Popular Woodworking 2009-11 № 179, страница 23

BY

CHRISTOPHER SCHWARZ & MEGAN FITZPATRICK

W

T ▼ hen ii

hen it comes to workbench designs, I think it is difficult to improve on the 18th-century designs developed in Europe, England and the United States.

These behemoths are far simpler to build than the contemporary and common Euro-style bench, yet the old benches also offer better workholding, superior mass and less maintenance. In fact, there is only one true advantage offered by the Euro-style benches, and that's portability.

Modern Euro-style benches are bolted together and can be knocked flat and shipped by truck or rail. The ancient benches are about as portable as a pregnant brontosaurus.

After building and working on more than a dozen different workbench designs, I resolved to fix this problem with the ancient benches, and I set my sights on turning one of my favorite French workbench designs from the 1700s into a bench that could be disassembled in less time than it takes to knead a baguette.

This design was first published in Andre Roubo's "The Art of the Woodworker," an 18th-century masterpiece that explained everything from carpentry to woodworking, marquetry, carriage-building and garden furniture. The workbenches in Roubo's volumes are monolithic and simple, yet they excel at making it easy for you to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards and assemblies. (See the sidebar on the "The Kitchen Test for Workbenches" on page 37.)

Since 2005 I've been working on a version of Roubo's bench and am impressed daily with its versatility. I also have a crick in my back from moving this bench in and out of trucks to demonstrate it at woodworking shows. It is one solid chunk of wood.

With a little design work, I easily transformed Roubo's bench into a version that was ready for the traveling Cirque du Soleil. But I wasn't satisfied that I had pushed the limits of the bench's design.

After writing the book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction &

21st-century Roubo. A bolted-together base makes this massive, classic design knock down quickly and easily

LEAD RHoto BY AL RARRisH; sTER photos BY THE Authors

Use" (Popular Woodworking Books), I was besieged by people who wondered if you could use engineered wood (such as plywood or MDF) to build a good workbench. I've used Baltic birch to make a number of workbench tops, but I've never been thrilled with cabinet plywood (it's unreliable these days), MDF or OSB (all of which sag like wet croissants). After doing some research I came across a material that you don't see much in woodworking shops: laminated veneer lumber (LVL).

About LVL

This layered material is like plywood in some ways and like solid wood in others. It is typically made up of many thin layers of veneer (such as yellow pine or poplar) that are glued into pieces that are basically sized like dimensional softwoods (2x12s, 4x4s etc.).

Unlike plywood, all the plies in LVL have their grain running in one direction - the length of the board -just like solid wood. But unlike solid wood, LVL beams have a lot of stiff glue sandwiched between the wooden plies. They are typically used as j oists to span long distances in residential and commercial construction.

LVL beams are stiff, relatively cheap and easy to find at commercial lumberyards. But for the woodworker, there are a lot of question marks when it comes to working with the stuff. How stable is it? How easy is it to joint, plane, saw and rout? Will the glue tear up the cutters of our tools?

Ripped and ready. We began by ripping down the LVL 2x12s we needed for the benchtop and were surprised by how easily the material cut on the table saw with a combination blade.

popularwoodworking.com ■ 33