Sometimes the best innovations are so simple it's a wonder that they aren't everywhere. This week, Mike Siemsen of Chisago City, Minn., sent me an e-mail about his new workbench that opened my head like a can opener.
Siemsen, who runs Mike Siemsen's School of Woodworking, recently completed building a very close copy of Peter Nicholson's workbench featured in the early 19th-century classic: "The Mechanic's Companion, Or, The Elements and Practice of Carpentry," which you can download for free from Google.
Siemsen developed the workbench with the input of period woodworker Dean Jansa. (Remember this marking gauge he built for Popular Woodworking? Let's all encourage Dean to write more.) The bench developed by Siemsen and Jansa looks a lot like Nicholson's – with one small upgrade that is amazingly useful.
The bench has a small gap between its two top boards. Look through the gap and you can see the transverse bearers that support the top. This gap allows you to do some really cool things with your planes and saws. By dropping a batten into the gap and onto the transverse bearers you can plane across the grain of a board (called traversing). Wedge the board against the planing stop plus a batten in the gap and you can work diagonally. You also can use the batten as a bench hook for sawing. And you can use the gap to store tools.
Is there precedence for this? Yes. George Ellis's Planing Board (which I describe here) uses wedges in the same manner. And a Nicholson-style workbench shown in Audel's "Carpenters Guide" shows a bench with a loose top. You could easily see how the gap could have been exploited….
In any case, it works. Check it out here and on his blog.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here you can see how you can use a batten in the gap to work across the grain.
Here the batten is used with the planing stop to work in a more diagonal fashion.
Here it's a bench hook for sawing.
And here the gap is used for tool storage. Next week we'll show how it makes julienne fries.
These last couple weeks I’ve gotten to break in my new Benchcrafted wagon vise while building a dry sink for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine.
The dry sink is enormous (it looked so small on paper). And every surface has passed under a handplane. The wide stock was prepped entirely by hand. The narrower stuff I processed first with a powered jointer and planer – and then handplanes.
I’ve been planing narrow and wide stock on edge, and the faces of wide panels. I’ve been planing with the grain, diagonally and across the grain with a fore plane, jointer plane and smoothing plane. I’ve been planing joinery with a plow plane and a fillister plane. And I’ve been planing mouldings with hollows and rounds and a beading plane.
As a result, I’ve been planing what seems like acres of pine. I’ve filled up the garbage can at the end of my bench twice with shavings.
So I feel confident in saying that the Benchcrafted vise has gotten a good workout with a lot of the tools you’ll find in a shop that blends both power and hand tools. And with each workholding challenge I presented to the Benchcrafted, it swatted them all down with ease.
The vise’s sliding block moves quickly along its threads, so you’re not spinning the wheel endlessly. And you can engage it with both subtlety and enormous force. The vise holds its position when you clamp a panel and want to plane across the grain but don’t want to bow the work – a delicate balancing act that would cause my old hillbilly wagon vise to slip.
And when I wanted to use the vise to really clamp something hard – such as a drawer side – it made the workpiece feel like it was physically attached to the benchtop. Totally solid. It also was robust enough to disassemble joints when used like a spreader clamp (this operation would pull my old vise apart).
So I’m sure you’re thinking: “Great, but is it worth $350?”
For me, absolutely. I spent about $250 to build my bench out of yellow pine, and so the $350 Benchcrafted vise means I still have a bench that works better than any other I’ve worked on in my life for less than half of the scratch I would pay for a high-quality commercial workbench.
Is it better than a traditional tail vise? So far, I think it is. We’ll see if the Benchcrafted sags in use like a tail vise does – only time will tell that. But what I like about the Benchcrafted vise compared to a tail vise is that I don’t have the large “no work” zone you get with a tail vise. You cannot pound or lean on a tail vise or it will quickly sag.
How does it compare to adding a quick-release vise with a big wooden chop? I think it’s a draw. I like having the full support of the Benchcrafted wagon vise, but I also really like the quick-release function of a steel vise. If you don’t have the money for a Benchcrafted vise, a quick-release vise in the end vise position of your workbench is the next best thing.
Some will balk at the price. Fine. This vise isn’t for you. Me? I’m sick of the low-quality vise hardware that has passed through our shop during the last decade. It used to be easy to buy fantastic vises from England and America. But now you are rolling the dice when buying new vises. I’ve seen decent new vises from the emerging economies, but I’ve also seen some stuff that went right back into the box and back to the seller. Junk.
There are no regrets with the Benchcrafted. It is impeccably made, overbuilt like something from the USSR’s space program and flawless in use.
And that’s good enough for me.
— Christopher Schwarz
I really need to start keeping a list of all the things I use my sawbenches for. Sure, I saw stuff on them. And I stand on them while go-go dancing in the shop to amuse visitors. Those things are obvious. What's not so obvious is how often they get me out of weird jams with my handplanes.
On Monday as I was planing down the face frame of this dry sink, the sawbench was the obvious choice to lend a hand. I wedged it between my bench and the dry sink, and voila. The job was done.
I also plane down table aprons in the same fashion with a sawbench (this particular sawbench was made by craftsman John Wilson; all mine seem to end up in the shops of friends). Frequently, I'll assemble cabinets or glue up panels on them as well.
If you've come up with other good uses for the shop appliance, post them here. Your suggestion might convince another woodworker that they should build a pair.
— Christopher Schwarz
Looking for More Woodworking Information?• Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE. • Looking for free articles from Woodworking Magazine? Click HERE. • Like hand tools? Read all our online articles on hand work HERE. • Want to subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? It's $19.96/year. Click HERE.
 Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has just released a DVD that is based on the theories, research and building that I did for the book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." The DVD – titled "The Workbench" – shows how I use (and adapt) three different workbenches to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards.
Shot during a week in Maine, this DVD demonstrates how to accomplish basic (and some advanced) workholding with a traditional European-style workbench, a David Charlesworth-style workbench and my own Holtzapffel-style workbench.
