Lot's of information here.
http://www.workbenchdesign.net/index.html
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Lot's of information here.
http://www.workbenchdesign.net/index.html
Good, Better, Best never let it rest
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What species is your tail vise made out of Sean? I went with a similar colour scheme just because I thought it looked neat. I used Nara.Originally Posted by Sean Hughto
Last edited by Chris Fournier; 07-25-2011 at 1:45 PM.
Member
Yours looks like a brother to mine, fer sure.
My tail vise is padauk, which I believe is what the guys used in the book. I did vary from the plan in terms of making my legs and stretcher slightly larger and the top the size I liked, etc.
Like you I found that a rolling cart fits nicely under the ends:
11bench2.jpg
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I've never used Klausz's bench (which I imagine would be exceptional), but I have used a modern "European", a Nicholson, and a Roubo extensively. The modern Euro benches have tail vises, which are really quite nice, I wish I had one on mine; a decent enough face vise; and are very questionable for planing the edges of long boards or door-type assemblies. Every time I needed to do that it was a huge production involving clamps way across the bench onto the tool tray (which also annoyed me, but it didn't irritate me nearly as much). In Landis's book, Klausz shows a board jack which goes in the tail vise, which would help a heck of a lot provided the board was long enough to reach.
The Nicholson, with its apron and the holdfast holes, handles doors and long boards with alacrity, although I would omit the crochet if I was to build another bench. I'm not really convinced about the merits of leg vises over conventional iron vises in the face position--always feels like six of one, half a dozen of the other to me. But I really miss that apron whenever I use another bench. It's really a joiner's bench, and since I lack power planing equipment, I end up needing that a lot. The usual criticism of the apron is that it largely prevents you from clamping directly to the top--I find holdfasts render this criticism moot.
My Roubo was flawed in a number of ways (thus I replaced it) but the core concept proved useful. I find for my work I prefer an apron, but flush legs helped a lot and the bench was massive enough to bore holes for holdfasts easily.
There are a number of blemishes in commercial benches that are not fundamental to the form--modern Euro benches don't have planing stops or holdfast holes, and they tend to be light enough to move around during vigorous planing. But these can be fixed relatively easily; the recessed leg design leading to awkwardness planing long boards is more fundamental. All the fixes I've seen for this defect either don't work with wide boards (in the case of boring holes for dogs into the meat of the bench) or don't work with short boards (in the case of the leg jack in the tail vise) or get in the way (in the case of a freestanding leg jack). It's not impossible to revive the form and make it useful, and certain aspects of it are really nice (tail vise comes to mind) but I haven't seen any such modifications really address the workholding issues.
Contributor
Hm.. some really nice bits of info here...
I think the style of bench we prefer is based partly on tradition and to some extent on the influence o fother writers on fora like this. The Ruobo is probably easier to build, and requiring less fiddly hardware than the Scandinavian design.
I think one's bench ideally needs to be adapted to the work . I can see a cabinet maker possibly wanting a wider bench than the joiner... it's also the first time I see the cabinet version of teh Ruobo - nice info...
The Scandinavian style bench is more of a universal or multipurpose bench - maybe not perfect for most tasks, but also quite suitable for most tasks. I grew up with these benches, as in the old norwegian educational system, there was 1 day a week with woodworking, from 4th to 7th grade. Most people those days ( around mid 60s) also added 1 year with a sort of continuance, where we had 1.5 day a week with woodworking, making quite advanced stuff, like cabinets, coffee tables etc.
I'm planning a new workshop, and a new bench, - Scandinavian style, but possibly trying to add a leg vise....
( I have some strange plans ahead... :-) )
What I'd really like to find, are some detailed plans of different end vises.... As I can no longer get simple stuff like vise screws or similar stuff over here, - at least not easily, I have to ponder a bit on what to do.
I can of course import the stuff I need, but expenses will be at least twice of what you guys pay... :-(
Last edited by Halgeir Wold; 07-25-2011 at 4:20 PM.
Member
Frid- Buffet.jpgHere's what the folks at a Canadian Bed & Breakfast hotel did with their workbench. Not meant to be inflammatory. For years my only bench was a small model Sjoberg. It was wholly useless in the shop so my wife and I used it as a portable bar when we had parties. I'd park a Stanley #5 on top to provoke conversation. Never could make a darned thing on that bench.
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Halgeir,
Do you know of these benches? http://www.workbenches.se/modellma.php
Contributor
Those are some real beauties! Classic design, wooden screws and all! And No- I've never seen those before...swedish maker....
We also have a norwegian maker Hamran ... http://www.hamran.no/hamran/høvelbenker/snekkerbenk -
Prices for these range from appx 1600 - 2000$..... all birch..
As it happens, I have all the wood for my bench... I dismantled some large japanese transport crates at work. The framing was a to me unknown wood, -very light in colour, very little figure, but weight and hardness seems to close to birch...
I also got quite a number of large and heavy plywood pieces to make cabinets... good catch -
( closest I can get to dumpster diving around here.... :-) all hardwood have to be specially ordered - at astronomical prices compared to yours ,, )
Guest
Helgeir,
I think Leif's benches go for around $1500.00 dollars. Might be worth a trip over to Sweden, just for the wooden vise screws, yes?
