Softwood Workbench VS Hardwood Workbench

hey folks how you guys doing hope you're all having a great day today in this video I want to compare my two work benches my hardwood Hickory work bench and my soft wood pine work bench they're basically the exact same work bench they use the same laminated top construction method they use the same laminated base construction the same base joinery and the same top to base joinery the only major difference is that this Hickory work bench due to the materials that I had on hand is just it's a couple inches more narrow in this direction than my pine work bench however due to the addition of the tool well on this one which the pine one does not have this one is actually a little bit wider so that's basically the main difference it's basically the exact same work bench so I'm going to cover the difference in the species and how they have performed and actually using the work bench the tool well having one and not having won the leg vise as far as a hardwood leg vise and a softwood leg white vise and the hardware that I've used and then the dog placement so first let's talk about the species this is my southern yellow pine work bench it is two and a half years old now real close to it and I've used it abused it it has held up just fine it has taken all my abuse just fine and I'm very pleased with my decision to use pine for this workbench it was very inexpensive the the lumber when I made this just the lumber was 110 dollars USD was made out of nothing but southern yellow pine two by tens from my local Lowe's you know prices may vary and whatnot but it's it's it's a relatively inexpensive option to get a really solid workbench and you know southern yellow pine is a it's a relatively hard softwood and commonly available here in the United States if you're not in the southern area of the United States then Douglas fir is very common in the north northwest and that's another good option that's relatively inexpensive basically you don't you don't need a heavy hardwood to make a quality workbench so how do I like this one in comparison to the Hickory workbench specifically in regards to the species I actually like working on the top of this workbench more so than the Hickory workbench and it's hard to describe the reason why it has plenty enough mass to not bounce around but I think because it is softwood it absorbs the impact much more so you know chiseling than my Hickory workbench specifically chiseling is what I'm talking about and the way I can explain it is on a long chiseling session on the Hickory workbench my my chisel hand almost feels as if that it's almost as if that same vibration impact that your hand gets when you take say a metal baseball bat and hit a metal pole with it the metal baseball bat will vibrate quite well and you will feel it in your hand a lot or the same thing as using a vibrating lawn equipment tool for a long period of time your hand will kind of almost hurt and feel the vibrations I get that same feeling with using the Hickory workmanship I feel like it's more it doesn't absorb the impact as much it just bounces it right back into your hand more so than this one I feel like this one really really just takes the impact more so than the Hickory workbench that's not to say that this Hickory workbench is a bad workbench to use just for longer periods of time I'm more comfortable using that one because this Hickory is very very hard and it's almost like the the metal baseball bat thing it just it has a ting or a reverb as you interact with it it's very very bouncy and that's that's evidence more so when you are here working with it for quite a long period of time both of my work benches have this same exact style leg vise but the execution is slightly different on each one this is my pine work bench so it has the pine chop here for the leg vise they both have this wedge adjustment down at the bottom to prevent racking and to prevent you from bending over so much and changing a pin for a traditional more despair allel guide so you just kick this in and it sets the difference down there and of course you tighten up here as normal the major difference in the both both work bench leg vices is the hardware this one is made out of it's a DIY approach this screw itself is a scaffold leveling leg so I back this out this screw in here is a scaffold leveling leg so it's not designed for this but it is it does the job quite well and it is glued and pinned into a in this case a cherry hub assembly with a split washer right here to attract the chopped as the screw is retracted this works really really well I'm very pleased with the setup and leg vices are awesome and very inexpensive if you buy the hardware to make one of these yourself you're looking at about 20 25 dollars to make this assemble yourself exact same setup on the Hickory workbench except because it is a Hickory workbench we have a hickory chop and this one has a manufactured to screw made specifically for vices this is a Yoast brand of screw that I picked up on Amazon I bought it because it had the highest reviews and it was relatively inexpensive I think I paid about $40 for this and it does the exact same thing as the scaffold leveling leg so instead of $25.00 ich to make your own hardware you just buy this and bolt it on it's a little bit more expensive twenty five versus forty dollars but the time you save and not having to make your own hub assembly it's just in my opinion that's worth it I'd rather spend that time doing something else so I like this whole leg vise setup again there's a wedge down here that I kick as well the only difference is and if I had to make a if i had to start my shop over again and build a new workbench i would probably use southern yellow pine for the entire workbench but I would use hardwood for the chop this one this chop doesn't flux nearly as much as the pine one does not to say that the pine was a problem by any means at all but it's noticeable that this one tightens up much faster when you just crank it down just a tiny Vicks there's not much flex at all in this chop so in this case Hickory for the chop of the leg advice or hardwoods I should say is the better option and also just just buying the hardware here this isn't expensive and it does a phenomenal job so this tool well was an afterthought on this workbench I added it kind of to experiment and see if I would like it and so far I'm absolutely pleased with it now the reason why a lot of people seem to discredit a tool well or say don't add one is because the comp most common gripes by far it seems is it's just the clutter catcher it's in the way it just collects crap and you'll never use it and I completely agree but the in my opinion that's a benefit this is a clutter catcher and I love it for that reason because it keeps the clutter off of my workbench no matter what if you're doing stuff on your workbench you're gonna have a bunch of tools and small stuff here and there that inevitably will just in my opinion has seemed to get in my way and then I just push it off to one side of my workbench leaving only like half of the workbench actually usable for the project in this case all the small things that I would typically have on the workbench get pushed off into here to where I can still access them as needed but they're not in the way for actually using the workbench for material so I for that reason I really like it and as far as it keeping the clutter there and project after project I am just under the habit of when I'm when I'm done with a certain task or when I'm done using a tool or done with a project I clean up and you know what tools have a home in my shop so this goes back to where it needs to be or back to where it lives and that's that so there are a couple things that stay in here like