Posts

Showing posts from August, 2018

An Unorthodox Nicholson-Style Workbench

Image
For the convenience of planing, and other operations, a rectangular platform is raised upon four legs, called a bench. Peter Nicholson, The Mechanic's Companion , 1831 If our shop is where we live, then our workbench is where we think and feel, where we do what is most satisfying to us as craftsman. James Krenov, The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking , 1977 I built my workbench in 1995. The top was made from big incense cedar tree that I felled and then milled with a Granberg Alaskan mill attached to a 1960's era McCulloch chainsaw sporting a twenty eight inch long bar with 3/4" pitch chain. The legs are also incense cedar and the cross pieces were milled from a black (red) oak tree that grew about twenty from the incense cedar. The idea for the bench came from Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Apprentice , at the time I needed a workbench that I could transport. I didn't mill enough wide boards from that cedar tree, in order to make the bench top wid