Building an oak and Douglas fir workbench using salvaged wood from a timber yards mistakes and off cuts.
Workbench Design
5ft long by 3ft wide is a good size workbench for a small workshop. It’s not that often that I need to plane timber longer than 5ft and with a width of 3ft gives me access to work on all four sides.
One heavy, strong last a lifetime workbench. That’s relatively simple to build with basic woodworking tools. Solid oak legs rebated into the top, With a restored 10” Parkinson’s face vice. Using wedged mortice & tenon joinery to clamp the lower rail and sides together.
Making the base
Starting with the legs and remembering to make the legs longer than necessary. I will cut them down to a sensible working height when its finished. What’s important is to be able to plane and chisel at the bench while keeping my back straight. leaning over a workbench that’s to low all day is no fun.
When marking out the tenons for the large 8” side rails put a pencil line exactly in the centre of the 8 x 2 and mark out the mortice either side of the centre line.
Clamp and screw the side together check all four corners for square. Having these side rails housed into the legs is for extra strength taking some of the pressure off the tenon, especially due to the substantial weight of the mid rail.
Mortice and tenon, mid rail
The legs and sides are set at a five-degree angle. It’s important to cut the mortice and tenon at the same five-degree angle. This will make sure that the mid rail is in line with the top. All the joinery layouts are using a centre line marking system as a datum.
Assemble the two sides and the lower rail hammering the wedges in hard to clamp the workbench together. The bench should now stand up on its own.
Making the top
laying the 6 x 4 oak slab onto the top of the adjoining legs. Then sitting underneath to mark a pencil line around the leg and side rail. Do this on all four legs then roll the oak over and saw and chisel away until you get a good fit.
No glue in this project. The sides & top are all held in position with large tech screws. The tops screwed down and the holes Plugged. The entire workbench can easy be disassemble if I ever need to.
Installing the vice
Having restored a 10 “Parkinson woodworking vice. The face of the vice needs to be about 3/8ths, lower than the top of the workbench. You don’t want any metal near the workbench surface. Next the internal vice jaw also needs to be set into the front face. Allowing enough room for a wooden face plate to be flush with the front of the workbench and top.
For the finish I applied 2 coats of rustic pine wax and 1 coat of clear wax. Buffed it off. that’s it, easy to apply no sanding between coats apply an even layer with a lint free cloth leave for 30 minutes. Then polish it off with a clean lint free cloth.
Thanks for reading
Best Matt North
A couple more workbenches for you to take alook at
Pine beginner’s workbench project here
New Workbench for my garage workshop here
