New Shop, New Workbench

At its simplest, a shop doesn't take much to be successful:  a  bit of roof, a bench, and a corner where a tool chest can be stored.

Scott Gibson, The Workshop, 2003


We are still settling into the house that we rented in a quiet little suburb of Denver, there are opened and unpacked moving boxes in the house and in the garage.

I was able to set up studio space in the spare bedroom, I cached the extra guitars in the closet and purchased a set of metal mesh shelving for the tone wood, it's a wonderful room, the only problem with it is there is no air conditioning in the house. There is an attic/house fan that sucks air in from the outside, it makes it hard to control "the climate" in this room. I bought a room dehumidifier to keep the guitars and wood at 45%RH, the machine puts out some heat, the room can get a little warm. I am looking forward to the fall when outside temperatures are a little cooler.

For the last several years, I have wanted a workbench base that has drawers for storing extra, and needed, tools, along with space to put the bending iron, router and vise when not in use. I devoted the last two weeks to making a new base.

I salvaged the legs from a router table I made and used only once. The legs and rails are connected to each other with lag bolts, I copied the mechanics for the bench from Carlyle Lynch's plans for making a woodcarving bench. Technically, this is a knock-down base, but since it is made out of white fir, the base is lighter than the incense/western red cedar top.

The drawer carcass is built from some one half inch thick plywood...

the drawers are made from pine...

I made simple wooden runners for the drawers and cut the runner dados on a table saw...

the joints are simple dadoed butt joints nailed and glued together. This is a work bench, not a museum piece, I'm not willing to spend the time chopping out dovetails. 

I painted the drawer faces with "Turkish Tile" blue.

I am very happy with the final product!

Now comes the task of filling the drawers with the necessary tools and I have to keep telling myself that I need to downsize the numbers of tools in the shop. More tools means making more storage space, I'd rather be spending my time making guitars!

I am almost open for business...