I also show how to use basic appliances, such as a bench slave, shooting board and a wide planing stop, to extend the capabilities of your existing workbench.
And if you are in the throes of designing or purchasing your workbench, this DVD points out the important design details to consider, including the size of the bench, its workholding and the structure of its top and undercarriage.
This DVD is (I hope) a distillation of my 144-page book on the topic. I think you'll find the DVD especially useful if you haven't read the book or would like to see its principles put into action on a variety of workbenches.
In addition to the 40 minutes of video, the DVD contains a glossary of workbench terms and articles you can print out on shooting boards, holdfasts and bench hooks.
As usual, all of my DVD proceeds are donated to charity. My proceeds from this $25 DVD will benefit the endowment fund of the Early American Industries Association, a very hand-tool friendly non-profit organization.
The DVD is now in stock and can be ordered directly from Lie-Nielsen.
— Christopher Schwarz
When I first built my Roubo-style workbench, I wanted to see if I could work without an end vise. So for the first year or so I used my planing stop, holdfasts, battens and geometry to steady my work as I planed it.
But I got tired of the whack-whack, shuffle-shuffle necessary whenever I needed to plane across the grain of panels (called traversing) or plane diagonally on any size board.
So I started futzing around with wagon vises, which I first spotted in an early 20th-century French tool catalog. My first attempt was rather "agricultural" – let's call it the "Early Cletus Period." I built one using a veneer press screw, some wooden runners, chewing gum and a fancy French-style escutcheon plate.
I soon left the Cletacious period and designed an evolved wagon vise that used a bigger acme vise screw, which is on the English-style workbench in my book on workbenches.
But today I am walking fully upright, leaving my sloping forehead ways behind me. My Roubo workbench is now outfitted with the ultimate wagon vise by Benchcrafted.
In the interest of full disclosure, I paid full price for this vise and spent my own money – Le Roubo is my workbench. (The prospect of my company moving all my stuff out of the office is probably one of the reasons I've never been downsized. It would take weeks.)
The Benchcrafted is a nice piece of work. After installing dozens of poorly made vises (and a few good ones), I was impressed to see how well cast and machined every component was as I took it out of its box.
The vise's installation instructions are thorough, well-illustrated and to-the-point. Benchcrafted also includes full-size templates that make laying out all your cuts and holes a snap.
For me, installing the Benchcrafted was a retrofit. So it was a little more involved than if you were installing this vise on a new bench under construction. The vise requires a cavernous cavity on the underside of your benchtop to house all its finely machined guts. So I spent some serious time hogging out waste with a router and a mortise chisel.
Then you need a beefy end cap on your bench to hold the vise screw. My cap is about 3" thick and is lag-bolted to the benchtop. A new bench could easily incorporate dovetails into the design or some sort of breadboard construction.
With the cavity and end cap complete, the rest of the job was precision boring and fitting. Use a drill press to install the vise screw. The templates and the hardware are made to tolerances that are too tight to hit with a brace and bit.
And use a router to install the runners. The runners guide the sliding dog. If the runners are out of line, the vise will bind up. Precision is paramount.
Then it's just a matter of fitting the sliding wooden dog and lining the interior faces of the jaws with leather (I used some scraps I found at Michael's craft store and yellow glue).
How does it work? Like a dream. The dog moves quickly and smoothly back and forth. And the wheel on the end doesn't interfere with the soles of my planes (like on the Cletacious vise). It is, without a doubt, completely worth the $350.
And though my co-workers laugh when I say it, I think this is the last end vise for the Roubo.
— Christopher Schwarz
This week my pesky highly rewarding day job has been interfering with the installation of my new Benchcrafted wagon vise. Our February 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking is riddled with typos (or it is written in Pig Latin). So Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick and I have been cleaning up our poor verbiage this week while the real work has sat dormant in the shop.
Here’s a quick update: On Monday I did nothing in the shop. On Tuesday I got my Ashley Iles 1/2" mortising chisel off the rack and hacked out the rest of the cavity on the underside. This was the biggest “mortise” I’ve ever chopped: 3" deep, 4" wide and 4" long. Then I used a jigsaw to remove the rest of the waste topside, which lengthened the slot for the vise’s sliding dog block.
Finally, I took my chisel plane (Yea! Another use for the chisel plane!) and trued up the slot. The chisel plane worked brilliantly. I pressed its sole against the existing slot and it trimmed the newly cut areas flush.
Today I worked on the bench’s new end cap. This was boring. A lot of boring. About 12 holes that all had to be spot-on to accommodate the Benchcrafted vise, plus the four enormous lag bolts that attach the end cap. Luckily, it was a snap.
Right as I was about to leave work today, I installed the vise screw and bolted it to the end cap. Then I turned the bench over to start the installation of the last metal bits. I couldn’t help it. I gave the wagon wheel a spin. Whizzzz. The vise moved like a water moccasin through the bog.
I belted out an uncharacteristic “Yee-haw” and headed home.
— Christopher Schwarz
This weekend I'm installing the Benchcrafted.com wagon vise hardware on my Roubo-style workbench. But before I could pull my old prototype wagon vise hardware off the bench, I had one more task for it to perform: Making the new end cap for the new wagon vise.
The new end cap on my benchtop has to be beefier than my original end cap, so I had to glue up some 8/4 maple into a slab about 3" thick. I planed it all flat using my old wagon vise, glued up the slab and then decommissioned the vise.
The new Benchcrafted wagon vise requires you to cut a curved cavity on the underside of the bench to accommodate the vise's guts. I hogged out most of the waste with a plunge router and a long straight bit. Then I cut off some of the excess waste with my tenon saw and shaped the cavity's curve with an outcannel gouge used bevel-down.
Of course, the new vise's guide rails are going to have to go right where I have a big void in one board thanks to a waney edge. I'm going to have to cut out the wane and patch it with some solid yellow pine for two reasons: One, it will make for a neater job all-in-all. And two, after seeing dozens of people climb underneath my bench at the Woodworking in America conference, I now know that there is no such thing as a secondary surface on this bench.
