Folding Workbench
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1 Folding Workbench This folding workbench, modified from an early twentieth-century design, will serve you handily even if you already have a heavy, fixed workbench. Henry Mayhew, writing on the lives of the working poor in nineteenth- century London, described the arrival of a country carpenter at a metro- politan sweatshop. Unable to ñnd a bench to work at, he chose an empty corner of the shop, pulled up some of the floorboards, and went to work standing in this hole using the floor as his benchtop. I wish I had a good ending to the story of this carpenter who started in the hole, and how he came up in the world, and that his name was Duncan Phyfe, and that he literally started at the ground floor. But I don't have such an end for this story, only the beginning; and like this country carpenter, you need to be- gin with a bench. This folding workbench has a solid work surface ten inches wide and a tool well of equal width. It is a simple piece, yet very sturdy and a great thing to have when you are working out of the shop or don't have space for a permanent bench. The height of a workbench is governed not by a rule of thumb but by a rule of knuckles. As you stand beside the bench, your knuckles should just brush the top. This is a good height for sawing and planing stock on the benchtop, yet it won't force you to swing your mallet too high when chiseling. On average, this height comes to about 30 inches, but you should make it to fit yourself, not the average. And, be With the diagonal braces removed, the leg frames on this little bench fold reasonably warned, I like a benchtop that is about one or two inches lower than most flat against the top. folks. At one shop where I used to work, it was not a week after my last day before all the benche s had two-inc h extension s on the bottom s of all the legs. The work surface and the tool well are joined on their undersid e by two or three cross-battens . Hinged to the outermos t batten s are leg frames, and two braces pivot down from a centra l batten to connec t to the leg frames with carriage bolts and wing nuts. When you unscrew the wing nuts, the leg frames will fold up to lie against the top. (If you want the legs to fold completel y flat against the top, you need to modify this design ei- ther by spacing the leg frames farther apart or by offsetting them someho w so that they miss one anothe r when they fold.) With the exception of the 3A-inch board for the tool well and its skirt- ing, the whole bench can be made from a single rough-saw n two-by-ten . You need a full thicknes s two-by-te n plank, not one that has been ma- chine-plane d down to PA inche s (but such stuff must do if you have no choice) . Look for the stiffest stuff that you can find, such as tight-graine d hard yellow pine. My bench is only 4. feet long, so 1 was able to make the top, the legs, the lower rails, and the braces from a single ten-foo t length of pine two-by-ten . !ie /<'· .'a . ii'^N begu: (is a t\\'o-bv-ten- Normall y you would begin by setting the plank on a bench to plane it inch pLinh. Rough-plane the sur/cia' S belore smooth , but since you are making a bench , I will assume that you don't beginning the layout. have one yet. Instead , you can hold the plank steady by sitting on it. Set the plank on stumps or kitchen chairs (don' t get caught) and sit down on it near the left end as you face it. Hold the back handl e (or toat) of the plane in your right hand and the foregrip in your left hand . If there is no forward knob, grasp the body of the plane with your thum b on the near side and your fingers on the far side. Start planin g at the far end and work your way backward down the plank. If the grain of the plank seems to be rising against you, sit on the opposite side of the plank and work in the othe r direction . You will need to turn aroun d anyway when you run out of space to sit. When you plane a rough board, you may find that the blade (the iron) can protrud e a bit more than normal . When you start, you are taking off only the high point s (the tips of the ridges that cover the rough wood). Since you are cuttin g about half air and half wood, the stroke is easy. Once the iron starts cuttin g a level surface and is bringing up long, full shavings instead of short crumbles, you will want to reset the plane iron to take a finer cut. The fastest way to work is go over the whole plank with an ad- justmen t that works well, then reset the plane as necessary and go over the plank again until you are taking fine, translucen t shavings off the en- tire surface. If you have started with a long plank that will provide both the benchto p and a length to rip into the legs, you can now cut the benchto p to length. Before you cut anything shorter (and I mean anything—rope , FOLDIN G WORKBENC H I 3 Rip the two-by-twos for the braces and leg copper pipe, or Shakespeare), be sure that you are not making your work frames from the plank after laying them out harder by creating a piece that is too short to hold properly. In this case, with the marking gauge. cutting the 10- or 12-foot-long plank into two pieces will make the work easier, as the piece you choose for the benchtop will provide support for the processes that follow: the ripping and final planing of the two-by-two legs, rails, and braces. First, use your square to ensure that the edge of the plank you intend to rip into legs is straight and at a true right angle to the face, and correct by more planing if necessary. Set your gauge to the thickness of the plank (whatever it may be, as long as it is close to two inches), then pull the gauge along both the top and bottom faces to mark out the first two-inch strip parallel to the outside edge. 4 I FOLDING WORKBENCH Support the plank that you are ripping on the plank that you are saving for the benchtop. Start your ripsaw on the end so that the kerf is just on the outside of the line scratched by the gauge. Saw along for an inch or so, then flip the plank over and saw from the other side for another few inches. If you get off the line and need to steer, don't try to twist the saw; just lower the angle of attack and hold your hand over to bend the blade in the direction you want to go. Keep flipping the plank over and sawing from the opposite side every six inches or so, not only to maintain an ac- curate cut but also to give your arm a break. Reverse the plank and start from the other end when you no longer have enough to kneel on. When your first two-by-two is sawn free, set it on the benchtop plank and plane its rough face as you sit on one end. Because the piece is almost five feet long, you have plenty to sit or kneel on to hold it in place as you saw or plane. Only when both of these steps are complete should you crosscut it into shorter lengths. Start the next two-by-two by planing the newly sawn face of the remainder of the plank and repeating the process of gauging and sawing until you have all the legs, rails, and braces that you need. In the next step, you join the timbers into two frames to support the two ends of the bench. The top rail of the frames connects to the legs with screwed half-lapped joints, and the lower crosspiece connects with mortice and tenon joints. The process of laying out these joints to connect the vertical and horizontal pieces is a basic procedure for all such framed work. In making chairs you lay out the legs and rungs in the same way; in making doors, you lay out the stiles and rails; and in carpentry, you lay out the posts and beams. Cut all the legs to length and align them on the benchtop with their ends square, across. Mark all the upper faces of the legs with a squiggle to indicate the face side of all the pieces. This is the constant from which you make all gauge measurements, and it is usually the better, exposed surface. "Best face to London," as they used to say. For the joint at the top of the leg frames, take one of the two-by-six rails and set it directly atop the legs, aligning one edge of the two-by-six with the top ends of the legs.