Wednesday, January 02, 2019

Workbench I

One of the more interesting threads to follow on woodworking forums are ones dealing with workbench builds, plained, in progress, or finished. Many times for the train wreck aspect. While a workbench is or at least should be highly personal and fit the users workflow and projects, most builds I see posted tend to be of the Swiss Army Knife variety.

My early benches fit that pattern as well. Another aspect is "fashion", over the years I've seen different types of benches come and go in and out of fashion. This year it is a French style bench, yesterday it was Scandinavian or German. I'm not sure if one of the better benches, the English bench, has ever been in fashion which shows just how fickle bench fashion can be. Full disclosure on this one: I'm guilty of advocating for Moravian style benches for reasons that will be covered in a later post.

Bottom line, style of build makes little or no never mind. Each style build has pluses and minuses what is important is have you thought through those factors and fit them to your needs, As an example a French bench can be very stable, heavy, reasonably easy to build but expensive to build when compared to other style benches. Where the English bench can be as stable, but not as heavy, a more complex build, and a much cheaper build.  Working on either bench is not much different, they both work but sometimes with slightly different means of holding the workpiece.

That brings up the Swiss Army Knife. This isn't much of a problem with most English builds, it seems most folks who choose an English bench do so for the simplicity of the work holding. The bench works fine with no vises. The French is another story. BTW I'm not picking on the French bench because in its pure form work holding can be almost as simple as that of the English bench. But for some reason many builders of the French bench go for the gold and try to make the bench into that Swiss Army knife.

I've seen benches with a different type vise on every corner along with a pattern makers vise hanging on one end, a leg vise, a metal QR vise, a shoulder vise, a wagon vise, a Scandinavian style tail vise, a sliding deadman on one side and a bench jack on the other. Add in dog holes lined up with every vise.  All this on one bench and with three or four different woods for contrast and you have a thing of beauty, Damn impressive as a work of art but I'm not sure it would be a functioning workbench. I expect most of the vises would just get in the way of working as would all the contrasting woods and maybe even the dog holes.

That's the train wreck, the next post on this subject will be about getting to a simple functional bench. 

ken

12 comments:

  1. Steve D6:33 AM

    I have a set of hardware for a Tage Frid style bench so that's what will be built next, forums and idols be damned. I wanted one since I was a yute and nothing has changed in that respect. My only apprehension is whether to use the end vise style that permanently hangs out from the bench but I think I have plenty of time to think about it.

    Maybe an outdoor bench but that's a different thing...

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  2. Steve,

    As will follow, the style of bench makes little difference in use. The major differences come in the difficulty of the build, time to build, how work is held, and cost. Each builder should weigh those factors. Most first time builders don't.

    Good luck with the build once you start. BTW, there ain't nothing in woodworking that gives as much satisfaction as a well built bench that fits your workflow. Conversely nothing in woodworking will drive you to barking at the moon as quickly as a poorly built bench or one that doesn't fit.

    That is part of the reason I've built so many :-).

    ken

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  3. Steve D11:00 AM

    Benches are good sports about assisting with their own replacements. I suspect a major obstacle to the Scandinavian benches is the intricacy of the tail vise and the availability of plans and documentation.

    I'm sure I could be happy with a number of styles, except for anything flexy or that runs away from me when I push on it.

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    1. Steve,

      There is no reasoning with lust. I expect you could be happy with many styles but none will satisfy until the lust is sated :-).

      ken

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    2. Steve D6:13 AM

      true that. hobbies are more about wants than needs

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  4. Anonymous1:20 PM

    Have a look here:
    https://dblaney.wordpress.com/tag/moravian-bench/
    Sylvain

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    1. Sylvain,

      Thanks for the link. It is a post I could have written but not as well. In fact that is the general direction these posts are going.

      ken

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  5. The english bench shows up a lot on this side of the atlantic, probably a lot to do with Paul Sellers and Richard Maguire as well as the (a) cost and (b) rigidity-to-amount-of-wood ratio. And tradition. Mine is a sort-of english bench but with a flush front to it which to be fair has been occasionally useful. More often than the tail vice I put in it and which has seen little use because the shed is so small I can't stand near it to work using it (try working in an 8' by 6' shed sometime :D ).

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    1. Sparks,

      I admire the work you do in such a small shop. Anytime I start to bitch about the size of my shop I look at photos of yours.:-)

      Tail vises are not much use in a large shop either. I have a metal QR vise in the tail position on one of my benches. Put there because it was a better place to store it than under the shelf in the tool room. I will use it occasionally to hold a board for sawing but not much else.

      ken

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    2. Oh believe me, I dream of a larger shed all the time :D But nobody over here really has a large workshop unless they do this professionally or can rent an industrial unit or something. I've resigned myself to just dreaming about it until and unless we can buy a house and move to somewhere with a larger garden and even then, those enormous 10mx20m sheds are just not a thing over here. 10x20 feet, maybe :D I think it's a factor in the massive popularity of woodturning here - you can put a midi lathe in the average shed here relatively readily, especially on the metal stands they make for them, and that plus a tiny bandsaw and you have a full hobby that would fit in an 8x6 shed with room aplenty. Look at guys like Nick Zammeti - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3-0S7vXfwYY2jj5EkMpymA - he gets a big bandsaw and a large lathe and all his filming gear into a single shed that's about 8'x12' which is a medium-large shed over here. It's damned tempting if you're in a tight space and want to have some fun.

      Meanwhile I've managed to get myself in trouble space-wise again with the latest project, but the next few after (if!) I get this one done are all within the kind of size I can comfortably work inside. I'm looking forward to that :D

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  6. I am looking forward to this discussion. I'm somewhat abashed to admit this but one reason I chose the english bench was that the french bench had become de rigeur, what you had to have if you were serious. I'm a contrarian. Who wants bouillabaisse in Paris when you can have fish and chips on newspaper from a street stall along the Thames? As time has passed, I have come to believe that the english workbench is inherently superior to the french bench. I don't think the same can be said of it in comparison to the Moravian workbench, which is a magnificent design as well. I don't know enough about other bench designs to have an opinion about them.

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    1. Andy,

      Thanks. For some time now after building a few and working on them I've felt the Roubo bench while a good bench was a fad. A fad that was carried too far with design elements that made little or no sense. While not picking on the Roubo I wanted to put my thoughts about benches and the building of benches on paper (so to speak, pixels doesn't sound right).

      The link Sylvain posted ( https://dblaney.wordpress.com/tag/moravian-bench/) is a very good starting place for that conversation.

      ken

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