I've been working on building Popular Woodworking's "24 Hour" workbench this week. The premise is that you can build the bench in a total of 24 hours of work. I've been trying to figure out for a year now what I wanted to build for a workbench. I've been afraid to spend the money a "real" bench would cost in case I didn't get it right. Finally, I decided this would be the way to go.
I started last Saturday picking up the lumber. Sunday I glued up the top. A few nights this week I spent a couple hours each machining parts and building the base. Yesterday I glued the banding on the top, and finished everything else today. All that's left is to apply finish. I figure I'll be right about at 24 hours when I'm done, not including cleaning up the mess. I'm also adding a couple of enhancements that I've seen in my other readings on the subject.
The top is 4 layers of 3/4" baltic birch banded with 2x SYP. The base is all SYP. The vises are Record's which I picked up at two different liquidation places over the past 2 years. It is very solid, but possibly a little light. I plan to build tool storage for underneath which should solve the weight issue. In all, I'll probably have about $200 in the bench.
Reply With Quote