Jim Matthews
12-08-2019, 5:35 PM
Acting on the example of others with MUCH more tidy shops I'ves sharpening, sawing and planing to their own benches.
It's still a Trainwreck in progress.
After wrestling with a shop layout that worked for me, a small workbench design arose.
33 3/4" high
26" wide
37 1/2" long
Clearance below vise to floor 21" minimum.
Max height of vise, 39" above floor. With good lighting, fine lines are visibl
In my opinion most workbench designs try to do too much and have unacceptable compromises as a result. They're also too big for a shop where the longest assembly I can get out the bulkhead door or basement steps is about 60 inches long by 20 inches on a side. Bigger than this and things must be assembled in place (for my house, anyway).
Given the confines of my basement shop, and accommodating poor vision I determined a dedicated sawing bench made sense. It needed an almost square footprint, and sufficient rigidity to hold my Emmert Patternmaker's vise.
These present real mounting challenges, as the central mechanism swings between the resting horizontal and vertical positions. (I never use it, fully vertical other than when fitting it to a bench top.)
The previous bench (seen in the background) was long enough to resist tipping over but was always in the way when I rummaged the storage drawers. It also became the dumping ground for things what dinnae have a proper place.
More on that later.
Rather than bodge holes in the top, it's left smooth for easy cleanup and (eventual) assembly tasks.
The difficulty in this design is from the massive vise. Dunno what it weighs, but it's all I can manage without a proper hoist. The entire assembly twists while sawing - and solving that took some atypical features.
A series of plywood gussets - front, back, top and bottom worked out well.
The top is two layers of cast off plywood, fully two inches thick.
The pieces are held together with countersunk straight shank screws and glue as suggested by Gary Knox Bennett. The top has an uninterrupted flat surface with a taped on vinyl mat. Attempts to glue it down failed, as the topmost layer of the bench is prefinished plywood. That *would* have been the top surface but the countersunk screw tops and seams between the ply pieces (recycled shelves) were holding dust.
Attached are pictures of the bench and a demonstration of holding positions for crosscutting, ripping and dovetailing. Note the Patternmaker's vise nifty rotation feature - a board can be clamped and oriented at most any angle.
My low sawbenches will be retired to act as a rest for the vise in storage.
FYI - For long rips, my Ryoba sings in this orientation AND I can see!
*Note to mods - all the photos are rotated 90deg and I can't correct this from my Android tablet*
421211 421212 421213 421214 421215 421216 421217 421218
It's still a Trainwreck in progress.
After wrestling with a shop layout that worked for me, a small workbench design arose.
33 3/4" high
26" wide
37 1/2" long
Clearance below vise to floor 21" minimum.
Max height of vise, 39" above floor. With good lighting, fine lines are visibl
In my opinion most workbench designs try to do too much and have unacceptable compromises as a result. They're also too big for a shop where the longest assembly I can get out the bulkhead door or basement steps is about 60 inches long by 20 inches on a side. Bigger than this and things must be assembled in place (for my house, anyway).
Given the confines of my basement shop, and accommodating poor vision I determined a dedicated sawing bench made sense. It needed an almost square footprint, and sufficient rigidity to hold my Emmert Patternmaker's vise.
These present real mounting challenges, as the central mechanism swings between the resting horizontal and vertical positions. (I never use it, fully vertical other than when fitting it to a bench top.)
The previous bench (seen in the background) was long enough to resist tipping over but was always in the way when I rummaged the storage drawers. It also became the dumping ground for things what dinnae have a proper place.
More on that later.
Rather than bodge holes in the top, it's left smooth for easy cleanup and (eventual) assembly tasks.
The difficulty in this design is from the massive vise. Dunno what it weighs, but it's all I can manage without a proper hoist. The entire assembly twists while sawing - and solving that took some atypical features.
A series of plywood gussets - front, back, top and bottom worked out well.
The top is two layers of cast off plywood, fully two inches thick.
The pieces are held together with countersunk straight shank screws and glue as suggested by Gary Knox Bennett. The top has an uninterrupted flat surface with a taped on vinyl mat. Attempts to glue it down failed, as the topmost layer of the bench is prefinished plywood. That *would* have been the top surface but the countersunk screw tops and seams between the ply pieces (recycled shelves) were holding dust.
Attached are pictures of the bench and a demonstration of holding positions for crosscutting, ripping and dovetailing. Note the Patternmaker's vise nifty rotation feature - a board can be clamped and oriented at most any angle.
My low sawbenches will be retired to act as a rest for the vise in storage.
FYI - For long rips, my Ryoba sings in this orientation AND I can see!
*Note to mods - all the photos are rotated 90deg and I can't correct this from my Android tablet*
421211 421212 421213 421214 421215 421216 421217 421218