By my calculation the woodworking bench plans allowed me to put the wood bench together on my own and I saved a lot of money doing so, rather than having someone else build one for me. The project gave me a great sense of accomplishment and the wood bench is a welcome addition to our backyard.
So let’s get started. The first step in building your work bench is to cut the 4×4’s to length. Use the miter saw and trim the four legs to 35″. You also should pre-drill the holes for the lag screws. Drill a 1-3/4″ countersink with a 1/4″ through hole. The top rails are flush with the top of the legs and centered on the legs. The lower rails are centered on the leg with the bottom edge 10″ from the floor.
Today a good workbench will come in all shapes and sizes. It may be a small foldable one that can be taken from job to job or it may be heavy furniture like piece with drawers and cabinets, which is a permanent fixture in your workshop. Often the permanent woodworking benches have a standard top and their counter height is normally about 36″ from the ground. This is ideal for many woodworking projects, but if you want you can purchase an adjustable bench. This is particularly handy if you want to tailor them to your own height and also the tools that you will be working with.
Cut all the 2×4’s to length making sure the ends are square.
As any woodworking fanatic will know a bench is an essential fixture in any good workshop. Fine woodworking benches can either be portable or a permanent fixture. Some even may come equipped with drawers, vises or a drafting table tilt top. But a good quality bench will not only help the work to go faster and more accurately it will also keep the user safe.
Materials List
32 – 1/4″ x 2-1/2″ Lag Screws
I decided to give it a shot and found out instantly that my friend was 100% right! The woodworking bench plans that I purchased could not have been any easier to follow! They were so detailed in each step that I was able to complete the entire construction of my wood bench in less than 3 hours! Imagine that, I started the project Saturday morning and was completed before lunch. I was then able to enjoy the rest of the weekend relaxing with my wife and watching the kids play.
If we think of the earliest plane as being a blade stuck in a flat block then these two elements will be the most important to consider. The quality of the blade and the flatness of the sole or bottom of a plane. With the earlier wooden planes flatness of the sole was not difficult to adjust, with metal planes manufacturing quality becomes a serious issue. Thankfully manufacturers have in the past 10 years addressed this issue and the flatness of the sole of some of our planes now means they do not need any attention.
There are about 15 student benches in the workshop. If I look under each of them what we would find is either a Clifton plane or a Lie Nielsen plane. We have had Veritas planes in the workshop they were fashionable at one time but we have had real problems with them maintaining absolute flatness of the sole over a period of time. This may well have been a manufacturing problem that they’ve overcome but we haven’t seen more recently manufactured planes in order to test them so we cannot recommend Veritas at the moment.
