A Workbench

Why a workbench first

Every hand-tool operation - planing, sawing, chopping, paring - depends on holding the work still against heavy force. The bench is the most important tool in the shop, and building it teaches milling, big joinery, and flattening at a scale that forgives small errors ¹.

Design principles

Good hand-tool benches share a few traits ²:

• Mass: a thick, heavy top (3 inches or more) doesn’t bounce or slide when you plane.
• Rigidity: stout legs joined with mortise and tenon or drawbored joints, so the bench doesn’t rack.
• Height: low enough to plane with body weight over the tool. A starting point is the height of your palm with your arm hanging relaxed, commonly 33 to 38 inches. Build it a little tall; legs can be shortened.
• Front flush: the front edge of the top and the front legs in one plane, so long boards can be clamped to the bench front for edge planing.
• Length: long enough to plane your longest boards, typically 6 to 8 feet.
• Width: about 20 to 24 inches - enough to work on, narrow enough to reach across.

Workholding

Simple, traditional workholding does nearly everything ²:

• Leg vise: a wooden chop on a screw at the front leg, with a parallel guide at the bottom. Holds boards on edge for jointing and dovetailing, with huge clamping power.
• Planing stop: a block that rises above the top at one end. Push the board against it to plane faces; no clamping needed.
• Holdfasts: bent iron rods dropped into 3/4-inch holes in the top. A mallet tap wedges them tight against the work; a tap on the back releases them.
• Holes in the front legs with a peg or holdfast to support long boards held in the vise.
• Doe’s foot or batten: a notched batten held by a holdfast to stop thin boards from swinging.

A tail or wagon vise adds convenience but isn’t essential.

A plan to build from

Christopher Schwarz’s The Anarchist’s Workbench is a free PDF from Lost Art Press, released under a noncommercial Creative Commons license ². It’s a chunky yellow-pine bench built from 2×12 construction lumber, with a leg vise, planing stop, and holdfasts - the distillation of two decades of building historical benches ². Download it and use its dimensions and sequence; this lesson is the overview.

Build sequence

1. Buy and acclimate the lumber: the straightest, clearest 2×12s you can find, stickered indoors for a few weeks. Construction lumber is wet and moves as it dries.
2. Rip and glue up the top from strips, edge-glued face to face, in sections you can handle.
3. Make the legs: laminate from 2× stock if needed, mill square.
4. Cut the joints: big mortises in the top or legs and tenons on the stretchers, often drawbored so the bench pulls itself tight without glue or clamps.
5. Assemble the base, then fit the top to it.
6. Flatten the top: traverse with a fore plane, check with winding sticks and a straightedge, then jointer and smooth.
7. Install workholding: the leg vise, planing stop, and holdfast holes.
8. Finish lightly or not at all; a little boiled linseed oil keeps glue drips from sticking.

Many people build the bench with only a few hand tools and a circular saw, flattening on sawhorses until the bench can hold its own work.

What to take from this

A hand-tool bench needs mass, rigidity, a flush front, and a height around 33 to 38 inches (build it slightly tall). A leg vise, planing stop, and holdfasts hold nearly everything. Schwarz’s free Anarchist’s Workbench plan builds a heavy pine bench from 2×12s; acclimate the lumber, laminate the top and legs, drawbore the base, flatten the top, and add workholding.