Excellent work! Nicely done. I'm a bit envious, someday I'm going to try that.Originally Posted by John Davidson
This project started with a few posts here at the creek back at the end of July. I finished it this last weekend.
I started by reading Scott Landis' "The Workbench Book". It then moved on to wood selection. I had already decided that I wanted to build my bench out of hard maple. However, hard maple in my area is VERY expensive. So, I searched for an alternative wood. I found a cheap source of ash but it was #1 common. Someone responded to one of my posts that ash would work fine but I might want to look at european beech. That it was the wood of choice on the other side of the pond for workbenches. So the search for beech was on.
I could not find any local supplier of beech but after surfing the web I found a source on E-Bay. A bid was placed, the bill was paid and a week later a pallet, 464 bft of 8/4 european steamed beech, arrived at the local Overnight terminal for me to pick up. The total cost after shipping was $1.55/bft. It was obviously more wood than I needed for the project but the wood was all select or better. I figured at that price I could find some other uses for the 300 bft or more that would be left over.
Three months later, it is finished. The bench is a combination of several different plans and designs. I used a plan in Woodsmith as a starting point and went from there. The bottom cabinet is straight from the Woodsmith plan. The cabinet is built out of 1- 3/4" sheet of birch ply and the beech, I tried but I couldn't find any beech topped plywood. All of the vise hardware came from Highland Hardware. The handles were turned on the lathe out of beech and padauk. The last of three coats of Watco natural oil finish was the last step, this last weekend. All in all, I an very happy with the result. It has been one of my most satisfying projects
Thanks
John
Rich
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It needs three coats of bright red latex gloss so's you won't trip over it 