[OP]
Contributor
Hello all,
Thanks for all the good discussion. A couple of notes...
For those who want it all (or can't decide)...
http://woodtreks.com/design-build-tr...eg-vises/1651/
The Klausz article on the gorilla glue page above is an excellent resource. I also found this extensive write up by Steve Odut:
http://www3.telus.net/steve_n_shelly...nchwriteup.pdf
This will be my second bench and my leanings toward the KFS bench stem in part from the fact that I don't do (or plan to do) much large case work dimensioning of stock with handtools. Mostly, i'll be doing joinery and prepping pieces for finishing--the bulk of the heavy lifting will be done by machine. I don't edge plane long boards very often at all. And, frankly, I think it's a better looking bench to my eye (and i'm blessed by the fact that this is a total luxury build-if I didn't already have a bench or if i needed to be making money, i'd definitely build a roubo and be done with it as i'm sure it would be a 20-40% faster build)
I'll post pics of my old bench and the german tail vise screw that recently arrived soon.
Cheers,
Chris C.
Last edited by Christopher Charles; 07-28-2011 at 5:47 PM.
Member
Odut's bench, and write-up, are unbelievably good. I chose a much simpler design (Charlesworth's) for my bench. Chose -- yeah right -- it's what I could do. I'm glad to see that the Klausz design is not only alive, its looking better than ever.
Member
LOVE IT!!!
My first bench, back when I didn't know any better, was the smallest Sjöbergs model -- it weighed a grand total of about 60 whole pounds. At first, I literally chased the bloody thing all over my shop when trying to hand plane, then finally stabilised it some with 100 lbs of sand bags on a couple of 2 x 4s across the trestles. After that, it worked ok, but not great. There's now a larger (and much heavier) bench in my shop, so the small one gets used for stuff that I don't want to do on the bigger bench (sharpening, metal work, etc).....
James
"Uke is always right." (Attributed to Ueshiba Morihei)
[OP]
Contributor
Howdy,
Here's an update that's barely on-topic, as the shop-, fence-, picnic- table builds are all taking precendence over direct progress on the bench. Nonetheless...
Last weekend did manage to haul my wood collection out of storage (my mother in-law's garage) to the new shop space. The wood is dominated by several hundred bf of 20 year air-dried local walnut upto 14" wide--here's a couple piles of fun waiting to happen...
IMG_0601.JPGIMG_0602.JPG
The lumber rack went up this morning and has mostly QS white oak from the Columbia River gorge soon to be a sofa table for a friend.
As promised, here's the old bench--it's been great and I was absolute thrilled to get it when I was a starving grad student. 6'x18" pine 2x3's. My wife found it for me for $25 when we were in upstate NY. Happily, i feel like I've outgrown it.
The bench screw is the German one from woodcraft and will become the tail vise. I'm planning to order a LN screw for the shoulder vise. Needless to say, the tail vise screw is a bit beefier than my current vise hardware.
IMG_0583.JPG
Finally, here are the slabs that will become the base and part of the top. Mostly elm from a local park. I managed to mark these out before we started moving and I'm planning to rough cut them as soon as I get the rewiring done in a couple weeks (after I double-check the measurements!).
IMG_0598.JPG
Cheers,
Chris C.
[OP]
Contributor
Hello all,
I've made substantial progress since my last workbench post, with some twists and turns to boot. I'll post a series of updates over the next couple of days.
The biggest twist is that I've ended up going the route of a Roubo with a BC wagon vise. This was a challenging decision, but one that I made for two very specific reasons:
1) the wagon vise will allow the bench to be as long as can be and still fit into the space I have planned for it (thanks to Derek for pointing out this consideration)
2) I will use the bench above for dovetailing and other work after moving the end vise to the front with a new chop to make a large twin screw vise and raising the height a couple inches. This is the set up Jim Toplin shows in one of his recent books.
If I was only able to have a single bench, I would have gone with a LN tail vise (and still second guess this choice periodically; I still shudder to think of the karmic consequences of not following Larry Williams advise (no pun intended, really)). The economics were a consideration as well, but I was very fortunate to have two separate fine friends who gifted me wood for the base and top, so the difference in price of hardware was easier to justify. The gift of wood also played a role as the Roubo requires more lumber and if I'd been paying, I would have gone the less expensive route. Finally, time was also a bit of a factor, as I perceived that the Roubo would take less time to build (may or may not be true and over the course of years, any difference I would consider trivial in the end).
The wood for the base came as two 4.5" x ~ 20" x 10' slabs of elm. I helped mill these as green logs salvaged from our local city park and then let them sit for three year (while making all the decisions above...), moved them to a new house and chased them around the new shop for almost a year. Here are a few shots of the process of breaking down the slabs.
IMG_1080.jpgIMG_1083.jpg
Contributor
Wow, that is a nice hunk of wood.
I have one piece about as thick but only about 5' long. Been thinking about making some short legs for it and making a shaving/carving bench.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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