— Christopher Schwarz
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Barring some tryptophan- or ale-induced trypanosomiasis, I'm going to start modifying my Roubo workbench this weekend to add some new vise hardware.
I'm replacing the metal leg-vise screw with a beautiful wooden-vise screw from Joe Comunale at BigWoodVise.com. And I'm replacing my hillbilly-style wagon vise with the stunningly machined wagon vise hardware from Jameel Abraham at Benchcrafted.com.
Both of these gentlemen are putting their hardware on sale temporarily. So if you're on the fence, get off. The Benchcrafted.com sale is for one day only: Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. The terms of the sale will be announced that day. So check the site that day for details.
I paid full retail for the Benchcrafted hardware, and I'd do it again. The stuff is beautiful. Even my co-workers (who had no idea what it was for) oohed and ahhed when I pulled it out of the box like some prize-winning poultry.
The sale at BigWoodVise.com runs until Dec. 31, 2008 (so you can conceal these charges on two credit card statements).
The vise screw for the Roubo leg vise is on sale for $130 (and that price includes shipping). The regular price is $165. That's a good deal.
— Christopher Schwarz
Looking for More Woodworking Information?• Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE. • Looking for free articles from Woodworking Magazine? Click HERE. • Like hand tools? Read all our online articles on hand work HERE. • Want to subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? It's $19.96/year. Click HERE.
My puny 8'-long English workbench is starting to feel like an apartment-sized dinette set. Why? Check out this 12'-long version of that same bench design that boatbuilder Bob Easton constructed using Douglas fir.
Easton's design is interesting because he incorporated a third leg into the middle section of the bench because he was concerned that the whole thing might flex under heavy planing. He built the third leg just a little short to ensure that the whole thing wouldn't become a teeter-totter.
After using the bench, Bob reports that the third leg probably isn't necessary. The bench doesn't seem to flex at all in the middle. However, it looks cool and is good insurance in case Bob ever decided to rebuild a V-8 engine on there.
The other interesting alteration from the original plan published in my "Workbenches" book is that Bob used a traditional face vise in the end vise position. I built a wagon vise there on my version of the bench. I'm Chris Schwarz and I approve of this alteration.
Using a vise like this in the end-vise position saves you lots of construction time. The wagon vise took as long for me to build as the rest of the English workbench (no lie).
Bob has been blogging about his bench and you can follow his progress using this link. Or you can skip to the final and glorious result here.
— Christopher Schwarz
Looking for More Woodworking Information?
• Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.
• Looking for free articles from Woodworking Magazine? Click HERE.
• Like hand tools? Read all our online articles on hand work HERE.
• Want to subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? It's $19.96/year. Click HERE.
Ever since we published plans for the Holtzapffel Cabinetmaker's Workbench in Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine, readers have requested information on how to build the bench so it could be easily knocked down and moved.
The version I built and published plans for in Issue 8 used old-world bench-building principles where the legs were tenoned into the top and the base parts were permanently drawbored. But when Kelly Mehler and I taught a class in constructing the bench last month, we decided to modify the plans to make the whole thing break down for easy transport. The students hailed from all over the country (Missouri, Alaska, Michigan), and so a portable version was necessary.
By the way, if you missed my daily blog posts about this class, you can find them over at the Popular Woodworking editor's blog by clicking below.
Day 1: Sticks
Day 2: Glue
Day 3: Grit
Day 4: Gruntwork
Day 5: Grease
Day 6: Guessing
Day 7: Gone
This weekend my blisters from the class began to fade, and so I cleaned up the construction drawing and cutting list a bit – you can download them for free below.
Here's how the knockdown construction works in a nutshell: The workbench's base is made up of two end assemblies, which are permanently glued and drawbored, plus two long stretchers.
Compared to the original design, the only changes to the end assemblies are that the legs don't have tenons on the top and you need to add a 3"-wide top stretcher to each end assembly. These top stretchers will help you attach the base to the benchtop.
The base's long stretchers are significantly different. The long stretchers have short tenons and are attached to the end assemblies with 1/2" x 8"-long hex-head cap screws, washers and nuts. All in all, the base's joinery works a lot like a traditional bed. 
The assembled joint that shows the cap screws in place and the plywood template.
The disassembled joint that shows the short tenon on the long stretcher.
To install the cap screws, drill 5/8"-diameter holes through the legs. Then rout out slots for the nuts and washers in the long stretchers using a plywood pattern, a 1/2" spiral bit and a guide bushing (see the photo for what this looks like). With the slots routed, install the cap screws, washers and nuts. Snug everything up with a socket set and box wrench.
With the base assembled, attach the workbench's top to the base with 3/8" x 5"-long lag screws through the top stretchers in the end assemblies. We used four lag screws per bench. The screws at the front of the bench were in 3/8"-diameter holes. The screws at the rear of the bench were in 1/2"-diameter holes, which allows for wood movement.
Everything else about this bench is identical to the plans found in Issue 8.
Holtzapffel_KD_Bench.pdf (52.91 KB) — Christopher Schwarz
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks continues to turn back the clock (a good thing in the world of hand-tool woodworking). The Warren, Maine, manufacturer plans to offer a version of the 18th-century French-style workbench made popular in Andre Roubo's "L'Art du Menuisier."
The company has just completed work on its first Roubo bench (shown above) for a customer. The bench is quite similar to the version I built for Woodworking Magazine, with a few exceptions. The two ends of the base are a bit different – there's extra stretchers in there to attach the top, plus cross-bolts that allow the bench to be knocked down. Also, there is a twin-screw vise in the end-vise position at the request of the customer.
All the important functional details are spot-on. There's a wooden planing stop mortised into the top. There's a crochet and a leg vise – you don't have to have both bench accessories to plane things on edge, but they are both convenient and useful. Also, Lie-Nielsen has added a sliding deadman. This is an accessory not shown in Roubo, but is very handy for securing wide panels and doors.
