Four Workbench Building Mistakes (that we all make).

if you're getting into woodworking you're gonna need a good workbench long before you have the skills to build a good bench so what everyone does is they compromise they build a first bench that's maybe not the best bench but it's within their skills that's totally understandable the problem is a lot of these early benches aren't just mediocre they're terrible a lot of bench builders fall into four common traps they build a bench with loose joinery not enough work holding the wrong size and they build a bench that won't grow and change as they mature into the craft now making mistakes like this can cost you a lot of time money and effort don't worry we are not going to let these things happen to you [Applause] i bet you've been looking at a lot of benches recently benches like the rhubarb with its simple clean geometry the nicholson with its incredible clever engineering or even the european continental bench with all kinds of fancy workholding options but you probably feel like you don't have the skills to build any of these benches and you need something simpler so you're flipping through magazines you're looking around on the internet and eventually you find something that somebody calls the modern workbench and that sounds good there are a lot of these designs out there and they have a couple of things in common they usually have a synthetic wood top some sort of easy joinery a single cast iron vice and somebody more or less just made them up now this is what happened to me i built this bench back in 2012. i had been woodworking for a year or two i wasn't that good yet but i knew i needed a big sturdy bench if i was going to pursue the craft and looking around on the internet i found a thing that somebody called a modern bench and i adapted it to make this thing here and for a couple of years it was fine but the more i used it the more the limitations of this bench became revealed to me and those limitations stacked up and stacked up to the point where honestly i hate this bench i hate it so much that later on this year i am going to dismantle it throw it away and start completely from scratch and the biggest mistake i made with this bench was choosing the wrong joinery no matter which bench design you go with you're going to end up with four legs and they're going to be joined together with these horizontal stretchers to create a rigid structure for your bench where a stretcher meets a leg you need a joint now this one that i have here is probably the gold standard in bench joinery this is called the through mortise and tenon so this stretcher is cut down to a narrower tenon and that goes all the way through a mortise in the leg what's really great about this is the number of different ways it resists force so this joint really doesn't want to move up and down it doesn't want to move side to side it's really rigid that way because of the shoulders on the tenon and it also resists twisting forces i cannot rotate this stretcher anyway this is probably the most popular joint for bench building because it's the sturdiest and it's not rocket science to cut a joint like this but you do need the right tools and you do need some experience here i am cutting the joint i'm using a big timber framing chisel that not everybody owns and i've chopped a bunch of mortises so it's not very difficult if you want to build something like this the mortise and tenon might be out of reach so you're going to go with something a bit easier when i went to build this bench i used this exact joint i just found it on the internet it's a pretty simple idea hold on here on the side of the leg you can see that there's a bolt and a washer and that bolt travels all the way through the leg and into the end of this stretcher all the way to this mortise over here inside the mortise there's a nut and another washer as you grab this with a pair of wrenches and tighten it up it pulls the whole joint together and theoretically gives you a strong hold now as soon as i saw this i liked it a lot because it seemed like it was within my skill set and it used nuts and bolts technology that i was already really familiar with joinery was still a little bit of a mystery now this has a single point connection just that one bolt that goes through and that should be a problem but the designer came up with a good solution you cut away a little bit of material here on the end of the stretcher that gives you two points of contact and makes the joint a lot stronger in theory in reality this joint is not great at resisting any of the forces that your bench has to deal with so if i move it up and down there's actually a lot of flex if i move it back and forth there's a lot of flex and it also has to fight that rotation and i can actually rotate this beam by hand and i know you're thinking oh wait a second it's just not tight enough and you're right it's not let's tighten it up socket wrench goes in here box wrench goes in here and tighten it's actually really easy and it does make a big difference and that's good because you're going to be doing it a lot see as you're using this bench and there's all kinds of twisting and racking forces applied to this joint well that bolt isn't going to give it's made of steel but the wood is going to compress and that's going to make that hole loosen up okay no problem you get your wrenches and you tighten it up again but as you're tightening it that also makes the wood compress so it feels stronger for a little while and slowly starts to relax and get loose again so then you grab your wrenches and you tighten it up again and it never ends the problem with the joint like this is that you're always going to be tightening it when you have your fastener running parallel this way to the direction of force you're always going to have problems with wood compression now there's a million ways that we could fix the twisting and the racking issues of this joint but there's really no point because this is just a stupid joint and honestly we just need something better of course joints made with hardware have one huge advantage they come apart and a lot of us need to move our benches i have had this bench in four different shops and every time i've moved i felt really lucky that i could take the bench apart move it and set it up again without a lot of fuss now what we need is a joint that still lets things come apart but while also being a good joint and one way we can do that is with this half lap joint let me show you what it looks like it's pretty easy to get the idea i've just taken out half the wood here and half the wood on this piece and put them together it wasn't very difficult to make either it's mostly a couple of saw cuts you knock out the waste and then try to get the pieces fitted together nice and tightly the half lap joint is surprisingly similar to the mortise and tenon in fact it kind of is a mortise and tenon you've got a long piece going through