Fine tuning with hand tools

[Bart Leetch]

First off let me say I do use power tools. but just lately my chisels & rabbit plane have been seeing a lot of use fine tuning tenons for the bench I am building. I just fit up my first tenon & it is nice & tight. I plan on making some bench bolts by using some brass rod I have & threading it for 1/2" bolts.
This bench won't be traditional in that it will have 1 3/4" worth of plywood & masonite top edge banded for a top & be 36" front to back & 5' long I am setting it up for a twin screw vice on the end to be installed later & it will have a wood vice on each end on the front.
Do to the smallness of my shop it will be used as an out-feed table for my table saw too.
The tool base under it will come next. It will more than likely be 3/4" plywood with dado construction & a face frame with solid wood drawer fronts.
The one innovation I have come up with to take the place of the tool tray is that the sides of the tool case will extend up past what would normally be the top of a tool case when it is lower than the bottom of the bench top so there is a place to put tools under the top. This will allow me to install double extended glides & a shallow drawer to be pulled out to put often used tools in.
This will be a great help when I remember that last cut I should have made before I started fine tuning with hand tools & assembly.
No it probably won't be a fancy piece of shop furniture but it will be a work bench for wood working.

[Bart Leetch]

Well I guess I shouldn't have mentioned I use power tools. Neanderthals not only don't turn the lights on they don't say much to power tool users either. Chuckle......

[Greg Wease]

I'm a proponent of function over tradition when it comes to benches and see nothing wrong with the laminated top you are using. I don't have a tool trough either so I added a couple of shallow drawers on my bench that double as temporary tool storage. I have one question with your design though. With a twin screw end vise and a side vise on the same end won't there be some interference? Maybe I'm not picturing this correctly.

Best regards,
Greg Wease
San Diego, CA

[Dennis McDonaugh]

Mornin' Bart, I am using a prototype bench I built to test out my theories about how I work in the shop. I'm not very introspective and I am finding out a lot about the way I do things (very disorganized). Anyway I've built two projects on my bench in the last month, a kitchen table and a set of shelves that looks like a boat. I used a lot of hand tools even though both projects were primarily done with power tools. After moving a block plane, bench plane, scraper, dovetail saw, tape measure, try square, various clamps, carpenters square, drill, jigsaw, coping saw and glueing blocks back and forth from my bench to my router table as I assembled the table and shelves, I find the idea of a tool well appeals to me more and more. My bench also serves as an auxilary outfeed table for my table saw which limits its height. I have 10 drawers under the bench which store all kinds of things so I don't have room to leave a space between the top of the drawers and the bottom of the bench top for tool storage. Initially, I thought the tool well would just attract garbage so I left it out. Now I don't know.