The bench is maple, and Thomas Lie-Nielsen reports that it weighs 400 pounds. The top is 4" thick, 24" wide and 8' long. When the bench is put into regular production, the legs will be 4" x 4".
The bench will be more expensive than the two styles now offered by Lie-Nielsen, a European bench starting at $2,000, and a David Charlesworth-style bench for $1,500. Thomas says that building the Roubo involves additional labor and material.
If you're interested in ordering one, you'll need to wait a bit. The company has temporarily suspended taking orders for benches until it can reduce the waiting list, which Thomas says is now at about nine months.
But if you've seen these benches at shows or in other shops, you know that the quality justifies the wait.
— Christopher Schwarz
Anyone who builds furniture while in a wheelchair is up against serious challenges. Not only are the machines and workbenches too high off the floor, getting the wheelchair close enough to the workbench to actually work is a serious problem.
All the workbenches I built for "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use," are unsuitable for the wheelchair user. The bench's bases won't let a wheelchair user get anywhere near the working surface.
Several wheelchair users have approached me about designing a bench for wheelchair users, but I wasn't sure where to begin. Sjoberg makes this version that is adjustable in height, which is very similar to Jeff Noden's Adjust-a-bench – at least in basic form.
Reader Larry Arnold, a wheelchair user, designed and built this workbench, which is quite stout, passes my kitchen door test and is handsome to boot. Here are some of the statistics:
The base is made using ¼" steel tubing. The legs are 3" square; the other steel rails are 2" x 3". The base weighs 106 lbs.
The top is 2-1/4" thick, 24" wide and 66" long. The top is 29" off the floor and made from Douglas fir. Both the vises are Lee Valley face vises, which Arnold said he chose because they have a low profile under the bench, allowing him clearance to roll under there.
He also has a deadman he bolts to the top, which will allow him to clamp long boards, doors and the like. 
"I built it all myself with no help, except for the top which I took to a cabinet shop to run through their wide belt sander," he says. "I have full access under the bench with no restrictions except for the vertical legs. It's going to be so much better than what I have been using, wish I would have built one sooner. I know it's not what you would build for yourself, but for me in my situation I can't think of much I could add to make it work better for me."
And here's the best news about the bench: Arnold is going to put it into service to build two Shaker-style tables from Issue 2.
Congratulations to Arnold on his new bench.
— Christopher Schwarz
Editor's note: Because it's "Workbench Week Internazionale" I decided to tie up a loose end from my book: "Workbenches: from Blah, blah blah to Yadda yadda yadda." On page 57 I discuss Thomas Stangeland's bench and point out how the best woodworking I've seen has been built on the most minimal of workbenches.
Helpful reader Tom Moore visited Stangeland's shop recently and snapped the above photo of the bench. Below is the story that goes with that workbench.
In 2006 I taught a class in handwork at a school where Thomas Stangeland, a maestro at Greene & Greene-inspired work, was also teaching a class. Though we both strive for the same result in craftsmanship, the process we each use couldn’t be more different. He builds furniture for a living, and he enjoys it. I build furniture because I enjoy it, and I sell an occasional piece.
One evening we each gave a presentation to the students about our work. One of the pieces I showed was an image of my French workbench. I discussed its unusual workholding devices and how the bench was a bit of a Thor Heyerdahl experience.
Thomas then got up and said he wished he had a picture to show of his workbench for the last decade: a door on a couple horses. He said that a commercial shop had no time to waste on building a traditional bench. And with his power-tool approach, he just needed a flat surface and some clamps to work.
It’s hard to argue with the end result. His furniture is beautiful. 
But what’s important to note here is that you can get by with the door-off-the-floor approach, but there are many commercial woodworkers who still see the utility of a traditional workbench. Chairmaker and furnituremaker Brian Boggs uses more newfangled routers and shop-made devices with aluminum extrusions than I have ever seen in a shop. And he still has two enormous traditional workbenches that see constant use.
The point here is that a good bench won’t make you a better woodworker. And a not-quite-a-bench won’t doom you to failure. But a good bench in any shop will make many power-tool operations easier and open the door to permit you to try many hand-tool operations. The bench is simply another tool. It’s the biggest wooden clamp in the shop.
As Thomas was wrapping up his part of the show he showed an interesting slide of an enormous and thick slab of an exotic wood he had been stashing for years and years in his shop.
“I just need to find the right project for it,” he said.
“Hey Thomas,” I heckled, “that slab sure would make a great benchtop.”
He laughed. Next slide, please.
— Christopher Schwarz 
If you were charmed by Harrelson Stanley's Japanese workbench, then here is another variant for you that was built by Russ Merz of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Merz built this bench about seven years ago. The horses were built using scrap oak salvaged from pallets. The beam was built from 2x4 construction lumber.
"I read about these and just had to have one," Merz writes. "I think you know the feeling."
Here are the stats: The trestles are 20" high and 38" wide. Each foot is 21" long. The slab is 3-1/8" x 8-3/4" x 68".
So how does he like using the bench? Well, he doesn't. The parts for the bench usually sit below his European-style workbench. But for our benefit, he dusted them off, set them up outside and snapped these photos.
"Even though I never use this, it was fun making," Merz writes. "About a year or so after you make this (bench), brush off the dust, sign it, put it on eBay and donate the proceeds to your favorite charity."
— Christopher Schwarz
Woodworker James Oliver has built a massive workbench with French lines (tree trunk legs), English-style workholding (a twin-screw face vise) and some modern practicality (a quick-release vise in the end-vise position).
When I first posted photos of Oliver's bench in January, readers wanted to see more photos – not only of the bench, but of the shop. Oliver, who works part-time for Coastal Carvings in Coombs, British Columbia, obliged with these two other views of his bench and shop. Click on the photos to see the full-size versions.
