Workbench Wednesday – Too Many?

Several years ago, probably at one of the French Oak Roubo Project builds, Benchcrafted’s Jameel Abraham and I were chatting about the massive weight of good workbenches and good vises.

“Why couldn’t we collect carved thimble boxes instead of cast iron hunks?” he groused.  “Instead we acquire stuff by the ton!”

At least he has the sense to only keep a couple benches in his studio.  I, on the other hand, have not been so restrained.  In great part due to my plan to host classes and workshop at the barn, I wound up with a dozen-and-a-half hefty benches scattered around, more than enough for every student who might come. (The cessation of that plan for a couple of reasons has made that situation non-optimal.)  This preparation was exacerbated by my own fascination with workbenches, and plenty of space to put any that I bought or made.

I’ve reluctantly(?) come to the realization that I have too much real estate occupied by benches I do not use, at least as workbenches.  I still have about 15 benches, but only use (at most) five of them as workbenches with any frequency, i.e. more than once a year.  The rest are little more than really, really stout work tables.

So I’ve taken the first small steps to eliminating or repurposing the inventory.  I’ve sold two, and last week repurposed an eight-foot Nicholson as a rolling bench to hold benchtop machines.  Obviously this is not a permanent nor irreversible arrangement — I can flip and remove the casters in about ten minutes — but it does provide a glimpse of what is possible, especially as I continue to explore the world of different workbench forms a la the ongoing Japanese planing beam build.

Rather than a hodgepodge of little rolling tables I now have all my main benchtop machines on one surface, easily accessible from both sides as the oversized casters make it a snap to wheel it out and around.