Mike in Mystic wrote:

Hey Silvan,

Thanks for the compliments.

Thanks for showing off your bench. Now if only you had made it out of 12/4
rosewood...

Yes, you're right there. I figure I've got close to $500 in this bench.

I have somewhere around $100 in mine. Maybe not that much. To some extent,
you get what you pay for. It sure isn't an ideal bench, but it's what I
have room for, and what I can afford.

This is mainly hardware. The Veritas twin-screw vise was $160, the Record
vise was $85 (got it on clearance), the bench dogs were $8/pair, the
wonder
dogs were $23?/each, and the hold-down was $52. So, that's about $350.

I don't have any hold-downs yet. My dogs are 3/4" oak dowels with a brad
shot into one end so I have a way to keep them from constantly falling
through the bench.

I bought some steel rod to tap for fake wonder dogs, but I haven't been able
to come up with a decent way to make a pad for the end, or a decent crank,
or a decent screw, so I'll probably suck it up and buy the real deal. They
look very handy.

I'm wishing I had some kind of tail vise already, but have made no decision
as yet. I might try one of those pipe clamp deals that was posted on here
a bit ago, or else buy some parts from Lee Valley and try to cobble
something together on my own.

You've probably heard me blathering about my other vises. I think that was
you. Old vise, new vise, big vise, small vise, free vise, cheap vise, one
vise, two vise, blah blah, blah, right?

The sweet thing was a the top. Neighbor's old table. Poplar with walnut
veneer. Not very tough, but it's pretty, and I could afford it.

made the base extremely solid. There are dowel pins at each joint, also,
which is really where the anti-wracking comes from. I have no reason to
believe it won't maintain it's stability indefinitely.

Sounds like maybe I should do more than retrofit some rods then. I s'pose I
should go dig out the book in question and pay more attention to the base
construction.

Or not. I can always fix it when it gets a lot worse. Angle bracketing it
to the wall of the shed^h^h^h^h shop helps some.

a bit with this when I got catches during planing. I posted a question
about this a little ways back and I think that if I improve the tuning of
my planes, and install some sort of anti-skid material to the bench feet,

Oh yeah, I forgot. I didn't realize that was you.

bench, but I estimated it at about 250 pounds, fully outfitted. I'm
already thinking of building a storage cabinet out of 3/4" MDF that will
fill up all
the space under the bench. A bank of drawers on one side and a cabinet

Filling up the space is a good plan. Just by way of demonstrating that, I
dropped the cap off my 1" chisel. Spent every bit of an hour rooting
around in the shavings on the floor trying to find it. Even vacuumed, and
then rooted around in the shop vac. I finally found it on the shelf under
the workbench, on the base of the circular saw, curled up in a walnut
shaving. I'm kinda thinking closing that space off would be a good idea
myself.

commercial benches. If I do that and fill it up with tools, I can't
imagine the bench will walk at that point.

I've been thinking about hanging some weights from mine. Hang them so they
swing. Seems it would have a dampening effect.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/