The first bench I made is still around and in use, however it’s very heavy, very large and in a very small space. Basically it’s would be a huge pain to move.
(and I’ve been eyeing up bench designs ever since I made my “roubo” bench and have just been waiting for an excuse to make a new one)
I started by looking at benches, then looking at wood, then looking at benches again and coming up with something that would work with the features I wanted, and the wood that I could find.
I went to Yandles to pick up the majority of the wood,
as I didn’t have any really large pieces.
I settled on some ash 6"x3” and sapele 12"x2”
as well as some odds and ends in both sapele and ash.
I already had some 6"x1” ash back at the store as well.
I had a quick watch through various workbench youtube videos and some Woodwright shop episodes as well as flicking through a ton of books.
In the end I drew up this crude 3D model in OpenSCAD
based on the 1800’s Moravian bench shown on the woodwrights shop and later documented online.
(OpenSCAD is a bit sketchy on my ancient laptop, but it’s fun to try out, the code is below if you’re curious.)
My last bench was made of built up stock, mainly 4"x1” and 4"x2” stock glued together.
This time I decided to live on the edge and reduced the dimentions of the original bench to match the wood availible.
I’m banking on Ash being stronger than Pine so hopefully 3” square legs will be OK.
I’m a little less confident in the top, being only 2” thick. I did consider doing a weird hybrid by adding a skirt to the front, but decided against it for now.
The beauty of the knock-down bench design is that if the top doesn’t work, or fails some time in the future, it will be really easy to just take it off and switch it out with a new one.