The layout for a hand-tool shop is pretty sweet. There's a saw till at the right of the photo with planes above. The window directly behind the bench is also home to a rack with striking and boring tools. And check out the nice collection of chisels on the left.
For me, however, the best part is the floor. Our shop in Cincinnati has a concrete floor, as does my shop at home. Almost every year, I come up with some scheme to lay a wooden floor in both shops, but something (usually my love of eating meat once in a while) gets in the way.
Thanks to Oliver for these photos of another inspiring shop and bench.
— Christopher Schwarz 
Many readers were interested in Bill Liebold's sliding leg vise, which he installed on his Roubo-meets-Dominy-style workbench (I'm just going to call this form the "Bill Bench" from here out). 
Liebold liked the sliding aspect of the leg vise because when you used it in tandem with a fixed leg vise, you could clamp just about anything. Need to dovetail a 24"-wide case side? That's child's play for this set-up. How about planing an entryway door? Just as easy.
This sliding leg vise arrangement was shown in a plate in Andre Roubo's 18th century treatise on woodworking, but I've never seen one in the wild on an old bench. Perhaps that's because there is a weakness to the original design (or my employer is not funding enough trips to France for me). Liebold said the pressure applied by the screw could bow the front edge of the bench out. This occurred because the vise runs in a track on the underside of the benchtop. When hard pressure was applied, the tongue that rides in the track would push out in some cases, bowing the front of the bench.
Liebold, however, has now fixed that problem. The solution? Steel.
"Well, I just had to make my sliding leg vice work in a permanent way so I wouldn’t have to worry about it breaking," Liebold writes. He lined the track with steel (you can get this from a home center).
So how does it work?
"Now the weakest part of the vice is the parallel guide," Liebold writes. "I cinched down on a piece of basswood until I could hear wood starting to crackle. I was able to dent the basswood and I bent the brass pin in the parallel guide. Success!"
— Christopher Schwarz
One of my (many) blind spots in woodworking is Japanese tools and shop practices. Sure, I’ve read Toshio Odate’s excellent autobiography, plus “The Genius of Japanese Carpentry.” And I drool with great regularity on the Japan Woodworker catalog.
But I understand Japanese shop practices as much as I understand all the acronyms my 12-year-old daughter uses when texting. DFLA!
So I’m always eager to learn about Japanese woodworking from people who have studied and practiced it in Japan. One of those people is Harrelson Stanley, the owner of JapaneseTools.com and the man who brought Shapton waterstones to American shores.
Stanley completed the furniture program at the premier North Bennett Street School as a very young man and then went off to Japan to study the traditional lacquering and woodworking trades. He came back to this country with a Japanese wife and a deep desire to spread the traditional Japanese practices among Western woodworkers.
This weekend at the Northeastern Woodworkers Association's annual show, Stanley was demonstrating his new Sharp Skate honing guide, teaching people to sharpen edge tools and helping people learn to wield a handplane on his Japanese bench.
The bench consists of two trestle-style sawhorses that are topped with one massive slab of a top. Except for the teak planing stop, all the bench’s parts are made using Port Orford Cedar, Stanley says, a durable and strong member of the cypress family that grows in the Pacific Northwest.
This particular bench was built by James Blauvelt, a Connecticut cabinetmaker, joiner and carpenter who runs the company Bluefield Joiners. But is this bench typical of what would be found in a Japanese workshop?
“Actually, it’s a little too nice,” Stanley says. “In a Japanese shop they would use something more makeshift.” 
Harrelson Stanley demonstrates how the notch in the top is used to true a plane's sole.
Here are some of the critical dimensions: The trestles are made from 3-1/2” x 3-1/2” stock throughout, with an overall height of 23-3/4” from the floor to the top of each sawhorse. The top is 3-1/2” thick, 10-1/4” wide and 8’ long. The working height of the benchtop is 27-1/2”, which is fairly low by modern Western standards.
The slab rests on the sawhorses and is held in place by a single cleat below the top that fits against the top of one of the sawhorses. Gravity and the force of the work keeps the top in place.
The top is considerably narrower than the sawhorses, which prompted me to ask why. Is that where stock was placed before or after it was worked? Not really, Stanley says. Typically, the Japanese woodworker would place a thin board across the two trestles and place the tools he or she needed on that board. Because this board is thin, it typically kept the tools out of the way of the work.
Another interesting feature of the benchtop is a triangular notch cut into the slab up near the planing stop. This notch holds Japanese planes with their soles facing up so the craftsman can dress the tool’s wooden sole with another plane.
As I was taking a few photos of the bench, one of Stanley’s daughters, Abby, demonstrated her planing skills on a piece of Port Orford Cedar (that wasn’t part of the workbench). After taking a couple warm-up passes, she pulled off a beautiful shaving that was almost entirely full width and full length. And, as you can see, the bench wasn’t too high for her.
— Christopher Schwarz
The last place I ever expected to stumble on Andre Roubo’s handiwork was next to an Art Deco radio and underneath some old water jugs. But on Saturday, I walked into an antiques store in Ottawa, Canada, and there was a worn but functional Roubo-style workbench perched patiently under a window.
OK, let me back up a minute: I was in Canada (actually, as I write this I still am in Canada) to judge a tool-making contest for Wood Central. The judging was held in the corporate boardroom at Lee Valley Tools, and at one point Robin Lee, the president of the company, and Doug, one of Robin’s old-tool conspirators, took me aside.
“Do you want to see a Roubo workbench?” Robin asked.
My reply was something along the lines of what bears do when in they have natural urges in the woods. So after we wrapped up the judging for the day, we headed out to the antiques store. We opened the front door, and it was sitting right there – underneath some metalware, stoneware and an old sled.
So I dropped to my knees and (I know you think the next word is “prayed”) poked around the undercarriage of the bench. I can’t say how old this bench is, but I can give you some interesting details about its construction and dimensions. 
