Workbench v2

I built my work table more than 40 years ago. It is built out of 3/4” plywood and the top is a remnant of a solid core 1-3/4” door. Originally, it just sat on the floor. I later added some locking casters. I was never really happy with them because it never really stopped the thing from shaking. The vise is entirely constructed out of plywood except the bench screw. The screw was originally a 1/2” threaded rod which I later upgraded. This was my original low budget workbench.

I don’t do a lot of hand work. I do mainly machine work so this thing is a combination of assembly table and in-feed/out-feed table for my table saw. It has functioned well but is starting to get a little decrepit and shaky so I thought it was time to replace it.

My new workbench is a little more up-town than the original one was. The dimensions are very similar to my original so it can still be used as an in-feed/out-feed table or an assembly table. It is 27“ wide by 34” high by 53 “ long. The top is made out of hardwood flooring leftover from when I helped my son install hardwood flooring in his condo fifteen years ago. I ripped it all down and glued it up. The boards ended up being about 1-3/4” by 1/2” so there are a lot of pieces in the top. I glued the top up in sections to match the capacity of my jointer and planer to minimize the amount of hand work needed.

I added a twin screw vise from Lee Valley on the end and a face vise on the left hand side.

I say it is a light duty workbench in the English tradition.

I decided I wanted lots of dog holes in the top so I could bolt down jigs. I didn’t want to purchase one of the commercially available dog hole jigs. They are expensive and I would likely only use it a couple times. I came up with a solution using materials that I already had in my shop.

I used a heavy peg-board with 1/4” holes and a sub base for my plunge router. I drew a grid on the peg-board and drilled some holes. I ended up with 5” by 6” spacing.

I cut off some 1/4” bolts, rounded them and epoxied them into the sub-base for indexing pins. You can see it is a little dark where I got the chuck a little too close to the sub-base.

I used a 3/4” router bit to cut the holes. To keep myself oriented, I placed tick marks on the side of the sub-base to align with the grid on the peg-board. That way, I was able to place it on the peg-board and make sure I was in the right holes. It only took me about two hours to make all the holes once the jig was assembled. I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

The base of the bench is local air-dried lodgepole pine. The frames are held together with pinned mortise and tennons. The end frames are attached to the stretchers with Lee Valley cross dowel knock down fasteners.

The casters are on hinged platforms that are engaged with an eccentric lever to lift the bench off the floor. The eccentric pivot point on the lever is about 1” off-center. I went with larger caster because my garage floor is pretty rough. The larger casters allow me to role this thing over top of cords and cracks in the floor and all the rest of the stuff.

When the lever is in the up position, the workbench sits on its glides.

When the lever is the down position, pressure is applied to the caster platform lifting the bench off the floor.

It took a bit of fooling around to get the eccentric offset correct. The casters platform has to be parallel to the ground for the caster to work properly.