I was going to make a new bench but!!!

[Lord Nibbo]

I was going to make a new bench but I just found this one. What do you reckon?

http://www.paintain.co.uk/workbench/workb01.htm

 

[tibbs]

Seems pretty good value - or so I thought until I found this one at Axminster - almost identical but about half the price, although its even lighter (28kg instead of your 38kg).

If you go for either of them & want to use them for hand planing etc then I'd add plenty of cross-bracing to the legs & plenty of weight low down (maybe fit a sturdy tray at floor level & fill it with as much iron (or granite ) as you can find - heavy duty benches seem to be 100-150kg.

Richard

 

[martyn2]

i had one very simuler to that one from MM and it has ended up in the greenhouse it was so much out of true

Make your own if you have the time then it you can build it to fullfill all your needs

Martyn

 

[Anonymous]

-

 

[sailorjack]

I bought one exactly the same about 20 months ago! Not much cop im afraid Although as it was the first step i took towards my woodworking passion , at the time i thought it was the dogs plums. Your be better off searching for old 2nd hand ones.
The drawer can just about take the weight of a few pencils, infact its now being slung! and the cheap thin plywood sheet at the bottom will need to be replaced with something more substantial, and as Tibbs said it will need to be weighted down at the bottom. Save your money or build your own
Hope that helps

Regards
Jack

 

[Paul Chapman]

Part of the problem is that some of these benches look better than they are. If you look at the spec of the Axminster one, the apron thickness is 60mm but the rest of the top is only 20mm thick. A bit flimsy.

Made mine from three layers of 18mm MDF glued together - much more sturdy and flat and so far it has lasted several years - and it was cheap enough to throw away and make another if it ever wears out :wink:

Paul

 

[builderchad]

I also have one of these benches. Lots of manufacturers roll out the exact same thing and mine was from Draper. I paid around £100 as well and was very dissapointed though I had just started in WW so didn't have the skills or confidence to make my own (probably still don't :shock

I shored up mine with 1/2" ply all around the legs where they meet the top to stop it rocking so much even when doing light jobs.

The Faithful presentation set on the the top was my first tool purchase (I was young and naive in Aug. of last year ) but pretty quickly went back to the shop and replaced with Veritas

I do handplane on it cause I haven't got anything else at the moment. I have to use the front vice and plane from the left side in towards the length of the bench with one foot on the lower shelf - very awkward. I have been eyeing out the concrete floor in my shed and wondering if I could sink some threaded bar and bolt the sucker down.

As mentioned the 1/4" ply underneath is rubbish and gives way pretty quickly to even light clamping, The drawer is actually tiny inside and pretty much only good for holding the 4 wood and 4 metal dogs provided. Also the dog holes aren't the same size as what seems to be common (can't remeber sizes) so all those lovely bench accesories that Veritas and others do wont fit this bench unless you refill and redrill the holes to the right size. The cast iron metalwork on the vices is quite poor and there is so much lateral movement on the vice that if I'm only using one end of a vice I have to use a clamp as well to keep the workpiece from coming loose and smashing onto the floor. And most importantly the top joins the legs with pretty small screws, no tenons...nothing...

Not worth the money by a long shot in my opinion.

 

[Mdotflorida]

For $1500 and a round trip to Maine, Christian Becksvoort is selling his bench.

http://www.chbecksvoort.com/coolstuff.html

Now if only it came with just a smidge of his talent. [-o<

Jeff

 

[matt]

Do a search for "woodworking bench" on eBay. There's at least 3 that look viable, one with a £50 buy it now option...

 

[Midnight]

What do you reckon?

bottom line is it really depends what use you're gonna put it to... honest, it's nae such a daft question as it sounds.. if you're gonna be hand planeing, you really need something both solid and substantial, preferably with a ton of ballast too... I cobbled my own bench up as a pre-cursor to my first project... swallowed a 10ft length of 600x40 worktop, half a sheet of 3/4 ply ontop of the donor carcass; has the table saw built into it, bench jointer slung inside it (along with a host of other junk I've picked up that shoulda been left well alone) and the damn thing still bounces around with the castors locked off...

gut reaction is that this particular one is wayyyyyyy too light for anything remotely serious unless you can add additional cross braces and bolt the whole thing down to something substantial...

 

[davidc1075]

I bought one of these benches off ebay at Christmas, it only cost £15 brand new and boxed. I ended up only using the top and the vices, made a double cabinet underneath and for £30 in materials a friend at work got a really good value bench