Workbench #1: A Workbench in the making...

My workspace is my garage. I have a small workspace that I built with some leftover MDF from garage shelves when I moved in. Its a place for just run off the mill round the house kinda stuff. You know, fixing the broken toaster, making a volcano for a school project, glueing together a broken picture frame. So when I started messing around with bigger and bigger wood projects I quickly realized I needed a dedicated workspace for those projects. One not encumbered by walls and laundry equipment.

So I found a decent packing crate, laminated the boards together and was quite proud of my worbench. Thats it balanced precariously on the sawhorses in the right of the picture.

There is not a single straight plane on it and I have learned through experience just how much pressure I can apply on the top before the whole assembly comes crashing down. But it served me well.

Then I was given a load of free 2×4’s, 2×3’s and some OSB from a completed church stage production. I had no idea what I was going to do with it and even though its just stock framing lumber I cannot say no to free or to wood. And if you combine the two you get me every time.

So as I was painfully extracting bent and overdriven 4” screws from my find, sizing and stacking them in the garage I was thinking what am I going to do with the stuff. A carelless turn while holding an 8’ 2×4 that sent my ramshackle ‘workbench’ crashing down once again gave me an idea. A workbench! Thats what the Church’s Christmas production stage leftovers was telling it wanted to be. And so it began…

I spent hours on LumberJocks pouring through the pictures of others beautifull hardwood workbenches. With vice grips and dog holes and deadmen. With drawers and cabinets and storage space. I drooled and made plans. I finally settled on a very basic design. And while I know that pine isnt the best wood for a workbench its all I got. It can always become a secondary bench should the Church decide to frame the Xmas production stage in hard Maple next year.

So with plans drawn I rough cut the required components last night.

Tonight I will cut straight edges on the 2×3’s I’m going to laminate on-edge for the top and do my first glue-ups.

-- “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” ~ JRR Tolkien