Workbench Wednesday – #13 (2015) 8-foot Nicholson

Thanks in great part to the exhortations of Mike Siemsen and his 2014 video The Naked Woodworker I decided to build myself a full-sized Nicholson bench in 2015.

As an aside, I found Mike’s video on work holding without vises or clamps to be a spectacular example of didactic media.

As has become my wont I used some excellent Southern Yellow Pine 2×12 stock for the bench.  After completing it I absolutely came to the conclusion that this is the simplest high-performance bench there is, and recommend it often to folks wanting to make a first workbench.  The basic chassis is simple enough and very quick to build, and there are a number of options and add-ons I have incorporated in later  versions.

The beauty of the Nicholson bench is that is so simple, and frankly easy, to build have the completed bench can be put to work in less than a single weekend, even taking time to worship.  Except for gluing the leg laminae together, the entire bench was build with decking screws.

Cutting up the lumber takes abut a good hour at most.

I start the actual assembly by gluing together the legs, using screws that were removed after the glue dried.

I cleaned up the edges of the legs with a #7, then screwed the outer aprons to the legs.  I immediately moved on to the inner aprons for the front and back, notching them for the cross battens of the top.  The strategy of using two laminae of aprons and more battens than probably necessary results in a lot of area that is amenable to using holdfasts throughout the bench, mitigating the need for vises and such on the basic bench, which was indeed was my goal for the project.

 

The overall assembly proceeded apace, requiring only a couple hours of dedicated time.  One of the things I did to streamline the process was to affix the aprons such that the protruded about 1/16″ above the leg tops so that they could be easily planed even and with nice clean edges, as is being done by my pal Tom here.  Actually, I recall spending more time chatting with ham than we did building the bench

 

A nice advantage to this procedure is that the top planks can be held to the aprons to plane the edges of the top, again resulting in a nice crisp edge.

The battens fit nicely into the already notched inner aprons, and I like to have way more battens than are strictly necessary.

After a couple weeks of settling into the atmosphere of the barn I flattened the top with the standard bench planes, then finished with a toothing plane.  In the end the bench was hoisted up to the fourth floor to be used alongside the laminated Roubo for video sessions.

The basic bench is a winner, and I recommend it as a starting point for new woodworking studios.  I like it so much I have built several more, both for myself and for friends.  I got my time down to about 6 hours for the basic Nicholson, with another dozen hours for tricking out.  Stay tuned.