# Sjoberg Workbench - good deal or not?



## Ratter (5 Aug 2008)

What do members think of this deal?

http://www.tooled-up.com/Product.asp?PID=132527

Sjoberg 1950 bench + cupboard and drawer unit £300 + £13 carriage

Is this good value for money or are there cons I should be aware of?

Are these people a reliable firm to deal with?

The fact that they are out of stock at the moment suggests they have sold a few.

How do these compare with Axminster benches?

I should add that I generally use power tools but might try some "real woodwork" if I had a decent bench


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## Imperial (5 Aug 2008)

£300 would buy some nice Beech or Ash to build your own rather than the Birch this is made of IMHO! :idea: 

Look here for a real cracker of a bench, and details of the build process

http://oudluthier.blogspot.com/


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## Pete W (5 Aug 2008)

Ratter":3tzy4zgw said:


> Is this good value for money or are there cons I should be aware of?



I bought something similar about 8 years ago, for general DIY chores before I was struck by the woodworking bug. Possible (or probable) cons would include:
a) It's very light. At 80lbs it's going to skid around your shop under handplaning loads unless you bolt it to a wall. The shelf on mine is loaded with as many hardwood offcuts as I can cram in there and still isn't as immobile as I'd like.
b) The vises are very likely junk. I threw mine away and put one of these on instead. Not as pretty but much more useful.
c) The weight suggests the top is actually much thinner than it looks. Probably 3/4 or 4/4 thick and wrapped in thicker stock to maker it look more substantial. 
d) The legs look awfully flimsy, which means it will probably rack and roll when you're planing.

On the other hand, the free cabinets might stiffen it up a bit, especially if you can fill them with enough weight. And while building a good bench is probably a better idea, it might be hard to build a bench without a bench to build on.

Not sure I've helped much


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## wizer (5 Aug 2008)

Do you require a traditional style workbench? Do you really want to spend £300?

I made my, mostly Ply, benchfor about half that.


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## Ratter (14 Aug 2008)

Thanks to all who replied and clearly more thought is needed.

I would agree that one could probably make something much better for less and I can see the limitations now. Annoyingly there was an example on eBay which went for £120 (at which price one can ignore some shortcomings) but it was at the other end of the country.

What prompted this question was the need to work on something better than workmates and old tables particularly as the workmate is too low and gives me backache.

At the moment I am renovating a kitchen and I have a range of three substantial homemade units which I needed to get rid of. So at the moment I am using that quite successfully as a bench - its not ultra stable but it is adequate and I can play around with the height to elimate the backache.

I've got it at about 930mm at the moment which seems to suit me (6' exactly) - workmates are nearer to 800mm.


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## Paul Chapman (14 Aug 2008)

Some good stuff here about benches http://www.woodworking-magazine.com/blo ... nches.aspx

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Scott (14 Aug 2008)

I've never actually used one of those Sjoberg benches but I've had a poke around a couple in a local DIY shed and they're very flimsy and not at all rigid.

Spend the cash on decent timber and build your own!


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## John McM (14 Aug 2008)

This might help
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/ ... on-two.asp


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## Martin Brown (15 Aug 2008)

I work for BriMarc and we are the distributors of Sjoebergs. I am not allowed to make a commercial post, however I cannot let some of these comments pass without caveat.

We have sold Sjoebergs for 20 years and the product is reliable and high quality, the sort of thing you expect from Sweden. 

It is not true to say that our product is flimsy or lightweight. You can make a bench cheaper if you have the time.

Please PM me if you would like to discuss this further, so I avoid commercial posts. 

Martin


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## Steve Maskery (15 Aug 2008)

I've not used a Sjo in a workshop, but I have seen them at shows and tried out planes on them. They did not seem flimsy to me, and I would have thought that £300 was a good deal for a usable bench off the shelf. Yes you could save some money by making it yourself, but I bet you wouldn't save very much, assuming you bought decent materials, hardware and finish. I've made two benches in my time and both cost me more than I anticipated.

If I were starting today knowing what I know now (yes, I know), I'd buy a smalllish Sjo and use it to make myself a bigger trad bench.

I can't remember the last time I saw anything from Sweden that was not well made (Volvo, Saab, Tormek, Anna-Freda...)

Cheers
Steve


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## DaveL (15 Aug 2008)

I do wonder if this is being confused with the Clark work benches sold by Machine Mart and the sheds?

I did have one of those and they are very light weight, the top being lipped to give the impression of being heavy weight. It did more about, the last thing mine was used for was to build my own bench on. I then give it to one of my work friends.

Like Steve I have used them at shows when trying out tools and they are a good sturdy bench and looking at that deal I would thing its good value to get a bench, vices and drawers delivered for just over £300.


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## Martingchapman (15 Aug 2008)

Ratter,
I have had one of these benches with the supplied cupboard/drawer unit, 4 x bench dogs and a hold down for about four years.

