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I have a small 48” x 15” roubo in my dining room. It is doing more important stuff than woodworking, but I did do some work on it and it does work quite well. At 36” long, I dunno, that’s pushing it. That said, if 36” x 18” is your goal, then everything at that size is portable without even having to be knocked down (I got that cherry/ash roubo out of my basement and up two half flights of stairs on my own WITH a busted elbow).
If you peruse youtube you’ll find all manner of ingenious super compact workbench ideas – provided you are not married to an historical looking bench. Jay Bates just released a video today of a workbench based upon in the idea of a super sawhorse that I think would be very functional, and doesn’t look too bad either:
https://youtu.be/ZlGSANE_9Yk But if you search small workbench and things like that, you’ll find all manner of ideas as a jumping off point.
The tricky thing with any small bench of the size you want will be mass. You’ll need to throw a big sandbag or dumbells, etc. on the shelf to keep it from moving. Also, 18” wide can make things possibly a little tippy planing from front the back on the bench without splayed legs.
Another option would be a low workbench. You could go super traditional with a “Roman” staked style bench or there are plenty of more updated styles you can find on youtube if you search low work bench. Many of them incorporate regular vises and work similar to an upright bench, just low. A staked style one tends to use a very different method of workholding utilizing a system of pegs and wedges that is very functional, but can sometimes be a little tricky cutting complicated joinery (they do use holdfasts though). A low bench can double as a coffee table in front of the couch allowing your workbench to disappear. But the big advantage of a low bench is that you sit on it so you won’t have any issues with the bench moving from being light in weight. But it IS kind of a different way of working and if you have any kind of back issues (like I have) then long stints can start to get uncomfortable. That said, when I use my low staked bench it IS pretty fun.
As for sound……
If you have a neighbor below you then you will need to decouple the bench from the floor with what’s called a floating floor. I own a recording studio and spend my day job making records so suffice to say, I know a wee bit about this stuff. Probably the cheapest and easiest solution is to get a single sheet of rigid fiberglass, like Owens Corning 703 or an equivalent (Knauf makes the same stuff). Get a 2” thick piece. These come in sheets that are 48”x24” so you will only need one since that’s bigger than your bench (you can cut this stuff down with a butcher knife or any thin and sharp and long enough blade). You want to wrap it in something so you don’t get fiberglass on you anytime you touch it. You can wrap it in fabric and just tape the fabric on the underside, some companies make pre-made fabric sleeves for them. You could also just use a black garbage bag in a pinch. Anyway, then you’ll need a THICK piece of plywood or MDF 48x24. Thicker the better – ¾” would be acceptable. Put that on top of your rigid fiberglass. Then put the bench on top of the whole thing. This will provide a stable platform for the bench and will do a VERY good job of decoupling it from the floor without the bench bouncing up and down. So when you pound on the bench, or saw on the bench, those vibrations won’t make it to the floor (well, some still will, but it will be DRAMATICALLY reduced). You can put the fiberglass insulation and the plywood in a coat closet when not in use (rigid fiberglass is fairly dense stuff – don’t confuse it with the fluffy stuff you put in your attic). This also gives you the option to put some cleats on the plywood to keep your bench from sliding around and if the surface area doesn’t provide enough friction with the floor you can lay down some drawer liner. In the music world this is how we keep the drums or the bass amp from leaching into other studio rooms through the floor. Anyway, this is probably the biggest noise problem. Depending upon variables, it’s possible that the plywood could vibrate acting like an acoustic amplifier to your pounding on the bench. If this happens just drop a sandbag on it (needs to be sand because it has to be able to vibrate).
As for the sound going through the air, you will NOT be able to STOP it. Instead take advantage of the fact that sound bounces off walls and those reflections make up a considerable amount of the sound we hear. Part of the sound you hear is the direct sound, and the rest is the reflective sound. You can’t control the direct sound, but you can control the reflective sound. By way of example, if I pick up my trumpet and play it in my living room (carpet and a couch, but nothing else absorptive) I just can’t hand the volume without ear plugs. However, I can go into the control room of my studio and blast crazy loud and I’m fine because there’s a lot of absorption in there. Without getting all crazy, basically you just want as much soft absorptive stuff as possible covering hard walls, floors, ceiling, windows. The more you can do, the better, but you have to be reasonable with the fact that you will live in this room as well. Carpet is a huge plus if you have it because that’s usually a quarter of the reflective surfaces. If you can hang heavy curtains rather that blinds on the windows that will help. It’s hard to do much more than that without things looking ugly. But, you can put some hooks along the top of a wall and hang a duvet only when you are working and that will help. Ideally, you want as much thickness as possible to the absorptive surfaces, but that is kind of unrealistic for a room that doubles as a living space. The thicker the absorption (all other things being equal) the lower the frequencies it can absorb. Luckily, woodworking doesn’t have a ton of low frequency energy.
Now if this will be a room dedicated to woodworking, there’s LOTS you can do (depending upon how much you want to spend). And if you are willing to rip open some walls and stuff you can make it quieter than a mouse…..
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Originally Posted by Joshua Lucas
