Workbench Tip

[harry strasil]

One of my old Mentors, now deceased had a shop full of almost all Powermatic tools, still like new, he covered them when not in use and kept them wiped down. His shop was in his basement with a tile ceiling, florescent lights lots of them and a tiled floor.
He made a beautiful work bench, took it 300 miles to get the top sanded smooth with a big drum sander, then spent 3 weeks scraping the top to a sheen and using a Starret straight edge and a .0005 feeler gauge to get it absoulutely level. he used it also as an assembly and finishing table. when ever he was not using it as a workbench he had the side of a refrigerator cardboard shipping box on top of it with the corners notched and glued together with a 3 inch overhang all the way around.
I set a can of pop on it once, the pop was in a cooler cover, I thought I was gonna get bodily thrown out.

[harry strasil]

forgot he ordered a $500 machinists level just to level his machines and that table. accuracy was .0001 in 5 ft as I remember.

fussiest person I ever met. retired pipe welder, one of the best I ever saw, he spent 3 weeks laying out and assembling the wood for a kitchen chair once, made a set of 4 each one took the same amount of time.

[Jim Meier]

wow, I thought I was stepping up when I used a 48" level on my workbench and called it good. I find that one of my benches always has a beverage of some sort on it...

[Marcus Ward]

I spilled beer on my bench the other day. I felt bad because it was a waste of beer.

[Billy Chambless]

I spilled beer on my bench the other day. I felt bad because it was a waste of beer.

Just remember, give it 30 minutes, then wipe it off with a clean, lint-free rag.

Reapply as needed.