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| Pre-fitting my first dovetailed box |
I have spent about a year learning as much as I can about woodworking, and especially working with hand tools. By hand tools I don't mean circular saws, jig saws, and hand routers (though I do own them), but the tools of my father and grandfather, such as hand planes, hand saws, and the good ole brace and bit.
I'm not precisely sure what got me into these tools. One day I decided I needed a sturdy workbench for my garage. That was it. Nothing else. The idea was that if I had to work on my car, a nice, flat, horizontal surface would really be handy. I wanted something really sturdy so I spent some time doing some research. I needed something simple, but really strong (who knows when I'll have to toss a transmission on the thing), and settled on a torsion box design similar to Tom's Torsion Box Workbench. Simple, sturdy, and extremely inexpensive, especially when you consider I had to settle on a 2'x4' design, as that was the max length I could fit into my little coupe. A couple pcs of plywood, hardboard, and a few 2x4s, and I was home free...except I couldn't afford the expensive miter saw, electric drill, and circular saw. I figured I could afford the drill and a handsaw (it wasn't until about a month later that I found out that I had purchased a "crosscut" saw) and that's exactly what I bought. No more and no less. It was good enough.
I loved it. It's not that the workbench turned into something absolutely amazing. It didn't. I just enjoyed the time I spent working with wood. I rushed it, didn't follow directions, made a ton of mistakes, but I made it work and still use it to this day for many tasks. You can see below that I didn't create a piece of art, but just a workbench, and I really have to say I learned a lot from a simple project. It was awesome.
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| Frame almost done |
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| Done enough for me at the time |
So since then I've made quite a few projects (for a guy who only gets to play on the weekends), and have been dying to share some of my experiences with anyone or no one, whoever may be out there that wants to hear about my silly mistakes and silly successes. They're all pretty much same these days.
So stay tuned if you'd like to see more projects, pictures, and hear more about my foray into the world of woodworking in the past year and moving forward!
Hi Josh,
ReplyDeleteI took a few days and reviewed all of your posts since they appeared on the Unplugged site. Nice work you are doing and I will be following. I do have a question about your workbenches. Since I haven't built mine yet, the 1.0 by Tom and a similar design to your first are my two considerations at this time. Why did you move away from or what's wrong the first design? Thanks, Ed
Hey there, Ed. Actually, the design of the more "traditional" bench was awesome. The only problems I had really came down to my skills at the time. I still use the bench today, really, though I've been using my new modified Tom's bench for the majority of my work (see my newest post). In the traditional bench, it was my first time really doing a large scale project. I also liked the traditional approach and so I also used tusked tenons to hold it all together. My problem was my joints were sloppy and the top was twisted during glue-up. I didn't get a ton of racking, but there was enough to make it noticeable. It's still a good bench, but it was my own fault as to why it's only become secondary. I also went through about 5-6 changes in vise styles before I found one that worked for me. The Tom's bench in this post was actually my first bench that got me into woodworking, and it was going to be just a garage bench. I didn't realize it would become addictive. I just built another Tom's which I modified the design to allow for my style of vices (and it's full size) which you can see in the newest post. It's rock solid. I've even though about laminating a top to put on the base instead of the torsion top, but I haven't seen too much of a need yet. Eventually I'll probably build another traditional bench, but with much better joinery...I just love the way they look and feel. But for the price and ease of build, Tom's is a great early bench that I can beat up, modify, hone my skills, and really figure out what I like before I go off the deep end. The only problem with the traditional bench was me. --Josh
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