My workbench is not quite finished, but far enough along that I thought I'd share some pictures.
Almost every single piece of wood is recycled -only the plywood for the cabinet underneath is not.
The oak came from an old transfer station in Fitchburg and the hard rock maple center slab from an old voc school in western, MA. The top finishes about 2" thick. Honestly, for a while I thought I wanted thicker, but this is just right... it's quite heavy enough that this is never going to accidentally move when I'm doing any planing on it (though most of my work is powered). I read through all of the workbench books and they were great at helping me get some of the features that I wanted straightened out...
The front is completely flush so that I can clamp doors and the like to the front. They aren't in yet, but more T-track will be getting installed in the front face of the top as well as the front face of the lower stretcher.
I did add some dog holes to allow me to use the vices for larger pieces, but as you can see, the less common feature I used was T-track. Coming from a metalworking side, everything uses T-channels and clamps.. the clamping is just tons more flexible in my mind. I'm using the Kreg clamping vices that they sell for their clamping table. 2 of the small ones and 2 of the long ones seems to give me pretty much whatever range I need. I machined the ends of the channels so that I can drop the Kreg clamps in place.
Originally, I didn't want the bright blue track that you can find in the woodworking places, so I ordered some T-track from McMaster-Carr... unfortunately, it seems that though it works, the top lip of the track is simply too thin for the clamping forces I like to use and gets slightly deformed.. no breaking (yet), but I expect to replace it with beefier t-track.. The only problem with the beefier t-track that I've found is that: 1.) it's blue.. and 2.) the hole spacing is too small. So I'll have to drill a bunch of holes and deal with the color. Oh well.
The design works great so far... and though it might not be everybody's cup of tea, I like the mixture of maple, red oak and white oak. I regret using a gloss finish though, so that may get sanded off and redone. Live and learn.
I just need to finish the cabinet below and I'll be good to go..
-Chris
PS. pay no attention to my bungled up dog hole in the CENTER OF THE TABLE... grrr.
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