Workbench Wednesday – Cypress Planing Board I

Photo courtesy of William Duffield

In great part thanks to my friend WilliamD’s demonstration of his mini-workbench at an SAPFM Chapter meeting in Fredericksburg VA several years ago, and more recently Youtuber Adrian Preda’s video on making his bench top planing board, I’ve been motivation to build a bench-top mini-bench type accessory or three.

For decades I used a pair of Japanese-style mini-sawhorses and a small torsion box for the purpose of raising the working surface to be most amenable to my creaky 65-year-old back and failing eyes.  Finally I was able to carve out a little time to work on a first version of this tool.  This was a very simple planing board, I will make my version of WilliamD’s much more complex tool once I get this one done.

Preda’s approach to making his board was not one I chose, but the configuration and some of the features he integrated were absolutely inspiring to me in moving this project to the top of the pile.

Looking through my pile of wood scraps I settled on gluing up a two-piece top slab of cypress, dimensioned to a slightly full 8/4.  I prepped the two pieces and glued them together with PVA into a 12-1/2″ x 2-1/8″ x 37″ slab and set it aside for a couple weeks until I could get back to it.  A couple weeks turned into six months.  Sigh.  Even though I had  interruptions by more urgent items I never stopped thinking about this mini-bench and how it could enhance my work.