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it is indeed Steve - I was astonished by how hard the knots were in the wood I used before, they were almost glass-like - horrible!

Good point Droogs - Sellers does not cover this, and watching his video again it does seem he has used a modern can with a pull top. He uses the circular body of a panel hammer as a mini-anvil to flatten the edge left behind and I suppose you could try this, but obviously you will be taking a...

attempt 2 is underway! I took Jacob's advice and got some decent 4x4 redwood, it is 3 times the price of crappy fence posts but has very few knots and no splits or cracks. I prepared all the bits for the legs this evening and it was much quicker than my first attempt - some of this down to...

I got a couple of hours to do some sawing and planing this evening while preparing the timber for my bench legs and aprons - this is my 2nd attempt as I made a hash of the first ones. Happily this made for a 100% scientific comparison what with the first attempt being candle-assisted and attempt...

it does look excellent - what are you planning on using it for?

... for the easy working of saws and planes etc, in case you were wondering. Recently I have had a nagging doubt that I was missing out using a candle for this purpose, so I have made a 'Paul Sellers' rag-in-a-can oiler so I can compare: npKo1y2e8RI I only made it last night so it is too...

cheers El Barto, no doubt further cock-ups await my next attempt, but I will plug on regardless! BM you can use this to embed youtube: GiH1-4C0-h4

PS Richard - yes your pics show up now

thanks Jacob - good advice, put with oodles of tact and sensitivity as usual! I do agree, mind you, and will start again. It was indeed a false economy to try and use those terrible old fence posts. Although they are not completely to blame, I can see now that just getting the hang of the...

ha ha! out of curiosity BM, do my pics look huge before you click them? In my browser they shrink to fit the window and the open up big when clicked.

right, I'm afraid I need to return our enjoyable discussion on bench design to the far less entertaining real world and report a minor catastrophe on my bench build. Remembering I had some cut brads left over from when I did the floorboards in the spare room I nipped out earlier this evening to...

thanks Phil - I like the slot idea, until now I have my bench has been up against a wall so I can simply place a board against the wall to get roughly the same effect, but I will not be able to do this in the future. Good to see how you have mounted your vice also - I was thinking of asking...

thanks Phil - does the slot run the full length of the bench? Do you have a pic?

thanks Richard - that is encouraging to hear. Unfortunately photobucket changed the rules and your pics no longer show up, but I do remember seeing your ingenious adaption to the QR vice in a previous post. El Barto - just read your thread - great job on the bench! also it was good to see...

for others considering buying the Schwartzmeister's book, don't be deterred by Jacob's comments - in fact he does devote a couple of chapters to discussing the dear old trad English bench. He even builds a couple of them! Admittedly his historical revisionist tendencies get the better of him...

A bit harsh on Richard Maguire, I think - despite (at the time) running a business making baroque workbenches (which is presumably what his customers wanted), according to Schwarz - who attended a show with him - he spent much of his time trying to dissuade potential customers from buying them...

All bar one of the joints can be best described as mediocre - reasonably tight fits but no where near the level of precision as Mr Maquire. Still they are the best I could do. All the small inaccuracies are not really going to effect the end result I think - as Maguire is keen to remind us...

I have the 2nd edition (blue) Schwarz book too and I agree it is good. His writing style (American Journalistic? Is that a thing?) is not really my cup of tea, but I admire him for his painstaking approach to research. As an aside, I also think we owe him a debt of gratitude for work he did...

good luck Sundaytrucker - hopefully my hapless efforts will encourage you to get on with yours! I prepared the wood needed for the legs - the fence posts were very ropey, and this contributed to my first major cock up. I am gradually getting more confident using a plane to get a board square...

In Schwarz's defence, he does say there are many variations, but the key shared features are the apron(s) and use of relatively thin timber for the top. I did watch the Paul Sellers video series on his bench build and he does a very good job of explaining it, and it does indeed look...