the other piece and it's enclosed on three sides where a mortise and tenon is enclosed on four sides the only difference is this front face right here and that's a weak point that's where the joint wants to come apart but it's really easy to reinforce that just by taking a couple of carriage bolts running them through the entire joint and then tightening them with nuts on the back this gives us a super tight hold that also comes apart from moving now i know you're wondering wait a second if the other joint made with bolts was so bad what makes this one better a bunch of things first you have an actual joint here the half lap is a legitimate woodworking joint and it's got all kinds of shoulders and walls that really resist force in every direction and then these bolts help it resist that twisting direction especially because these are oriented perpendicular to the lines of force they don't tend to make the wood compress and so they don't need to be tightened i used very similar approach to this when i built my english joiners bench over a year ago i attached the legs to the aprons with carriage bolts and all the rest of the joinery is half laps with screws and construction adhesive now i've been working at that bench for over a year every day and i have never tightened anything since i assembled it so it's not too difficult to combine a couple of approaches into a joint that's strong but also portable something that you're not going to outgrow right away now when it comes to work holding most modern benches make things very simple you get a cast iron face vise bolted to the bench you're done now these vices do have a lot of things going for them for one thing they're pretty much plug and play you attach the vise to the bench top and you're ready to go they're also very easy to use there's just nothing to know about them these vices are excellent for working on small parts or the edges of medium-sized boards but as your work gets longer or wider you're going to have problems if this is your only work holding so here is a very wide board and i can't grip this at all if i'm only using my face vice the jaw just won't open far enough and it can't handle that much leverage on the jaw as my boards get really long this isn't enough either a board that's gripped here but unsupported down at the end it's gonna dip as soon as you put any pressure on it this vise also isn't great for working on the ends of boards because it's got guide bars inside so if i want to dovetail the end of this board as i get it in the vise i have to angle it i might have to angle it a lot before i get a good grip on it that's not a great position to be in personally i find these limiting if they're my only work holding option i really like a much more integrated solution for working on the faces of boards i like a planing stop these are fast cheap and easy to make a planing stop uses the bench top to keep your work stable and just keeps the wood from flying off the bench while you're planting it since the wood isn't really held down it's really easy to switch out components flip them over or batch out a bunch of parts all at once you can even do wide boards just by throwing a batten across the end of the bench if you're working on the end of a board cheap shop made vices can actually be better than commercial vices because they don't have those guide bars this is my homemade diy leg vise and it's angled to make it easy to grip pieces vertically and work on the ends you could also build a traditional twin screw vise it's just a pair of screws and a board this type of vice is optimized for dovetailing the ends of wide boards and doing cabinetry it's much better than a cast iron face vise for that kind of operation you also need to work on the edges of long boards especially as your work gets larger in a situation like this it's very handy if your bench has an apron or at least a flush leg on the other end then you can add a holdfast or a peg to your vise and that lets you hold the entire board well supported it won't dip when you put pressure on it now i know that there are a lot of woodworkers even master woodworkers who get by with nothing but a vise like this by combining it with a bar clamp or a pipe clamp i have tried this approach many times and i know it works for other people but it just doesn't work for me i really like an integrated work holding situation especially because a lot of the things i add to my bench to make it more flexible they barely add to the cost or the complexity another place you can really mess up a workbench is by making it the wrong size as new woodworkers we always think well i want my bench to be enormous i want the pangaea of workbenches it can't be too big unfortunately it can be too big in particular it can be too wide this is my first bench it is exactly 30 inches wide and i would have built it wider if i had had more material for the top thank goodness i couldn't because this bench is already a little bit too wide because if i have a tool all the way on the far edge it's not easy to grab it i have to bend over at the waist and after i've done that a few dozen times in a day my back really starts hurting now over on my english joiners bench i built the top to be exactly 24 inches wide that might sound narrow but it's never gotten in the way of me doing a project and it's comfortably within my reach anytime i need to grab a tool i can get it without bending over or god forbid walking around the bench that is a huge productivity killer now we also have to think about length and weirdly you don't want your bench to be too wide but you almost can't make it too long you probably want to make the longest bench that you can fit with some space on either end because you need to get at the ends of your bench this bench is seven feet long and i've always found that to be a really good size it's not enormous i don't pile a ton of crap on it but it holds all my projects really easily my english joiners bench is 5 feet long i made it that way because i have a lot of viewers with small spaces and i wanted them to have a bench that they could use in cramped quarters if i were going to rebuild a bench from scratch i would make one in the english joiners bench style but i would make it at least seven feet long i think that's pretty much perfect we also have to think about height but that's not too difficult to figure out if you just stand next to your bench in a relaxed posture you want to see where your pinky knuckle touches the top of the bench that's usually the ideal height i'm 6'2 so the ideal height for me is somewhere around 33 inches if you do a ton of hand work you might bring it down a little bit if you're mostly a machine woodworker you can bring it up a little bit there's a little bit of leeway in that height is something that's pretty easy to adjust all you need is a saw we've covered a bunch of aspects of bench design but we haven't talked about adaptability you need this bench to work for