8VIDEO European Workbench Tour

In this video I want to introduce you to my workbench which I've had for quite a while

It's a lot fancier of a workbench than you need to get started

So my reason for showing it to you is so that you've got something to think about and aspire to in the future

If you're going to be involved in woodworking for the long haul and you've got a space to accommodate it

Then this bench is really going to help enhance your enjoyment of the craft

But in the meantime, let me just give it a little demonstration. I built this bench from scratch in

1988 I Was working at a cabinet shop at the time and the boss would let me stay late after work and work on my own project

so we started work at 7 I was punching out at 3 and

Then I spent from 3 until about 10 o'clock at night Working on my own stuff. I built a lot of the furniture that's in my house now working on that cabinet shop

And and as well as this bench, so this is what you call a traditional

European style bench and It was designed at a time when hand tools

Were a big part of the craft Now even though hand tools are less a part of the craft now than they used to be

This is still a fabulous bench With some features that I want to show you the first have to do has to do with the two vices on the bench

so Well, actually before I do that, let me explain this. This is I call this my my my clamp and assembly cart

This actually is in the course I've got the plans and instructions for building this this is a terrific

supplementary thing for assembling projects on for storing clamps for Bringing parts together with clamping pressure and glue so you'll see more of this later

But for now, let's just get it out of the way and let me introduce you to what's called the tail vise

so this is the whole The whole corner of the bench opens and

The main purpose of this vise is to hold Pieces of wood on their flat. So we've got these things here called bench dogs

They fit into these square holes here and you can put them in different positions depending on how long

the piece of wood you're working on is but in this case, I just put the piece of wood here and

Tighten it up and now it's firmly locked in position This is perfect for for planing wood

Which is something that I'm going to go into in the course just to give you a sense of that planing wood by hand

This is also great if you have to sand the face of a board because it's solidly secured and it's not going to go

Anywhere, so that's the tail vise now over here There's the face vise which is kind of a little more like a regular vise

Handle here it opens up fairly far Let me open it up all the way for you and show you a little thing I made up

Although this is primarily a woodworking shop. I Do some metalworking and machine repairs and here sometimes as I need to and of course

This sort of a vise is no good for that. You don't want to be putting metal in

wooden jaws because it's gonna hurt the wooden jaws, but That's why I made up this thing here, this is a regular

machinist vise It's bolted to a plywood platform that has an extra piece of plywood on the bottom

And it goes in here and just tightens right up Now I've got some metal vise here if I need to

To grab any metal for cutting or for welding even And it just pops out

Now let me show you something else about this face vise here Sometimes you want to hold long pieces of wood

on their edge So just as an example now I can hold it like this and just tighten this up a bit more here

I can hold this piece of wood like this, but really the end should be supported. So that's what's going on here

This is just what's called a bench dog in the world of work benches you can have

rectangular holes like this for bench dogs But you can also have round ones too and the standard size is 3 quarters of an inch so

This aluminum bench dog. I bought it from Lee Valley tools If you don't know that company you will soon because they got a lot of great woodworking tools

But I've just drilled a hole in here The dog fits in here

And now it can support The far end of that piece of wood

If I wanted to do some planing say or some work on the edge of that that piece of wood

Just before I finish up I want to point out another technical detail of this style of bench

and that's What you call a tool well, and that's that's it at the back here

It's one you have to have tools of course as you're working, but you don't necessarily want them on the top of the bench

so the purpose of the tool well is just a Place to get your tools away from the surface of the bench so you can move things around

And it won't interfere with them so With a course like this you know because woodworking is such a large topic

There's no way I'm going to cover anything like all of it in this course. I'm going to get you going

But from time to time throughout the course I'm going to I'm going to point you in directions

That you might find interesting so areas of woodworking that we're not covering

But I want to alert you to the fact that they're there and that's kind of what this bench tour is all about

It's just to alert you to what's out there When you get seriously involved in the craft if you do

What you will get in the course are plans and detailed instructions and some some videos for actually making the kind of

Simple work surfaces that you're going to need because you can't really work on the floor

I mean you can try, but it's not it's not going to be nearly as fun as if you're actually working on

A proper surface, and it doesn't have to be fancy not when you're a beginner, so I

Look forward to showing you all about it