NotchLoading plan…
Loading plan…
Use your browser's Print (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and choose Save as PDF. This page works offline once you've opened it with a signal.
Heavy laminated maple top, bolted base, one good vise. Build this before you build anything else.
| Part | Qty | T × W × L | Material | ✓ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top laminations Glued face-to-face on edge. 20 x 1.5" ≈ a 30" wide top, trimmed to 24". Cut long, trim after. | 20 | 1 1/2" × 3" × 62" | Hard Maple | ☐ |
| Legs Laminate from 8/4. Final bench height ~36" — measure to your own wrist, not to a number in a book. | 4 | 3 1/2" × 3 1/2" × 33" | Ash | ☐ |
| Long stretchers | 2 | 1 3/4" × 5" × 44" | Ash | ☐ |
| Short stretchers | 2 | 1 3/4" × 5" × 16" | Ash | ☐ |
| Vise jaw liner Wood liners on the vise jaws so metal never touches your work. | 2 | 3/4" × 4" × 10" | Hard Maple | ☐ |
| Item | Qty | ✓ |
|---|---|---|
| Hard maple, 8/4, for the top (Hard Maple) ~$7/bd ft rough. Buy rough and mill it yourself — surfaced maple doubles the price and you're re-milling it anyway. | 40 board feet | ☐ |
| Hard maple or ash, 8/4, for the base (Ash) | 20 board feet | ☐ |
| Front vise (quick-release, 9-10") Buy a good one. A cheap vise that racks and slips will annoy you every single day for twenty years. | 1 each | ☐ |
| Bench bolts / barrel nuts Knock-down base. A workbench that can't leave the shop was a design mistake. | 8 each | ☐ |
| Waterproof wood glue The top glue-up alone eats most of this. | 32 oz | ☐ |
| Bench dogs, 3/4" | 6 each | ☐ |
| Boiled linseed oil / wax finish NOT polyurethane. You want a repairable, non-slick finish that glue won't bond to. A film finish on a bench top is a mistake. | 16 oz | ☐ |
Overall cost: $$$$. Lumber varies by region, species, and season, so we give a band rather than a figure.
Stand up straight and let your arms hang. The bench top should land somewhere between your wrist crease and about 2" below it.
Taller if you do mostly joinery and detail work; lower if you do a lot of hand planing, because you want to get your body weight over the plane.
Adjust the leg length in the cut list to whatever that gives you. Do not use 36" because a plan said so.
Tools: Jointer, Table Saw. Materials: Hard maple, 8/4, for the top
Rip 20 strips at 3" wide from your 8/4 maple, ~62" long. Joint one face and one edge of each.
They must be flat and consistent. Twenty strips of slightly-different thickness is twenty small errors that add up into a top you'll spend a weekend flattening.
Tools: Hand Plane, Parallel Clamps. Materials: Waterproof wood glue
Do not attempt all 20 at once. You will not get glue on all of them before the first joints start to set, and you will have built an expensive firewood sculpture.
Glue in groups of 4–5. Flatten each section's faces. Then glue the sections to each other. Four or five smaller, controlled glue-ups.
Use cauls. Keep it flat. Overnight between each.
Tools: Hand Plane, Straight Edge
Nothing in a home shop will surface a 24" x 60" x 3" slab. So: winding sticks to find the twist, a jack plane across the grain to knock down the high spots, then a jointer plane along the grain, then a smoothing plane.
Check constantly with a straight-edge in both directions and diagonally. Chase it until it's flat.
This takes hours. It's also the most satisfying work in the whole build, and it's why the bench is worth having.
Tools: Chisels, Drill / Driver. Materials: Hard maple or ash, 8/4, for the base, Bench bolts / barrel nuts
Mortise-and-tenon the stretchers into the legs, but assemble with bench bolts, not glue — a glued base is a base that never leaves the shop through a standard door.
Dry fit, check for square and no rack, then bolt it up.
Tools: Drill Press. Materials: Bench dogs, 3/4"
3/4" holes, on the drill press, dead perpendicular, in a row about 4" in from the front edge, spaced ~6" apart.
Perpendicular matters enormously: a dog hole drilled at 3° off vertical will tilt a bench dog, which tilts your workpiece, on every project, forever.
Tools: Chisels, Drill / Driver. Materials: Front vise (quick-release, 9-10")
Follow the vise maker's instructions — mounting varies. Generally: mortise the rear jaw into the underside of the top so the vise's jaw sits flush with the bench's front edge.
Line both jaws with maple. Get the jaws parallel and flush with the benchtop; check with a straight-edge across them.
Tools: Random Orbit Sander. Materials: Boiled linseed oil / wax finish
Boiled linseed oil and wax. Never polyurethane — you want glue to pop off, not bond, and you want to be able to re-oil a scratched top in ten minutes instead of stripping it.
Then stop treating it as furniture. Drill it, clamp to it, cut on it, dent it. It's a tool. The scars are the point.