Overall, this Canadian Roubo is 8' 8-1/2" long, 17" deep and 28-3/4" high. The top is 2-3/8” thick and the consensus among the group is the top is pine. There is no planing stop evident in the top, but there is lots of evidence of holdfast holes that were plugged. The top is made of two pieces. A very wide front piece and a narrow piece at the back that is joined with a square-shaped spline.
The joint is at the exact point where the rear legs pierce the top of the workbench. The rear legs are slanted (as you can see in the photo) and join the top with the exact joint that Roubo shows in his landmark 18th century woodworking book – it’s basically a through-dovetail combined with a through-tenon.
The front legs are joined to the top using this same joint. All the legs are 3" x 3" and look to be some sort of oak. The legs join the stretchers of the bench about 4" from the floor and each joint is pegged with through-pegs.
To plane long boards, there is a long stile that runs from the benchtop to the stretcher at about the midpoint of the bench’s front. The stile is pierced by numerous small holes for pegs that will support boards on edge. The far right leg is also pierced by a couple holes, though these holes were larger in diameter than those on the stile – perhaps they were for holdfasts. 
The single drawer in the bench pulled right out. Inside was one small till and sliding tracks for at least two more (which were not in the drawer).
The leg vise (in the face vise position) was traditional in structure. The vise screw was wooden and quite worn (though it still worked). The nut at the rear of the jaws was detached and needed to be reattached.
The leg vise had a parallel guide that pierced the rear jaw, though its pin was long gone. The leg vise’s position on the top was quite interesting. The top cantilevered off the bench’s base on the bench’s left side by 24". On the right, only by 4". The leg vise was roughly centered on the cantilever. The lower part of the vise’s rear jaw was secured to the front leg with a strap of metal.
Overall, the bench was incredibly sturdy and showed evidence of heavy use and age. One of the members of our party asked if someone could have faked the bench or aged a newer example to look old.
While that’s always a possibility with antiques, the bench was selling for $2,000 Canadian, so if it was faked, the faker wasn’t going to be getting rich off this bench – it’s a lot of wood and there were a lot of wear marks that would have to be faked.
After about a half an hour of me making geeky statements (“Look you can see how the shell bit tore out the grain as it pierced the leg!”) I could tell it was time to go. All the members of our scouting party were standing around looking at me like my kids do when I’m on a lunatic woodworking speech.
There’s more bench news from this trip. While Lee and I were eating breakfast Saturday with Ellis Wallentine (from Wood Central) and Clarence Blanchard (a fellow judge from The Fine Tool Journal), Lee said two words between mouthfuls of eggs that has me sketching wildly this evening: “furniture” and “workbench.” More on this later topic next month.
— Christopher Schwarz, who this weekend picked up tips on teasing people on the Internet from Robin Lee, master taunter.
One of my favorite things about the Holtzapffel Workbench I built for Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine is the monster twin-screw vise with wooden vise screws. The wooden screws move the vise's chop quickly, engage the work firmly and are quite durable.
Plus, they're wood. And I like wood.
Now there's a new source of wooden vise screws that I can heartily recommend after inspecting the finished product this weekend. Woodworker Joe Comunale of Romeo, Mich., has started a new business called BigWoodVise.com to sell vise screws, nuts and handles for woodworking benches.
While I was teaching a couple classes at the Sterling Heights, Mich., Woodcraft, Joe stopped by the store to show me the screws, which he has been selling for some time to friends and fellow woodworkers in the Detroit area.
The screws are as nice as I have seen on any bench. The threads are crisp, with no visible chipping or tear-out along their entire lengths. The hub, which is the large end piece on the end of the screw, is finished as well as any piece of furniture. One style of hub that Joe makes, which he calls the "Classic" style, has crisp black lines burned into the hub. 
The screws he sells come with the matching nut, the handle and round ball-shaped caps for the ends of the handle. The two nuts I tried moved smoothly and rapidly on the screws and showed very little slop in the mechanism. Joe says he wants to tighten up the fit of the nuts on the thread, but I think they're great as-is.
His vise screws attach to your vise's wooden chop with a garter system. Garter systems confuse many woodworkers who have never seen them, but they are really quite simple. The job of the garter is to secure the chop to the screw so that the chop will move out when you retract the screws.
The garter itself is a small piece of wood that is mortised into the chop of your vise and held in place with friction. One end of the garter nests into a groove in the screw.
The 2"-diameter, 2 threads-per-inch screws from BigWoodVise.com are made from ash. The handles I inspected were made from maple.
Joe has just launched his web site recently and is having a "March Madness" sale that ends March 31. So if you are in the market for vise screws, you might want to place your order soon. The "Classic" vise screw, nut and handle are on sale for $99 for each set this month – the regular price is $150 for each set.
This business is a side job for Joe, who is a mechanical engineer, but he plans to keep several screws in stock and promises (at most) a four-week delivery time. He also is happy to do custom work if you have something special in mind. Contact Joe at joe@BigWoodVise.com for details.
So if you're tired of getting grease marks on your work from your metal-screw vise, or you are building a bench with an old-school look, then definitely check out these screws from BigWoodVise.com. I don't have any plans for building another bench (where would I put it?), but if I do, I'm definitely going to buy a set of these screws myself.
— Christopher Schwarz
When I first built my French Roubo-style workbench, I put a sliding deadman on it to help support doors and long panels. But I have long intended to replace that deadman with a sliding leg vise.
Roubo actually shows this arrangement in one of his volumes, and it is a tempting morsel. However, as you will soon see, it is also an engineering challenge.
I'm tempted to build it because it would be the final solution for dovetailing and working on the long edges of boards. One end of the work would be held in the regular leg vise (located on the left leg). And the other end would be grasped by the sliding leg vise. With a long bench (mine is 8' long) you could hold almost any piece of wood you would find in a furniture-making shop.
The engineering challenge comes when you try to build it so it is sturdy and won't damage the bench. It can be done, of course, but adding the sliding leg vise as an accessory requires some careful thought.
