Members' Gallery - Share Your Builds

Finally An English Workbench

Here is my English Workbench, it got started and stopped, put in to storage and then, eventually finished. I didn't bother with the dovetail half laps and went with standard half laps as I always planned on painting the lower frame black. I haven't applied any finish to the top as I wanted to see how it moves before another flattening in six months or so time, the timber used to build this bench moved like buggery so I expect I will have some work to do. The Vice went together reasonably well with the main reason for using this face vice was because it I could straddle the leg as the bench is quite small (1400-1500mm) and also having reasonable capacity (300mm) between the guide bar and screw. Unfortunately the vice jaw bowed soon after installation, luckily I hadn't lined the jaw and just this weekend I opted to reflatten the inside face of the jaw with a combo of hand plane and chisel, lined the jaw and apron with a rubberised cork and beveled the leading edge. I'm dead chuffed with this bench.