I keep a screwdriver that's really handy and some small stuff dogs and stuff like that but for the most part all of the you know the bad clutter I guess you could say doesn't build up and it's just been such a such a treat to have a place to put stuff that's still readily available but like I said not in the way of anything that I not in the way of working here on the workbench and then also this increases the the surface area of the workbench because if you have a bunch of pieces for projects you can still straddle them on the work on the tool well it's out of the way but still fully supported and still kind of you know readily available again so - well in my opinion huge thumbs up I'm gonna put one on every workbench I work on going forward absolutely love it in my opinion it's a must next up is the dog holes and on this pine workbench I only have a singular roll of dog holes on the the main side of the workbench decided that I'll be on most of the time and not over here the Hickory workbench I'll show you has it over there as well but just to explain this set up it's just four inch on center three quarter inch holes all the way down except for where that four-inch Center interferes with this leg mortise and then just the ones between the legs are centered but four inch on center as well so this gives me all of these three quarter inch holes that also accept a hold fest so there's so many options for holdfasts throughout the workbench and for that reason I haven't had a need to put any more holdfast holes in the rest of the workbench I have one more hole right here for a holdfast and that's the only spot the rest of the time I use the hole fests in these dog holes now look for the dogs on this workbench I got a lot of flack for just using regular 3/4 inch dowels they are really really tight in there I cannot push these down or up by hand so I use this little brass mallet to push them up as I need them again I have one in every single hole and that seems to be working really well a lot of people have said that the pine will eventually wear out and these holes won't be any good if anything these have gotten tighter over time maybe because the pine shrinking a little bit maybe because these oak dowels absorbing oil as I put it on the top of the workbench regardless I'm very pleased with these oak dowels and I'd probably do it again if I had to the other thing that I do for as far as clamping in between I've recently picked up which I love these things now this is a I forget the name of that I think it's a Veritas wonder dog but anyway it's just a small clamp that you can put in a dog hole you clamp between centers you're limited by the thick the height of your piece by the thickness of this Veritas wonder dog thing but I really really like these and it stores in the same dog hole just upside down from the bottom works really well so that's that set up on this workbench on the similar workbench we have a similar front row of dog holes on the operator the main side of the workbench and then also a duplicate row on the opposite side and then one centralized hole on both ends of the workbench and the reason for this is because I also have another one of these wonder dogs here I keep one on each workbench because I like these so much but with that in this location and then you have say a dog on each end obviously spread out a much more than you have a three-point clamping area which is it's very solid for larger objects or for panels and such so there's a lot of options here another benefit like I said of the three-quarter inch holes is no matter what hole I choose I can use these hole fasts which give us so many clamping options and by the way this this is a Gramercy Tools holdfast that is absolutely in my opinion the best bang for the buck when buying full fests these are fantastic so there's that and then as far as the dogs I did not use the dowels because there would just be so many of them instead I first picked up some of these brass dogs I figured out what the heck I'll get my try I don't really like these the longer ones the reason being is I used the exact same drill bit to do these dog holes that I used them the other one and I think because this is hardwood because there are so many it was a - flute auger bit in my drill and I think it just heated up too much and some of the holes kind of flexed because of that or they're kind of bent so because the holes are not exactly perfectly straight that tends to bind in some of the holes for this this holdfasts on this one I think this is a good one that one's not this is a good one I can move the whole fast no problem but this one and this one and I think this one I can't go any further than that I'll have to use a hammer to get it in further and then again a hammer to push it back through the top so problem is the hole not the holdfast or that I'm sorry the dog here the solution is to get some of these much lesser expensive dogs for shorter or thinner work bench tops about these off Amazon the cheapest ones I could find and it has a hole in the bottom that I super glued a dowel into just to increase its length as far as grabbing on to it and these work just fine and every single one of the holes because there isn't that extra length that has that is in conflict with these slightly not straight or curved hole so this seems to work really really well in every single one of the holes with no problems and that dowel on the bottom side allows me to push it back up or pull it down as needed so just two of these is all I really need and not these these are fantastic so this setup right here is I would say is much more convenient but a little bit more expensive than the dowels so that's it just a light comparison between the two work benches as far as picking one over the other any time you do that you imply that that the one you did not pick is like massively inferior for some reason so I would say that in my opinion both of these work benches are you know ninety five out of a hundred on a scale of 1 to 100 both of them are plenty capable of anything that I'm going to ever throw at them which workbench would I build going forward if I had to start over it be a combination of both I would definitely build a leg vise I would definitely build the entire work bench out of southern yellow pine but use hard wood for the jaws of the Vice or the leg vise chop I definitely add a too well and I would definitely add 2 rows of dogs 3/4 inch holes instead of squares because they are so versatile with the options of using holdfasts and I would definitely just pick up some of these inexpensive smaller bench dogs rather than dowels or longer bench dogs I don't know if the the hardwood that Reverb issue us talking about with this Hickory workbench I don't know if that's specific to Hickory and how dense it is and then you know the characteristics of it obviously Hickory is not a common material for hardwood workbench I would believe you know beech or hard maple to be the probably the most common materials for a you know hardwood workbench but I'm very pleased with both of these you know I you can nitpick them to death but ultimately it doesn't matter what species you use for a workbench so long as you give it enough mass to withstand lots of generations of abuse I guess you could say and so long as you have proper joinery proper construction methods if you have those two covered it doesn't matter what species you use that's it if you guys have any other questions let me know you guys take care have a great day and I'll talk to you later

Channel: Jay Bates 2 - Vlog and Non Project Videos

Views: 404,380

Rating: 4.8942919 out of 5

Keywords: jayscustomcreations, update, woodworking, jaybates, vlog

Id: 3HoOPhKMbms

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 03 2018