Workbench Apron Drawer…

…It’s On its Way (the YT Video) and You Shouldn’t Live and Work Without One!

For a few weeks there I had to do that very thing with my new workbench. And I must say it was a strain for me because I have relied on one in all of my workbenches for decades now. To say that this one small thing is essential to both my working and my wellbeing is very much an understatement. You should try life with one for a month and then tell me it gets in the way, you don’t really need it or there’s a better alternative. It’s likely to be one of the best investments of your time you’ll ever invest in. I made (and others filmed its making) it in about 2 hours, replete with half-lap dovetails, housing dadoes and a through-tenoned back. Tonight it’s glued up and in the clamps for the night ready and waiting for tomorrow when I shall fit it to the bench opening. If you have made the workbench and don’t have the drawer yet you will find this a fascinating project all the way through, especially if you have never made one. It’s the perfect place to start out drawer making. I thought about seeing if I could make one in a half hour totally by hand. What do you think?

Along with the workbench drawer, which is itself a treatise on basic drawer making, I am making a wooden waste bin for my shavings and such. A fairly simple affair but the important thing is that I will no longer have to stare at the plastic apology for one that I dislike so strongly. Plastic, stainless steel, they just seem inappropriate and out of place in a workshop yet that’s what most woodworkers have. I feel to be less and less accepting of plastic as the norm for such things. I thought about it and concluded that it’s because they are so out of place that I want rid of it contaminating my eye view. They just have no place in my workshop.

Hannah has a commission for a compact workbench and she is pulling all of the parts together from up-cycled, recycled wood to do that. It’s not a woodworker’s workbench but more a metal working mechanic’s one. I gave her wood from a former school bench I no longer needed. It was mine actually. She’s a lot more confident about the task these days than she was say a year ago. I guess she had withdrawal and felt lost after working on her tool chest for so long. 

 

In the day to day I spend time drawing and sketching, developing ideas and bringing them to the stage for videoing. With a true team like ours there is a lot of interacting to make everything coordinated. I really do have to turn many things down these days because of the higher demands but I am most fortunate to be able to do what i do. So many new things happening every day in the background at the workshop and soon I will be making an announcement for something that is very close to my heart. Stay excited won’t you?

11 Comments

  1. I’ve been holding out for this one for ages! can’t wait to get started on it, thanks.

  2. Thanks Paul.

    Please, oh please, try and make a drawer in 30 minutes. Minimal talking. It would be very relaxing to watch.

    As for your advice. When I first started hand tool woodworking about 3 years ago, I didn’t listen to you on the marking knife (bought a $75 one) or the mallet (bought a $100 one). About a year or so later, I finally bought the ones your recommended (for a fraction of the cost). There was absolutely no comparison. The ones you recommended were vastly superior at a fraction of the cost. As such, when you strongly recommend something, such as this drawer, I now listen and believe you.

    1. Joe, I started with the stanley pocket knife that paul recomends. I have been religious about not taking it away from my work bench. Recently we have been doing work on the house and I used it outside the workshop. Long story short, I thought I lost it. My wife knowing I was in distress over it, found it and sat it on my wallet with a nice note telling me how much the little knife missed me. Lol.

  3. Now that you are settled in to the new place, will you consider bringing back your “Ask Paul Sellers” Series?

  4. Hi Paul,

    A couple of comments. First yes please I also would thoroughly enjoy watching you work at full speed occasionally. Probably you would want to voice over the video instead of your usual relaxed live talking or perhaps some combination.

    Also I wanted to acknowledge the great photography and videography quality. I’m mainly interested in content not video production artistry but being able see little details by zooming in to your photos is really great. A case in point is some of the wood selection you do. In the case of the drawer I wanted to look at the great knot on the RHS of your drawer. I have a great deal of Red Pine (Norfolk Pine I think) here for “free” and it generally has plenty of knots and other natural characteristics one might think of as a defect. I’m learning to select wood and position these natural occurrences on my jobs so they don’t make too much extra work for me.

    Another example where video quality helped was being able to see the saw marks on the bottom side of the table surface. Leaving behind these pedigrees of origin is interesting to me also.

  5. Maybe by next week we will be given the honor of seeing what Paul had started teasing weeks ago and is continuing with this uninformative entry.

    When do we get to see the YT video and is it PS or Woodworkingmasterclasses?

    Regards,
    Bill Antonacchio

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