The Workbench

In order to work wood of any kind you will need to have work space. The center of that space is usually the workbench. You will need a level, sturdy table somewhere around wrist high. There are places where one can purchase a work bench; Rockler, Grizzly, Woodcraft, Traditional Woodworker, to name a few. I should say, they can be purchased at great expense and, possibly, great marital strife. However, you can get by for quite awhile without a bench. In his book, Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings, Mr. Watson gives us some clever ways to use clamps and wedges on a sturdy table to secure your work piece. I'm not going to pretend that these are a substitute for a sturdy bench but, they can tide you over.

Now, if you are like me and don't have tons of money to spend on stuff, getting a bench is a pretty steep obstacle. A decent sized bench with vises can pretty quickly get into used car territory. The situation is not totally bleak, however. I'm sure there are dozens of options out there but the one I eventually decided to try was Tom's Torsion Box Workbench. It looked like a sturdy bench that didn't require a lot of fancy tools or complex joinery (remember that I was just starting out and knew nothing). The plans were posted to Popular Woodworking's website in 2012 but were originally published in American Woodworker in October 2001 when it was suggested that it would cost $250 in material. In all honesty, it would probably cost you nearly $100 more than that today.

 I built the bench pretty close to exactly as it was designed. I was limited by a lack of tools in some kinda goofy ways. For example, in order to attach the front rail, you benefit from a socket wrench to tighten the lag bolts down into their countersunk holes. At the time, I only had an adjustable wrench. The result is that, if you were standing in front of the bench, you could see that the countersunk holes for the bolts are roughed up around the edges. I also didn't have a large enough drill bit to drill the holes for the threaded rods that hold the whole thing together so I drilled holes with the biggest bit that I had and then used a rasp to enlarge them (not recommended as it is a real time consuming pain in the ass).

So, how does it work? Well, when you balance the cost of the thing, it's pretty dang nice. It has it's limitations. The most frustrating one is probably that the hand screw tail vise will loosen and eventually release under heavy strain like course planing.
Additionally, over time, the jaws of the front vise became worn slick and it took stupid amounts of pressure to hold anything if there was the slightest lateral force applied (think, planing end grain). I eventually became so frustrated that I applied anti-skid tread tape to both sides (not recommended). While it radically reduced the slip it introduces accidental abrasion from the grit. Had I foreseen that (or thought at all about the sandpaper like nature of anti-skid tape) I would probably have used suede. I expect that mis-matched scraps could be acquired fairly cheaply and glued to the jaws introducing friction without the scratches (that's the point of this blog, by the way, to pass along lessons that I learned the hard way).

As I learned more about woodworking techniques, I eventually decided to modify the bench. One of my first mods was to bore holes into the top to for use with hold fasts. Those perform better than they have any right to. If you looked at the plans then you know that the top is a hollow box made of 2x4s and plywood. Since hold fasts stay in place because of the friction of the wood surrounding the shaft is so great it seems likely that a hold fast knocked into a hollow box wouldn't hold for crap but you would be wrong. The will still occasionally turn loose but not often.


Another modification I made was the introduction of the free rotating saw backstop. It is a piece of wood screwed the end with washers to keep the pivot smooth. It will rotate until vertical when it meets a dowel driven into the end of the bench. This provides back pressure when sawing (with a Western style saw) which is nice because I haven't gotten around to building saw horses yet.

Now, back in November, Woodcraft had a significant sale and I have picked proper tail and front vise hardware (coming soon).