Ash & Purpleheart Workbench

Well I never thought that I would accomplish this feat this early in my woodworking career. I just started doing it and before I knew it I had rough sawn ash stacked in my garage and vises in the mail. It really came to this because I needed better clamping options and I was tired of pushing my bench across the garage.

I have been working on this since October. The purpleheart was given to me as “scraps” from my uncle and I bought the ash directly from the sawmill. The vise on the end is a Grizzly Cabinet makers vise ($50) and the two screws in the “twin screw” vise are Tail-Vise screws ($37.50 each) from Lee Valley. The vises work very well. The twin screw vise does not tolerate being unequal on screw turns more than one revolution but it works fine, I’m still happy with the extra $200 in my pocket that I saved not buying the actual twin screw vise. I figure maybe someday I can put sprockets on the end and add a chain.

Basically all M&T joints with bolts through the joints on the crossbeams. I pegged the tenons with 1/2” purpleheart dowels made on the router with a 1/4” roundover bit. Good practice. Everything is real tight and this bench is very solid/sturdy.

It weighs in around 250 lbs, I think a bit more probably. I would have liked to taken pictures in the sun but no one has been around to help me carry it outside so that’s fine.

I finished it with a recipe I found in a couple of different places online, it is 2oz of beeswax shaved into 16oz of turpentine until it dissolved into a nice slurry and then I added 16oz BLO. It turned out really nice and the smell during application wasn’t bad at all. And when it did dry the bench mostly smells like beeswax. Once it dried I needed to buff it which really makes it look nice. It feels a bit tacky yet but I’m sure a few more days and some sawdust will take care of that.

I uploaded a few videos also. The first one being a general tour of the unfinished bench, the seconds being a timelapse of me applying finish which is pretty fun to watch, and then the final video is a couple things that I forgot to point out and it was taken after the finish was applied (but not buffed).

Big thanks to all of the help that I got from all of the LJ’s on here, especially on the Workbench Smack Down Forum.

Any comments are welcome, thanks for looking everyone!

-- Grant - S/N Dakota