Dave in Indy wrote:

impressed with some of the Sjoberg benches I've seen, esp. for the
money. Was considering a Grizzly bench top and maybe Shopfox leg set.
What about the Kobalt type benches at Lowes with MDF top? All thoughts
appreciated. Thanks!

Lowe's sells Kobalt benches? Must be in bigger stores or something.

You can get by with not much. I don't recommend this by any stretch, but my
workbench is just some crappy construction grade lumber jobsite kit I
picked up when I got my house, and my first dedicated shop space, and I
wanted to have a workbench in it, even though I had no real idea what I was
going to use it for.

There's a picture of what it used to look like on my stupid little website
somewhere. When I got into this hand plane tomfoolery a coupla years or so
ago, I gave it a makeover, rather than going to the trouble, expense, and
really downright inconvenience of building a real bench. I planed the top
pretty flat, then I bolted some pieces of a curbisde salvage walnut
veneered poplar table to it; making sure everything went down pretty darn
close to flat. Then I bored a full grid of 3/4" dog holes in it.

No tail vise, and one end of it is still a metalworking station with a
couple of anvils and a 4" pipe vise, so it's anything but ideal. It works
though. I'm limited to smallish projects as a practical matter in that
teensy shop anyway, and it's a suitable bench for suitably smallish
projects. Two face vises, one of which has a pop-up dog. Some dog holes,
some 3/4" oak dowels for dogs, and some other shop-cobbled work holding
gadgetry, and it gets the job done.

You can do MUCH better than this, but you can get by with something pretty
seriously crappy as long as it's flat and has a place to put your vise, and
a place to stick something to keep the wood from scooting out from under
your planes.

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