Cutting the housings I have seen many (and even had to work on) low-grade benches without aprons. Admittedly they were assembly products shabbily made by workers who knew nothing about much beyond earning a living, and so I didn’t expect much at all. Aprons are critical to a good bench in many ways not the […]
Assembly begins Yesterday we locked the aprons to the bench with clamps and bolts and screws and lifted the main laminated benchtops in place to dry fit before gluing them to the aprons. This process takes some thinking through to ensure all of the components are together; clamps, hammers, wedges, screws, bolts, lag screws and […]
I realise that these posts are long, but we are invading the worlds of make believe benches, stepping off of the conveyor belt to fantasyland and getting into real woodworking again. To do that we have to have a real working bench that no one can really criticise as being useless, amateurish, fanciful, indulgent […]
The final stage of the bench make is to install the helping hands that grip the work of a lifetime. It’s so good to get to this stage and though I do not need any more benches (wherever I am I have a dozen or more to choose from), I want to know that […]
I have all three vises fitted to my bench, two at opposite corners and to my right that is to perform tail-vise operations combining the poor man’s dog in the vise with dowel dogs in the benchtop. I will say up front that bench dogs and dogging systems are for me none essentials. Some […]
When we started this series I don’t think anyone realised it could possibly be so popular. It’s taken a lot to pull it all together but now I am so glad we chose to do what we did. The results are staggering in terms of how many people have watched the series, that’s great, […]
