impressive, but note that it is being built on a full size cabinet-maker's bench.
Sometimes it makes sense to exchange money for more time - you'll never get more time.

[Christian Thompson]

Have you checked out Chris Schwarz's bench books? I have the "Workbench Design Book" and he talks about the disadvantages of torsion boxes for hand tool work - they are springy so chiseling goes slowly, they puncture easily, dog holes are hard to place, and they don't weigh enough (which you are going to address with books). I ended up creating a bench top of laminated plywood - one sheet cut into four 2'x4' pieces and laminated together to form a single 3" thick piece. It only took a few hours to put together and so far it works pretty well - nice and solid and weighs enough that the bench doesn't slide too much (some extra weight might help, though, due to the small size of the bench).

[Andy Margeson]

Alex,

Mike Siemsen is writing an article on a Nicholson bench he made recently that I think comes apart for transport. He hopes to publish it around Christmas time. Check his blog periodically. In any case, you could make a Nicholson bench with leg assemblies that bolt to the top and shelf so you can take it apart. You could size the bench to the space you have available and make it out of an attractive material. I think that would be an excellent choice.

[Igor Petrenko]

How about building one of those cabinet workbenches? will look good in any living room
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[Chris Griggs]

Over a year ago, before I built my bench, I came very close to ordering one of Blums bench horses. I emailed him asking him to address some of my concerns about it's stability. Just looked back in my email archives and found his response. Real nice guy BTW, and responded very quickly. If you end up deciding to buy instead of build give him a ring and he'll definitely help you decide what is right for you. If i had not decided to build my own, I would not have hesitated to buy from him.

"Hi Chris,

Thanks for inquiring about the benches.

The bench horse line all have amazing stability, much greater than they appear to have. Sawing and bench hook work are no problem on the 'original'. Now when you start talking about heavy scrubbing straight across the grain, it gets a little fuzzier. Physics are still undeniable. The bench weights 55 lbs and is only 18" wide, so yes, you can make it move sideways with heavy planing. The 'plus' has a wider footprint, so it is more stable than the 'original'. It , of course, wont be as stable as a 400 lb bench. Having said that, I can scrub plane on the 'original' without too much problem. I use rubber cane tips over the leg levelers. That really keeps it from skooching around on a slick floor. I plane at more of a diagonal. As with all tools, we learn to compensate for the tools shortcomings and it soon becomes second nature. It is hard to quantify the degree of increased stability between the two. The plus is more stable, but I wouldn't call it significantly more. I could make any project of a proper scale on the bench horse 'original' with strictly hand tools and not find myself wanting for a bigger bench.

I hope that answers somewhat your questions. Your instincts are right, bigger, wider , heavier benches are more stable. However, I feel my little bench horse 'original' will do most things better than much bigger and heavier benches do.

Kind regards,
Gary Blum"

[Wilbur Pan]

You don't necessarily need mass to keep a bench in place. One option is to take that bumpy rubber drawer liner material and place a piece under the legs of the bench, and let friction do its thing.

Second option is to brace your bench against something solid like a wall, column, or door frame. I did this with my first temporary workbench (http://giantcypress.net/post/567995425/building-a-workbench-without-a-workbench-ii-or-who), and it was so solid that my "temporary" workbench wound up lasting me 8 months.

[Bill Houghton]

You might dig out Aldren Watson's "Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings" from your local library. If I recall correctly, he's got some small-space working layouts.

[Steve Branam]

Thanks for linking to my bench, Simon! Jim, while I built it on my Schwarz Roubo to use as a travel bench, in Roy Underhill's book The Woodwright's Apprentice, where I got it, Roy builds it on nothing but a rough saw bench. Once he has the legs attached to the top, he stands it up and uses the bench to finish building itself. Pretty much anything could stand in for the saw bench, from a box to a couple of chairs to a couple of sawhorses to a kitchen table (while the wife isn't looking).

[Jim Matthews]

Dammit Wilbur, just when I think I'm original (clever even), you post something like this.

Today I just retrofit my concrete basement floor with OrVX subfloor and my bench slid around like a peewee hockey game.
The sheet of rubber drawer material underneath it was my only *aha* moment this week. Too bad I wasn't the first to think of it. Again.

I'm reminded by your temporary bench that our forebears didn't have John Economaki and Festool stocking the corner store with specialized gizmos - they made their own solutions.

[Alex Stace]

alrighty, sounds like torsion box is out.

Lots of interesting ideas to ponder.

I have a bunch of 15/16ths x 12 pine one side rough...Would laminating rough side pine work okay to make it back into 3x12 stock?

[Dave Lehnert]

This is what I use. Kinda a fancy sawhorse.

[Steve Branam]

Second option is to brace your bench against something solid like a wall, column, or door frame. I did this with my first temporary workbench (http://giantcypress.net/post/567995425/building-a-workbench-without-a-workbench-ii-or-who), and it was so solid that my "temporary" workbench wound up lasting me 8 months.

This looks like a wide variation of the Japanese planing beam that Toshio Odate shows in his book, butted up against a wall much the same way. When I used my portable bench in a school art room with smooth linoleum floors, I butted it up against a post in the middle of the room. Only difference was it was the other end of the bench, since we were using western planes on the push stroke. The only thing you have to watch out for is make sure there's enough distance between the work position and the wall (or post) to let the plane finish its stroke.

[Jeff Schmidt]

This bench, attributed to David Hartka, and found in Landis' Workshop Book, has always intrigued me. It is what I think of as the ultimate Apartment workbench that doubles as furniture. I have searched but never found any additional details as to its construction.

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[Bill Moser]

Here's mine:
215910
It's 4' long, 9" wide, and 14" tall. Works great, as long as you don't mind working on your knees:) If you want a normal-height bench, you'll need to build it so that it resists racking. I have a small sjoberg bench that is useless for planing because of racking. The other issue with small benches is weight -- planing operations tend to walk your bench across the room. What I did for the bench above is to bolt it to a piece of 3/4" plywood. As long as I'm kneeling on it, it ain't going anywhere.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Before I moved, I used my porch railing as a bench. I just flattened the top of one of the railings enough to work with, and when I needed larger, I clamped a sheet of ply across a corner. I lucked out in that apartment in that our porch was incredibly sturdy - as it had to be for a three story porch that held up part of the roof - and the tops of the railings where 2"x6"s, and the bump out around the stairs gave me lots of places to clamp stuff.

After I moved, I realized not all porches are as sturdily or professionally built, and until I started my bench, I had to think of another way to work. I got a whole lot of mileage out of our kitchen countertop - it was flat enough - in lieu of vices, for planing I made basically a two foot long shooting board. For planing longer things, I just left my piece a little long, and screwed a stop to the underside of the wood I was planing, so it wouldn't slide away - basically, the piece of wood I was working on was it's own bench hook. I used a small workmate for sawing activities, which was okay as long as I kept a foot on it (mine was terribly rickety.) Small crosscuts I did with a bench hook, larger sawing on sawbenches. Mortising was often done on the saw benches, sitting on the work.

Of course none of this works if your countertops don't have an open edge at the right end of the counter for you.

How moveable do you need the bench to be? When you say moveable, do you mean I can move it next time I move to a new apartment, or I need to be able to store it out of the way when you're not working? If it's the just the prior and not the latter, a small bench designed after the Nicholson design could probably be moved easily enough by a couple of people, or you could build a bench with the Benchcrafted or Lee Valley knock down barrel fastners, so it could be taken apart.