Musings

High-heeled Slippers

When making the pair of workbenches for use at Handworks this weekend, I decided preemptively to make them considerably lower than I would normally.  This is because the bench going to the Library of Congress needed to reflect the stature of the users, which in my observation tended to be considerably less than mine, and I made the second bench more-or-less like the first one.

Going by the old “hanging pinkie knuckle” rubric both benches would be accurate for me at 30 inches.  All that shows is that some words, like “rubric,” are not worth the letters it takes to spell them.  My preferred bench height is in the 36-37 inch range.  So I just do what I recommend you do for yourself; decide hat height is most comfortable and productive for you and make your bench that height.

Back to the benches in question.  Since some of the LoC folks are a fair bit shorter than I am, and others are not that much shorter, I decided to make the bench short but with the option of adjusting them up easily and stably.  Hence the need for a matched set of high-heeled slippers to go under each leg.

I started with a standard 2×6 and ripped it to 5″ wide, the width of the bench legs.  Then I cut the ripped board into the necessary number of sections to make one piece 5″ wide by 4″ long and another 5″ x 8″ for each leg.  I glued these together to make a stepped block, or the high-heeled slipper.

I faced each horizontal surface with medium emery paper (I am guessing about 150 grit) by lightly spraying all the contact surfaces with spray adhesives.

The result is a set of height adjusters that function well and are extremely stable and unobtrusive, allowing the bench to be set-up for working at heights of 30″, 31-1/2″, and 33″.