An Occasional Sawbench

[Steve Kang]

I built this split top bench to do double duty for sawing and seating. As I'm currently living in an apartment, the bench need to be aesthetically pleasing enough to live in the living room and also work in my micro-shop. I still need to finish the tool tray to fit my D8's, and give it a good scraping and a coat of deftoil, but structurally it's complete.

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[Andrew Hughes]

Looks nice Steve,nothing like nice tools to inspire us to keep doing exceptional work.A good beach is a important tool.

[william watts]

What a great idea, a saw bench and a bench bench. I may build one for extra seating and a saw bench in my garage shop. Yours is beautiful work and a real conversation starter in the living room.

[brad jansen]

Outstanding job and well designed.

[Joe A Faulkner]

Very nice. When I picked up the lumber for my bench build, I threw one 8/4 piece of walnut in for good measure thinking I'd work it into the bench top, but couldn't bring myself to do it. But I have enough scrap maple to make a saw bench; so who knows that 8/4 walnut just wind up in a shop project after all, especially seeing how nice it looks. Very well done.

[Jim Matthews]

Yours is much nicer than mine, but similar in design.
I have a removable center board, which is tapered.

A couple of taps and it's solid. One sharp rap, and it's out.

Now that you have a 3/4" hole on each end, consider the longer hold downs from Veritas.

I've found that for ripping long boards, it's much easier to do off to one side of the bench than down the center.
A second bench (no fixtures, same height) makes it a breeze.

What are you using for saws?

Kudos

[Pat Barry]

Yours is much nicer than mine, but similar in design.
I have a removable center board, which is tapered.

A couple of taps and it's solid. One sharp rap, and it's out.

Now that you have a 3/4" hole on each end, consider the longer hold downs from Veritas.

I've found that for ripping long boards, it's much easier to do off to one side of the bench than down the center.
A second bench (no fixtures, same height) makes it a breeze.

What are you using for saws?

Kudos

Jim - are you using the two benches side by side to do the ripping? How is that different than having the slot for ripping down the center?

[Jim Matthews]

I rip down the center of boards less than 30" long.

I rip with longer boards clamped to the main saw bench, and the other sawbench some distance away to hold up the "free" end.
The sawbenches are in line with the board.

It's rare that I work with anything much more than 12" wide.
That's just enough to hang over the bench with the holding fixtures.

To rip things less than 18" long (or so) I like to rip vertically in one of the bench vises.
That's not practical for anything longer, nor is it faster.

FYI - I'm not skilled enough to work from the saw straight to joinery - everything gets a swipe from the plane to get into square.