Workbench Building Evolution

If you had asked me 3 or 4 months ago if I would ever build another workbench, I would have laughed and said “no way, I want to build furniture on my bench. In fact the huge volume of workbench posts and emails and videos and magazine articles and books, etc, etc has pretty much worn me out on the topic.

Then a truck rolled down the hill into the J. Gibson McIlvain lumber yard where I work. It was full of 24-40 foot long Douglas Fir timbers. Watching a forklift unload what amounts to a stack of telephone poles is an awe inspiring sight. The truck was bringing in a load for a Timber Frame customer of ours and contained a variety of structural timbers in beautiful #1 Appearance grades. The 12x12s are always amazing to look at but what struck me were the 4×8, and 4×12 sizes. There were also some 6×12 timbers. All I can think of when I look at these is workbench. Recently when Christopher Schwarz built his little Cherry Roubo workbench out of a single Cherry slab, the woodworking world immediately began thinking about building a bench top with as few glue lines as possible. I guess I always knew that timbers like these Douglas Fir ones were out there, but I was shocked to see so many that were so clear and straight grained.

Now I need another bench like a need a hole in the head, but I keep going back to the idea and thinking that I could do a lot with just one of these 10 or 12 foot timbers. Don’t be surprised if you see a little bench building showing up on the blog again in the next 6 months or so. I have been thinking about that Joinery bench design ever since Tim Williams blogged about it last year. I think it would be fun to adapt his design using massive timbers and a single board top. Even more fun would be to build it all by hand using traditional timber framing tools with pegged mortise and tenons.

So no promises as I definitely have a lot of other projects on my plate that need to get done first, but this topic weighs heavily on my mind.

You see a monster stack of Douglas Fir is visible right outside my office window. It makes it hard to concentrate on my work.

Dang Douglas Fir sirens!