• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Vice Disaster

This is like workbench top trumps :lol:

Seriously, I'm finding this useful I was going to ask sometime soon to see peoples benches to get ideas for mine.
 
Well I’m glad that it’s been useful,and fun,I was hoping. So go ahead and ask, start a new topic I suppose there are some parameters or maybe you don’t have any ideas yet. Thinking out loud with not a lot of pre-thought.
Freestanding or wall mounted.
Style, as in Roubo English or whatever, pick from a dozen.
Solid bashable or MFT or whatever it’s called with all the holes in it.
Leg vice or traditional record type. Position of vice. Fixing of vice.
End vice ?
Height?
Holdfasts?
A well?
Debates with regard to type of timber, methods of construction.
Dear God the more I think about it this it could be a very long topic so think carefully Matt before opening this particular can of worms as everyone will have their own unshakable ideas. Ian
 
Can I put forward this bench for Top Trumps? Feast your eyes on this beauty:

J9QgUKk.png

8' x 4' Workbench, very Spartan and practical, no vices, holdfasts, wells, or any other fancy accoutrements you Easterners may be used to.

Made with a stout 4" x 3" softwood frame which were lengths that were too badly split for any actual work.

Qrx9LIG.png

12mm MDF 8' x 4' sheet as a work surface.

G2WPjk2.png

Textured finish, of course.

7VYIxqU.png

The top is loose on the top of the bench, so if needed it can be pushed so that one side is flush with the base for cramping stuff to the side of the table.

uYuubBA.png

Loads of storage space underneath, I'd argue you'd get more under there than any other bench builds with all those fancy drawers and shelves.

GxNkbz8.png

How do you rate it? 8-)
 
I like it, but I think you will struggle spinning it out into your own YouTube series and selling courses on how to build it... ;)
 
Fine........ for an assembly bench. :lol: I don't think it would help much when chopping out mortises or edge-planing boards.
 
Mike G":29fhkvbw said:
Fine........ for an assembly bench. :lol: I don't think it would help much when chopping out mortises or edge-planing boards.
Click to expand...

You'd be very surprised how stout and heavy it actually is, there is very little rebound if you're working around the edge of the frame, in the middle where it's just ~12mm MDF is a different story! You may notice there's another identical one off to the left in the first photo, that one has 3/4" plywood on top and that definitely is a more solid and flatsurface to work on.

I don't think I've edge planed off it as such, but I've definitely edge sanded with a belt sander by g-clamping the workpiece to the side of the bench, hence why the benchtop isn't fixed in place :D

AndyT":29fhkvbw said:
I like it, but I think you will struggle spinning it out into your own YouTube series and selling courses on how to build it... ;)
Click to expand...

"Build a workbench in a couple of hours for pennies", is much more appealing in my opinion than "Build the most elaborate workbench from the most exotic materials with all the expensive gadgets and gizmos" :lol:
 
In the trade, all the guys used to have two benches; one to actually make the component parts and the other was a 8x4 sheet of mdf on a pine frame, exactly the same as the one above (^) More often that not though, the job was built on the assembly table and the proper bench was used as a large, heavy storage shelf :lol: - Rob
 
TobyT":ynewqzp6 said:
If anyone is still looking for vices buying an old workbench can be a cheap way to get one/more old vices. I recently bought an old college workbench for £60. From memory it came with 52P, 52 and a 52.5QR. They need a bit of a clean up but were useable.
If I was any nearer I would be putting a bid on this.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Double-vice- ... _Auction=1
Click to expand...


This is only 20 miles from me so I favourited it and went in this morning... I waited for the last 20 seconds and put in a max bid of £75 which was immediately outbid by the previous max bid of another buyer. I didn't go any higher as it would only have been a temp bench to allow me to build my workshop cabinets on more than my workmate so I missed out. Not to worry, it has got me looking for other SH benches now though...
 
gratuitous bench shots? yer ok I don't much encouragement.

3x2 CLS for the entire thing, no screws all real joints, yes the wood is shite, but the chisel is sharper.
nearly 5 years since I made it, hard to believe that to be honest. but it's still going strong having made many random bits of tat on it.
it's gotten sopping wet from a leak in the roof, it's gotten burned from welding over it, screwed to, nailed to and beaten with a hammers for wood work, metal work and the occasional bit of jewelry, it's had oil dripped on from engine rebuilds and the occasional nice wood working project. currently I can see about 2ft either side of the vices of it as it's covered in crap, machines, bits of guitar and some weird contraption or other.

I don't think you can build a cheaper bench that is of comparable quality.

25863692085_8cfc5e62a0_o.png

I see the bench as the first project any workshop should do, I don't consider it to be fine furniture and it should be made as quickly and as cheaply as possible yet still capable of withstanding all the crap you can chuck at it.
my dads workbench was a steel frame with laminate worktops on, he was a welder by trade so it made sense to be made of metal, he had a cap he could drop over it if he needed to weld directly on it but rarely used it.
before that it was a steel frame with 5 planks of whatever he could get but around the 4" thick.
I've always followed the same approach as he did. the bench is there to be worked on, make it from what you've got then get on with the work.
 
Just to update this thread, here is my bench replete with new vice and apron. The apron itself is 30mm thick, and has another 30mm planted on the inside at the lower edge, giving me 60mm I can clamp to:

oiu36ss.png
 
Yes, I did. The female threads were quite gunked up, and the UNC alternative to Whitworth needed just a little fine-tuning, but it all pulled together nicely in the end. Unfortunately, the straight new apron forms a lip with the top of the bench for a couple of feet, so I have the option of planing the apron down to suit, cutting in a patch to the benchtop, or replacing the benchtop. I'm rather attached to my battered old benchtop, so I am loathe to do the latter. I'm just living with it for the time being and I'll make up my mind in due course.
 
I imagine it’s the area behind and to the right of the vice, you’ve worn it away Mike! Would it be possible to take it off and put it across your planer? I certainly wouldn’t plane that new front face to match the dip, perhaps it’s time for a new top on that side.
 
No, if I took it off Ian it would go back in at the same level as there are two big M&Ts holding it in place at each end.
 
Yep, I made a little wooden dog for it....just in case.
 
TrimTheKing":cvaa85t8 said:
TobyT":cvaa85t8 said:
If anyone is still looking for vices buying an old workbench can be a cheap way to get one/more old vices. I recently bought an old college workbench for £60. From memory it came with 52P, 52 and a 52.5QR. They need a bit of a clean up but were useable.
If I was any nearer I would be putting a bid on this.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Double-vice- ... _Auction=1
Click to expand...


This is only 20 miles from me so I favourited it and went in this morning... I waited for the last 20 seconds and put in a max bid of £75 which was immediately outbid by the previous max bid of another buyer. I didn't go any higher as it would only have been a temp bench to allow me to build my workshop cabinets on more than my workmate so I missed out. Not to worry, it has got me looking for other SH benches now though...
Click to expand...

Shame, would have been a good purchase for the bench alone. It was the same reason I ended up buying a bench on ebay. I moved into this house 5 years ago and have been planning to build myself a proper bench ever since I moved in, but work off the workmate until then...finally I saw sense and realised that anything would be better. It's now comfortably covered in cr*p and the resulting working space is only slightly larger than a workmate; but it doesn't move and has two vices (the third is sitting under the bench waiting to be renovated).

Good condition 'classic' work benches seem to fetch some silly money. I think they get used for upcycled kitchen islands and the like. If you go for something that bored schoolkids have sawn into, hammered 6" nails though and generally abused then the price drops considerably.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top