Luckily, industrious reader Bill Liebold has built the sliding leg vise on his 12'-long Dominy-style workbench with an end vise. He is smitten with the functionality of the sliding leg vise, but is still working out the engineering aspects of it.
The real issue is that the sliding panel moves in a groove that is routed into the underside of the benchtop. When you really cinch down the sliding vise, it can bow out the front edge of the workbench.
"I was able to bow the front edge of the bench top but that was with far more pressure than I need to hold a piece of wood," Liebold writes. "I did it to see what would happen if I overtightened the vice. I like to experiment."
If you are considering adding a sliding leg vise, you are going to want to change the groove in the underside. Personally, I'd locate it as far back as possible from the front edge of the benchtop. Liebold thinks it would be best to have the groove start 3" in from the front edge, and to use a 1"-thick tenon on the sliding panel. I think that sounds about right.
There are lots of other ways to go about this, I'm sure. And now I'm toying again with the idea of adding a sliding leg vise if I can just get the engineering worked out in my head.
— Christopher Schwarz
On the cover of "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" there are a couple low sawhorse-gizmos parked beneath my French-style workbench that look like Munchkins from the Lollipop Guild could have used them to build the set for the "Wizard of Oz."
Those are Japanese sawing trestles that I built five or six years ago based on plans from Toshio Odate's "Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit, and Use." I built the trestles to do some hands-on research on Japanese sawing methods after several people had mentioned that Japanese saws weren't designed to be used at a high Western-style workbench.
After I built the trestles, I pushed my current bench aside and started sawing on the floor of our shop. To make joinery crosscuts, you place the work across the trestles and kneel on a mat (I used a moving blanket). To make rips, such as a tenon cheek, you prop the work up on the trestle, stand on the work and cut the cheek. (See the photo.)
I have to agree that the Japanese saws did cut more efficiently this way, especially the ryoba. But you do have to be in better shape than a typical Western woodworker. That's because you are the woodworking vise. Your weight and your muscles immobilize the work as you saw. Plus, you have to tune your sense of balance a little finer.
After I finished with that experiment, I kept the trestles around because they're quite handy. I use them primarily for assembling things on my benchtop. With my work resting on the trestles I can easily clamp all around the work and under it.
My trestles are cherry and made from 2"-thick stock – I built them entirely by hand from some stock we had harvested from a co-worker's back yard. Also, just for fun, I built them without glue or metal fasteners – I remembered something about that detail from college when I studied the Shinto religion. You don't want to mess with the kami. It was a fun afternoon project. The trestles are 16" long and 6" high. If I had to make them again, I'd probably make them 18" or 20" long – sometimes they are a bit small to hold casework.
— Christopher Schwarz
The most common question I’m asked these days (right behind “Could you please get me some chocolate raisins at Trader Joe’s?”) is this one: “What is your dream workbench?”
It’s a fine question. And when Craig Stevens at Woodworkers Resource asked me the question for this podcast interview, I stumbled around and answered that it would be something like a Roubo Workbench (a French design), with the workholding of a Holtzapffel Workbench (designed by a German living in England).
A bit of a Euro-mash workbench, I suppose.
Well today, woodworker James Oliver of Vancouver Island, B.C., sent me a photo of that exact workbench, which he has recently completed building. The bench is 112" long, 27" wide and 32" high (James reports that he’s 5'7" tall). The majority of the bench is structural fir; the vises and sliding deadman are ribbon-figured African mahogany.
The twin-screw vise is even larger than mine – 25-1/4" between centers. And the jaws are lined with saddle leather. And my favorite detail is the little oil cup on the left side (made from walnut) – Andre Roubo would love it (if he were alive and had a broadband connection).
The bench took about a week to build. James builds furniture for Coastal Carvings fine art gallery using only solid stock, no plywood or veneers.
I think James’s bench is an excellent design. Bravo.
— Christopher Schwarz
One of the best things about building old-style workbenches (like Andre Roubo's bench above) is that there are little lessons you learn by using them. At times, you learn the lesson unconsciously and it takes a couple years for you to even learn that you learned it.
This morning I was flattening the panels for the blanket chest I’m building for the Summer 2008 issue by planing them directly across the grain — what Joseph Moxon calls “traversing” in his book the “Mechanick Exercises.”
So I’m minding my own beeswax while traversing, and I notice something I’ve been doing for a while without really thinking. While traversing, I wedge my left foot under the stretcher, and I use that foot to help pull my body back on the return stroke.
So I paused and I pulled my left foot out from under the stretcher and tried planing with both feet planted on the floor instead. That felt a lot like working. So I wedged my foot back under the stretcher and returned to work.
Did Roubo design this workbench with this little detail in mind? Likely, no. But the stretcher’s location has always been curious to me – it’s only 5" off the floor. Other benches I’ve worked on (and constructed) put the stretcher considerably higher off the floor. If you have a low stretcher, give this a try and let me know what you think.
— Christopher Schwarz
Probably the silliest thing about woodworking journalism is the "in a weekend" project that we promise readers on the cover of the magazine: "Build a John Goddard Highboy With Four Sticks and Pocket Knife – In a Weekend!"
(And trust me, it's the exclamation point at the end of that sentence that makes you buy the magazine and puts food on my table.)
Anyway, loyal reader and blogger Eric Seidlitz sent me the above photo of his Roubo-style workbench that he built over a holiday weekend. Eric, who works in Malaysia, said he's been frustrated with his bench-building efforts lately and has been having trouble finding good material and getting his tools to work. So he absconded with his children's Christmas present and built the above bench.
I think it's lacking in the mass department, but otherwise he did a fine job.
What would really improve this photo would be the addition of some Lego Frenchmen with frilly cuffs and collars at work at the bench. I checked the Lego web site, and though you can get Lego dudes dressed up like knights, astronauts and Indiana Jones, Lego doesn't appear to have any 18th-century French Joiners in its product line.