you now but you also need it to work for your future self if you're watching this video it's likely that you are mostly a power tool woodworker just looking into getting your first real bench and you're thinking oh listen i don't need a full-on hand tool workbench i just need a bench that's going to handle a little bit of chiseling a little bit of planning that's all i do and i completely understand i used to be exactly the same way 10 years ago i was 90 power tools couple of hand tools but then i discovered i actually like the handwork more and i don't enjoy working with machinery and i moved more and more towards hand tools until well that's all i do and this bench falls short now if you want to make a bench that's going to work even if you go much deeper into hand tools you don't need to totally redesign your bench you just need to make a couple of changes so the bench is adaptable to the things you need in the future first thing you want to think about bench top material a lot of modern benches recommend that you make the top out of a synthetic composite material like plywood this bench top is made out of glue lamb it's a construction material wood mixed with resin and i've got a top made of masonite now this approach makes a lot of sense i'm not really against it because you start out with a top that is dead flat and because it's a composite it never goes out of flat which is great now the problem with a bench top like this though is you can't plane it i really like solid wood benches because they do go out of flat occasionally but i can plane them flat again quickly usually in an hour maybe less and i only have to do it about once a year it's easy i know what you're thinking wait a second if my bench never goes out of flat why do i care about planning it well every time i plane my english joiners bench i don't just get a flat top i also get a perfectly new finish this bench which i've been using for 10 years just shows every single dent and ding and scar blob of glue finish stain it's all there some of us take pride in that those are the battle scars of all the work we've done the problem is having a messed up uneven benchtop is bad for your furniture it'll dent your components it's actually much better if you can freshen up that bench top at least once a year maybe more often with a synthetic top you really can't do that a solid wood top is cheaper and it's easy to refresh anytime you want one great way to make your bench more adaptable in the future is just adding simple accessories like bench dogs and hold fasts neither one of these costs very much you can make the dogs in your shop and they expand what your bench can do a lot so for instance if i've got a pop-up dog on my face vice and then a couple of dog holes and dogs in my bench i can use that setup to pinch those wider boards that i can't grab here and of course hold fasts have a million different uses i have to make a totally different video about those i can just add those to an existing bench unless i've used the wrong material for the top for instance this glue lamb is very stable and very sturdy but the surface of it is kind of squishy and as soon as i drill a hole in it and try to use an accessory it just wallows out and stop working so it won't grip a hold fast and it doesn't work with these dogs either this bench is covered with places where i've tried to modify it by adding plugs of hardwood or dropping in other things to try and get this to work with these common accessories but it just won't when i chose this composite material for my top i just closed off a lot of options another common way to expand your bench's capabilities is by adding additional vices most popular thing is to put in a tail vise usually right on the end over here i wanted a tail vise for years and i finally bought a nice one and i got all set to install it and realized that this distance right here was too small i had put this stretcher too close to this edge and i just couldn't put my tail vice in and when i figured that out i cursed so loudly they could hear me in texas and i live in ohio now you might think oh well if i ran into a problem like that i would just take the bench apart and re-engineer it and put it back together and let me tell you you probably won't if you have a bench that's working and you're getting projects done you are not going to want to disassemble and re-engineer the whole thing it's really important to try and anticipate these problems and get them right when you first build the bench you don't have to have the stuff you don't have to have the vice that you're going to add just look at some vices or some accessories you might want to add and tweak your design so that you won't be limited down the road so i have to admit the more woodwork i do the more i kind of become a grumpy old traditionalist when i first got started i'd be doing a new piece or a new process and i would think oh the old way of doing it that's that's stupid i can improve on that i'm a smart guy and then i would try my smart approach for a while get really frustrated try the traditional way of doing it and realize oh my god it works it works way better than something i just come up with off the top of my head and you know that really makes sense if people have been doing something the same way for decades or even centuries it probably works pretty well workbenches are like that there are lots of different good designs out there and you can pick from a bunch of stuff that's time tested but you probably don't want to innovate innovate in your furniture building innovate in your artwork but in your jigs and fixtures and tools and benches you probably want to be kind of boring now i want to do a lot more workbench videos i've built a bunch of them at this point i have a pretty good idea what i'm talking about and i'd love to cover this topic more if you have specific questions or topics you would like me to hit go ahead and leave those down in the comments i've also got my english joiners bench it is not the last word in workbenches it's not perfect but it is compact inexpensive effective and beginner friendly you don't need many tools or much experience to get it together dozens or maybe hundreds of people have built that bench they seem really happy with it i've got several videos and a full set of plans and you can check those out down in the description and just like always these videos would be impossible without my patrons on patreon if you'd like to be one of those people and get a bunch of rewards for your support go on over to patreon.comkrueger and check out everything i give to the people who make this stuff possible i'll be back next week with another video and i really appreciate you taking the time to watch have a great week

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 400,851

Rating: 4.9244132 out of 5

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Id: 5CwIX6jE-qA

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021