Workbench Wednesday – #18 (2018), Bob’s Tricked Out Nicholson

It’s not my own bench but demonstrates a developmental step in the making of Nicholson benches at the Barn.

My friend Bob has many and varied skills that I draw on frequently.  At least once a year he comes over to fell trees for firewood, having been a timberman virtually all of his life.  I am happy to cut up the trees once they are down but am not fully confident of bringing them down where they should be (i.e. not on top of me).

Bob is also a gunsmith and firearms instructor (I will be getting some advanced training from him next month) and I’ve visited his workshop several times.  In my visits I noticed a decided lack of workbench assets there so last spring I built him a tricked out Nicholson for use on guns stocks and such.  He had some space limitations so it was a custom built 6-foot unit.

The basic bench was little different than what I’ve built before.  To this base I added a twin-screw face vise on the front apron, then added a bench top Moxon vise to be moved wherever he needed it on the top.  In fact, building this bench was the practice that let me work out all the kinks for the class I taught in Arkansas last summer.

At the end of the first day working on the bench I had it up in its feet and was ready to turn my attentions to working on the vise screws with my new Bealle threader.

But for the first day I just built it the way I do them all with the apron projecting slightly above the top battens so I could hand-plane everything nice and even.

Next week I will focus on incorporating wooden screws vises into the bench.  It will be the final installment of “looking backwards” in the bench making adventures at the barn, but never fear, there are a half-dozen new iterations coming down the pike.