I think the Lego Pirates would be a good substitute. However, their eye patches aren't going to help with their sawing.
— Christopher Schwarz
Mark L. Wells writes: I've read your book and the extra chapterr. Both are great. You provide so
much more detail than anything else I've read, and I almost feel guilty
for not having to work it out myself.
Anyway, I am going to rebuild my bench soon and I plan to put a leg
vise on the front. When attaching the top, I assumed I would have to
use mortise-and-tenon joints because of the tremendous shearing force
generated by the leg vise. I'm concerned that the vise would just push
the workbench top right off the legs. However, when I saw the simple L-brackets in this chapter, I started wondering if those would be sturdy
enough to resist the force of the vise. The L-brackets would certainly
be a lot less work!
Have you tried attaching the workbench top using L brackets when the bench has a leg vise?
Answer: Good question. My gut says that two L-brackets on the leg with the leg vise would
probably do the trick. However, just be safe, I would probably put one
stout 1"- or 1-1/4"-diameter dowel in the top of that leg. That should
provide all the protection against shear forces that you need.
Hope this helps, and good luck with your bench design.
— Christopher Schwarz
When I travel with some of my old-school workbenches, it looks a bit like a 19th-century British caravan to India. Since 2005, I’ve strapped my French Workbench into the bed of a tiny Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. I’ve driven it across town with its hinder hanging out the back of a Honda. And I’ve crammed the English Workbench into two too many mini-vans.
These workbenches don’t knock down flat for shipping and weren’t designed to. Society was a lot less mobile when these benches were in favor. And while I prefer these workbenches the way they are – built as one monolithic structure – sometimes you need to build your workbench so it knocks flat.
Though I discuss some bench-bolt schemes in “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use,” I didn’t cover the tricks to installing the hardware. I’ve installed quite a few of these systems in workbenches and beds.
So I’ve written an additional 10-page chapter that covers bench bolts and other systems of making your benches knock down flat into five pieces. Anyone can download this chapter here, for free, whether you’ve purchased the book or not. (The chapter is about 3.5 mb, so you will have an easier time if you do this on a computer with a broadband connection.)
The chapter discusses the pros and cons of the various ways to make your workbench’s base knock-down, including:
1. Solid-wood tusks driven into through-tenons that pass through mortises in the legs.
2. Drawbore pins
3. Lap joints secured with screws or lag bolts
4. Hex-head bolts, bench bolts or threaded rod.
Then I detail how to install the two tricky bits of hardware: hex-head bolts and the Veritas Special Bench Bolts, which I quite like. In addition to discussing knockdown workbench bases, I also discuss some of the different strategies for attaching the top to the base so you can easily remove it.
There might be a little surprise in here for you if you’ve read my book. All of benches feature very stout joinery, yet, I think it’s quite possible to really overdue it when it comes to attaching the top to the base. Most people focus on controlling racking forces when they attach the top. In a well-designed bench, you really should be more concerned about shear forces instead – and those are much easier to manage. Dec. 20 update: Three typos fixed in file below. Thanks for the copy editing!
WB-Chapter9-appendixR2.pdf (3.49 MB) — Christopher Schwarz
P.S. A shameless plug: You can order a signed copy of the book with a companion CD of extra bench-building information from my personal web site.
 A couple readers have pointed out a problem with page 81 of "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" (Popular Woodworking Books).
The two columns of text on that page were transposed during the layout process, and I didn't catch the mistake before we went to the printer. All the text is there, and the story will make sense if you read the right column of text first and then the left.
Of course, that's not a good solution in my book (pun intended).
So I've prepared a corrected page that you can download, print out and stick in the book if you like. The page is in pdf format. If anyone else has any errors they have spotted, please e-mail them to me and I'll see that they are corrected in future editions (assuming that there are future editions).
NewPage81rev2.pdf (906.22 KB)
Sorry for the mistake.
— Christopher Schwarz
 When the first copy of “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction and Use” arrived on my desk from China via airmail, I couldn’t stand to even look at it. I stuck it in my satchel (which my wife fondly calls the “manpurse”) and took it home.
Before dinner that evening, I took the book out and showed it to the kids. Maddy, 11, took the book and started paging through it.
“Wow. This is great dad,” she said. “Will you autograph it?”
My heart swelled a bit. I had impressed my daughter that I was an author. But something didn’t quite seem right in her tone of voice.
“Why do you want me to sign it?” I asked.
“So I can sell it on eBay,” she said. “Someone might pay me extra if you sign it.”
Ah, Maddy, my little bourgeois capitalist. Since then a few other people have weighed in on the new book. A few people have said the book is a bit of a rehash of principles I’ve discussed on my blog and in print. That’s fair to a degree. My blog has been a place where I explore ideas in rough-draft form. The book is the summation of more than a decade of ideas and experiences, polished and complete. Well, that was the plan.
This week I got my first review on Amazon, which sells the book at a very competitive price, I might add. I don’t know the reviewer personally, but he read the entire book and grasped the message I was trying to transmit. Below is that review in its entirety, reprinted with the permission of the author.
The book is now available most everywhere. If you would like to purchase an autographed copy (along with a companion CD of additional material), you can visit my personal web site. I can't compete on price with the big booksellers, but I can sign the book (and occasionally one of the kids helps by adding a small smiley face on the title page).
Those books with the smiley face have got to be worth something on eBay some day.
— Christopher Schwarz
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly remarkable woodworking book
November 17, 2007
By Landscape W. Shipwreck (Island J, Brigstocke Township, N. Ontario)
As an avid reader of Christopher Schwarz's various articles and columns in woodworking magazines, I've been awaiting the publication of this book with anticipation. Now that I've read it I have to say that it's better than I expected, and my expectations were very high.
I've read a number of books and articles on workbenches (notably the ones by Lon Schleining and Scott Landis, which are valuable for what they are: surveys of various styles of workbenches, with info on how to build a few of them). This book is different. Not just a little different. Radically different.
Schwarz is n | |