The low Roman workbench is finished. It’s made from two 2x12x12ft doug fir boards laminated together. It’s 6 – ½ ft long, 10-3/4 inches wide and 22” tall. I went with the tapered leg tenons, unglued and unwedged. They work absolutely perfectly and in hindsight I don’t know why I fretted so much over this. They’ve gone in and out two dozen times and it’s always been rock solid. I’ve got three spring loaded dogs at the end of the bench and then the classic bunch holes for wedging wood.
A couple unusual features for a Roman workbench:
1st, instead of ordinary pegs, I made pop up pegs that are just like the dogs, but longer and without the flat face. The main advantage is being able to fix them at any height, including below the surface of the face of a board (useful for something like using a router plane, by way of example). They are also never in the way as I just sink them below the surface of the bench rather than having to remove them if I need the area clear. I’ve seen other people with like six or seven pegs to accommodate different heights, but I only need just the three this way.
2nd, I put an apron on the end. The number one complaint I read about Roman benches is trying to do joinery – particularly dovetails and tenons. You can put a tapered notch on the side of the bench for this kind of work, and that was my initial plan. However, after lots of videos and blogs, I discovered that while they technically work, they are still fairly compromised – particularly with anything other than narrow boards. To get around this problem I’ve seen people add a straight up vise to the end, but this was unappealing to my inner-caveman. The default option is doing this work horizontally (ugh). So I added an apron for holdfasts. It was a bit of a geometry puzzle, but it turns out that just those two very precisely placed holes allow me a mind-boggling array of work holding positions for every conceivable circumstance I could possibly come up with – and a few inconceivable ones as well. The joint is ridiculously strong, but after considering the years of mallet whacking this thing will take I went back and added a little bracing to the backside.
I hadn’t planned on making this so quickly, but there were some surprise cub scout woodworking projects sprung upon me. Part of my motivation for this bench, which I hadn’t mentioned before, was my 3rd grade son. I’m NBA sized and so is my Roubo bench at 42” tall. That meant anything my son did required doing it from the top step of a step stool which made positioning his body difficult and was generally annoying. We did a cub scout project yesterday and this bench was just WAY better for him.
It’s fun to work on. It’s amazing how effective three pegs and a triangular wedge can be at holding work. It’s almost like a brain-teaser figuring out where to put the peg holes to maximize their efficiency – and they REALLY hold the work well. In fact, while I’ve used the holdfasts on the apron a couple times, I have yet to need them on the top to hold anything.
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Originally Posted by Joe A Faulkner
