Two years ago, I built my first workbench. At the advice of someone (I can’t remember who) I was going to keep it fairly simple. Just 4 legs, a top, and a vise. I went to my local home center and got everything I needed. A bunch of 2×4’s, some treated 4×4’s (treated was all they had), and some screws.
THE BUILD
I face jointed the 2×4’s and glued them together in widths just wide enough to still fit through my portable planer. I ran those sub-assemblies through the planer to flatten them, and then glued all of them together. In the end, I had a 35 inch wide bench top. From there, I was trying to figure out how to cut these relatively large mortise and tenons for the legs. The mortises were the easy part. A few minutes with the router and a flush trim bit, and I had myself some 1 inch deep mortises. Since I was still working with the Shopsmith at the time, the table saw was not an option. I opted to go with the router again for this one. I set an adjustable square to 1 inch and struck a line from the top of each leg. From there, it was just a matter of screwing a piece of scrap stock to the leg at that line and using a flush trim bit to clear out the waste. Needless to say, the fit was less than ideal. Nevertheless, I slapped some glue on the joint and put them together. After the glue dried, I came to the realization that treated lumber and PVA glue don’t work well together. The glue held, but the legs could still wobble some. My solution? Angle brackets!
What an ingenious idea! At least I thought so at the time. Now it was time to turn my attention to the stretchers. Oops. I forgot to cut mortises for those…No problem. I’ll just screw the aprons to the legs. That’s just as good right? Well, at the time, yes.
Now it was time to flatten the top. Since I didn’t own a jointer plane then, I figured I could get it flat enough with a belt sander. Wrong again. Sure, I got the glue lines to be flush, but the top was anything but flat. Oh well, it’s still a bench. Now it was time for the vise. I went to my local freight store and bought a cheap front vise, which I mounted in the tail vise position. I drilled some ¾ inch holes for dogs, and I had myself a workable bench.
THE PROBLEMS
In the beginning, I didn’t really notice any problems. It wasn’t until I started using more hand tools that the shortcomings of the bench became apparent. When I would clamp a board in the vise for face planning, the angle brackets and screwed aprons let the legs wobble, and the bench was very unstable. Attempting to plane on a bench that is wobbling on you is less than ideal. To add to the problem, the top was pretty heavy, but the legs and aprons were relatively light. This allowed the bench to not only wobble, but also scoot across the floor. I dealt with these problems for a good while. It wasn’t until the vise started to give way (and I got more into using hand tools) that I began thinking about a rebuild. For some reason, my brain could deal with the wobbly, movable bench, but a vise that didn’t work smoothly was where the line was drawn.
THE SOLUTION
Build a new bench, of course! But that’s a story for another day.
