Now that we seem to have finally turned the corner of winter and the days are drawing out a little I’m starting to look forward to working on my boat and using my new garage as a workshop.  As soon as I have cleared out the junk and draught proofed the door I intend to build myself a work bench where I can carry out wood working projects for my Flicka.  I’ve never much liked working on the dockside without a proper bench to work on.  I do have a small plastic vice which is surprisingly effective when clamped to the table in my Flicka. However, handling sheets of plywood, using a router or planing a piece of timber is a challenge without a proper workshop.

So, I first looked at various ready made benches for sale and found that these vary from the luxury top of the range hand built benches provided by Richard Mguire: http://www.rm-workbenches.co.uk/ to very cheap ‘noddy’ benches that look like childrens toys.  Mr Maguires benches are very nice indeed and ideal if you have the cash and want something really beautiful and practical and long lasting at the same time. Also I think very good value when you consider the cost of the timber and how long it would take to make to that standard.  The are also some very good benches provided by companies such as Axminster in the UK. Here is their heavy duty work bench:  http://www.axminster.co.uk/recno/3/product-Axminster-Heavy-Duty-Bench-with-Shelf-and-Cupboard-21595.htm.

There are also some lovely benches made by Swedish company Sjobergs which are comparable with the Axminster ones.

However, after a lot of researching and thinking I realised that I couldn’t really justify an expensive bench. After all I intend to use it for routing and glueing up with epoxy and so it will get abuse. What’s more I don’t really want to be working on something that I am afraid to damage.  I do think a Maguire bench would really inspire me but then again, since I’m a beginner, do I really deserve such a beauty?  Besides, these benches require a stable environment and my garage was quite damp this winter.  Something incorporating plywood might be more sensible.

Then I came across this site: http://www.workbenchdesign.net/ which is full of useful stuff about benches and bench design and construction. But most importantly I stumbled upon Tom Caspar's design for a torsion box bench. This is a very clever method which uses torsion boxes which are simply boxes made from plywood on a framework of 2 by 4’s. It’s very strong and heavy which is critically important for a work bench and for a beginner with little spare cash it’s cheap, quick and easy to build. This is the bench I have decided to build.  This is an overview with links to a downloadable PDF that shows you how to build it.

http://www.workbenchdesign.net/bench1.html

But there’s another set of instructions on the American woodworker site which is also easy to follow:

http://americanwoodworker.com/blogs/projects/archive/2009/03/04/tom-s-torsion-box-workbench.aspx

When I’ve cleared out the garage and rounded up the materials I hope to blog about this project soon.  I’m hoping my local DIY store will stock suitable plywood because they have a huge cutting machine and it would save me a lot of time and effort to have the panels pre-cut nice and square with good clean edges.

Gus