The Woodshop Shed

The "Paulkravian" workbench, v1.0

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


My shop is in our single car garage, and there's not much room when the car is in there. My existing workbench is a piece of inch thick melamine covered particle board that used to be a desktop, screwed to a 2×4 frame. It's solid, but larger than I would like, and I can only clamp to the edges.I like the idea of the Paulk workbench, but a regular one is way too big for my space. So this one is 2 feet by 4 feet, and made with 3/4 ply. I initially put together with glued and screwed butt joints. Once the glue was dry, I took out the screws, drilled the holes out, and glued in 3/8 dowels (which was probably overkill). I didn't want any metal in the bench top, as I have accidentally cut into existing bench too on more than one occasion.The legs are based on the Moravian workbench here ( https://woodandshop.com/moravianworkbench/ ). I kind of screwed up and didn't cut the mortises at the right angle, and so cut the tenons on the 2×6 crossmembers at an angle to fit. I didn't want to mess with tusk tenons, so the crossmembers have 1/4-20 threaded inserts in them, and are bolted into the mortises with carriage bolts and shop-made star knobs. The leg assembly is bolted to the benchtop with a 3/8-16 bolt in the top of each leg, also with a threaded insert. The benchtop was given s few coats of water based poly.The test-clamp shown is a cheap Harbor Freight clamp heated and bent with a mapp gas torch. It works, but the bend tends to flex more than I like, so with probably try a different approach.

0 comment(s)