The upsides;
It is not at all flimsy or lightweight, especially once the drawers and cupboard are filled up with tools.
I have not fixed it to the floor/wall in any way and it is fine for hand planing. The construction with the cupboard/drawer unit is such that there is no racking at all.
The top is solid and will take any amount of hammering.
The supplied bench dogs work well as does the hold down.
The cupboard top provides an ideal shelf for frequently used tool storage which means you do not need a channel at the back of the bench for tools.
There are slots in the face of the right hand leg to take the hold down to support the end of long items held in the right hand vice.
The end vice and bench dogs work well together to hold long flat items.

The downsides;
The bench is quite narrow so if you are working on wide stock it will overhang the front of the bench. Can be a bit annoying when setting up sash type cramps to glue up a wide panel, the front of the cramp overhangs the bench so it can twist over (however the fact that it is narrow is also a benefit for me because my workshop is only 7ft wide).
The corners of the drawers are held together by plastic channels, these can slip off causing the drawer to fall apart. This would be easy to fix but I have not bothered as it is not a major problem.
The vices have a single screw in the middle which means if you put a piece of timber in one end and tighten the vice it will rack as it tightens up. The solution for this is to put a similar thickness piece of timber in the empty end of the vice so it tightens up on both pieces.
The two holes in the top for the hold down have a metal tube lining to stop damage to the holes. Sometimes, when the hold down is tightened up, because it sits at an angle in the hole, it can drawer the tube up so that the top ends up slightly proud of the bench top. Simply be aware of this and tap the tube down again when it happens.
The doors on the cupboard run in channels which can get filled up with sawdust which gets jammed up in the end of the channel when the door is opened, to resolve this simply vacuum the channels out when cleaning up.

I am a weekend woodworker and this bench does all I want.
You could probably make something cheaper, whether it would be better only you can decide.
I only know that I preferred to spend my time making furniture, rather than a workbench and I have not been at all disappointed with the Sjo.

Martin.


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## dunbarhamlin (15 Aug 2008)

I've had this for a few years, and it's served its purpose adequately.
The top and vices are fine.
The base could do with a bit more meat. It will do a bit of a shimmy, particularly when preparing rough stock with a slick/scrub/jack. It would probably be better with the wider stretchers that are discarded if using the cupboard/drawer unit.
More trivially, the sliding doors are a pain, and stay off unless someone's coming around.
When I find a round tuit, I'll be making a new base for the top.
Starting again, I'd just make my own.

Cheers
Steve


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## Toscageoff (15 Aug 2008)

Greetings

I agree with everything Martinchapman said except the metal tubes have not racked up when using the hold fast on mine and the plastic drawer corners have not slipped.

All in all I am very satisfied with this bench


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## Scott (15 Aug 2008)

In fairness to Sjobergs they were in a DIY shed staffed by the usual numpties who may or may not have built it very well (or tightened up any fasteners properly) but they were definitely wobbly. 

I bow to those with more experience of them :wink:


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## wizer (15 Aug 2008)

I still think you can build a more substantial workbench with more 'features' for less money. There are some truly beautiful workbenches out there. But let's be realistic, a workbench is there to take a battering. It's a means to an end.


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## BradNaylor (17 Aug 2008)

Ratter":2tpsb05w said:


> Sjoberg 1950 bench + cupboard and drawer unit £300 + £13 carriage



Seems a lot for such an old bench...

:lol: 

Dan


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## router (17 Aug 2008)

i make do with a bench i built from a couple of pallets and vice attached any other clamping down i need is done with g clamps through the top as it is made from a half pallet so it still has gaps between the boards!


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## Wanlock Dod (18 Aug 2008)

Ratter,

I made a bench for less than £200 including a drawer cabinet, vices etc. after having carefully reviewed the specs of the Sjobergs and some other commercially available benches. The top of mine is all hardwood, and is pretty heavy, although the base is softwood. I reckoned that I'd have had to pay more than twice what it cost me to buy an equivalent bench. You could do it a good deal less expensively than I did by, for example, just making the front 6 inches or so (where most of the work is done) out of hardwood and the rest of the top from softwood.

One thought though, don't be put off by the birch used for the Sjobergs benches, it might not be the most prestigious timber but it is pretty hard stuff. The top may well be made from many small bits laminated together though. I couldn't see any info on the thickness of the bench top, but I've seen similar ones where the laminated top is only about an inch thick. I have a feeling that this was the main factor which resulted in me making my own. I also needed some practice at woodworking, although in that respect you could say it didn't help (I'm still pretty rubbish). I think that the bench I made was more comparable to the Hoffmann benches sold by Rutlands, which I couldn't have afforded.

If you do make your own then don't under estimate the time it will take, thats what your paying for when somebody else makes it for you.

Making a bench ones self can be very satisfying, although I expect that getting straight on with a few projects on a bought bench would be no less satisfying.

Hope this is helpful in some way :? 

Cheers,

Dod


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