Woodworker's Journal Summer-2008, страница 42

Arts & Crafts Workbench

Our author's bench will proper workstation, but on the flatness of your planing technique.

By Ian Kirby

not only provide a also essential feedback stock and your hand

The workbench top is to the woodworker what a face plate is to the machinist — a surface used as a reference. In wood terms, it's a dead flat, hard surface. Its edges and ends are square. It won't sag under load. About every two or three years, any distortion due to movement, wear, or dings can be skimmed back to accuracy by planing. It needn't be babied like a piece of furniture, but you don't cut into it by chiseling, sawing or drilling. Apply oil to keep it clean and protected from spills. If you must use it for glue-ups, pro

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tect it from clamp heads and glue drips with a sheet of Masonite®.

Benchtop Characteristics Well: Many contemporary benches offer a well as "a place to put your tools." My experience is that the tool you want ends up in the well under the board that you just carefully clamped into place to do the work that requires the tool! So, my bench has no well. Structure: In the past, benchtops were made of two or three thick slabs of readily available quarter-sawn hardwood — maple in the U.S.,

42 arts & crafts workbench