For years I have been threatening to build a legitimate work bench. I have been using fold up ones and steel ones but I want a wood top with dog holes and a couple of vices.
Because there is a rather large investment in the "TOP" I have kicked around using several different less expensive materials. In recent years the replaceable MDF top has been popular with many magazines. I forget what I was building several months ago but I ended up having several pieces of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood stacked up and noticed that they looked quite substantial.
I am wondering if any one has used Baltic Birch ripped in to "lot's" of strips and glued up on the faces to make a bench top. Basically the edges of all the Baltic Birch plywood would be facing up and down to form the top of the top.
I am not sure if this applies or not. But I knew somebody who lived down the street from a waterski factory. They had some monster 17 ply board. He used to haul the scrap away. If I recall correctly, they were about 1 1/8" thick and about 18" wide by about 5' long. He had hundreds of these things. All of them very heavy, thick and straight.
He used them for everything. His shop floor was made from these. He made all kinds of benched for himself and others from this. Big, heavy and thick. He often used harboard as a replaceable top.
I wouldn't cut them on edge. If youhave enough plywood to make a tope, do that. Lay it flat and cover it with hardboard. I have build a number of shop benches and cabinets out of scrap. When there was enough materials, I would build something else. This sounds similar.
Best thing I have found for the top is a used solid interior door. I bought a discarded hospital door for about $5 or $10 a few years ago. Would have cost me at least
I take it none of the plywood pieces are large enough to glue up flat to make the top. Given that, I think you could laminate what is essentially a 2"-3" slice of a very, very thick piece of plywood. It should make a reasonable top, at minimal cost, mainly the cost of the glue, of which you will probably use a lot. I can only think of two drawbacks which are probably easily worked around.
1) Since plywood is generally made of veneers glued up perpendicular to each other, half of the grain of your bench top will be end grain, oriented vertically, and the other half will be side grain, oriented horizontally. This means that your bench top may be a bit less stiff than a solid word version. If you are concerned about the stiffness, especially if you don't make the top thick, you should be sure to incorporate some support in the leg structure under the top to stiffen it up.
2) The grain of the top will be half end grain, and half side grain. You may be unsatisfied with the texture of the top with its varying grain. You could work around this by applying some kind of uniform thin top layer, such as a sheet of masonite, to be replaced when it wears unacceptably.
Other than those two caveats, I say, "Go for it!" Recycling is the way of the future, and we should try to appropriately use all of our scraps instead of merely tossing or burning them. I just built a very heavy bench out of some glulam beams from our neighborhood gas station that were headed for the landfill (someone who can't read ran his too- tall truck into the canopy). Now I have a really beefy bench and the landfill has 600 pounds less wood in it, and it only cost me a bit of glue and labor. My last bench was made of recycled 4x4's and oak flooring. I used bolts I have gleaned from garage sales, keeping them out of the landfill, and even made some barrel nuts for the stretchers out of some scrap aluminum. I painted it with the tag ends of paint that I am not allowed to put in the landfill, and that our county no longer recycles. About the only way I can think of to have made the bench "greener" might have been to use some kind of glue not made of petroleum products, such as hide glue.
I'm kind of with Lew on this one. If you shop for relatively cheap wood (common rather than select and 5/4 rather than 8/4 stock) you will have alot less invested in a top than vises.
Not to say that there is anything wrong with a bench made from recycled material, I applaud that. It just seems a bit inconsistent with the premise:
"For years I have been threatening to build a legitimate work bench."
Yeah, if they aren't big enough on their own get a sheet of 1/4" then piece together your scraps on top of that. Run them through the drum sander first to make sure the thickness is consistent on each layer. Then flip the sucker over or put another 1/4" layer on top.
Or they'd be good for building drawers to go under it.
My concern with a hardboard or MDF top is that the holes for the dogs would eventually deteriorate. AND while I would make the MDF of hardwood top replaceable I think I would want something a bit more permanent.
No offense to the OP, because we are all like that are sometimes, but it reminds me of the posers in Nashville who post ads for "professional musicians" who inevitably have no budget to pay them.
I take it none of the plywood pieces are large enough to glue up flat to make the top. Given that, I think you could laminate what is essentially a 2"-3" slice of a very, very thick piece of plywood. It should make a reasonable top, at minimal cost, mainly the cost of the glue, of which you will probably use a lot. I can only think of two drawbacks which are probably easily worked around.
I'm thinking buying a sheet or two for the sole purpose to rip in to 3 or so inch wide strips. those turned on edge and the faces glued together. It would be like a 360-400 on edge ply top when considering that 1/2" BB comes in 9 ply to start with. Thicker pieces would actually save me some glue up time and would use less glue.
1) Since plywood is generally made of veneers glued up perpendicular to each other, half of the grain of your bench top will be end grain, oriented vertically, and the other half will be side grain, oriented horizontally. This means that your bench top may be a bit less stiff than a solid word version. If you are concerned about the stiffness, especially if you don't make the top thick, you should be sure to incorporate some support in the leg structure under the top to stiffen it up.
Right, but I am considering at least 3" thick so I don't think that the possibility of sag would ever be a problem. And unlike regular plywood Baltic Birch is all hardwood with no voids if you can get the real stuff.
2) The grain of the top will be half end grain, and half side grain. You may be unsatisfied with the texture of the top with its varying grain. You could work around this by applying some kind of uniform thin top layer, such as a sheet of masonite, to be replaced when it wears unacceptably.
Other than those two caveats, I say, "Go for it!" Recycling is the way of the future, and we should try to appropriately use all of our scraps instead of merely tossing or burning them. I just built a very heavy bench out of some glulam beams from our neighborhood gas station that were headed for the landfill (someone who can't read ran his too- tall truck into the canopy). Now I have a really beefy bench and the landfill has 600 pounds less wood in it, and it only cost me a bit of glue and labor. My last bench was made of recycled 4x4's and oak flooring. I used bolts I have gleaned from garage sales, keeping them out of the landfill, and even made some barrel nuts for the stretchers out of some scrap aluminum. I painted it with the tag ends of paint that I am not allowed to put in the landfill, and that our county no longer recycles. About the only way I can think of to have made the bench "greener" might have been to use some kind of glue not made of petroleum products, such as hide glue.
Well there is that to consider and one of the reasons I am not sold on a sacrificial top. Having said that however the Baltic Birch plywood top would be all solid hard wood. I think ultimately it would be stronger than the same sized solid wood slab and less likely to be affected by climate changes.
;~) Being in the "BiZ" I have a lot more labor in the price than 65-70% of the price. Typically on the skinny side my labor is at least 75% of the total price and more often closer to 80%. And then again it all depends on whether I am building fine furniture or a fence. ;~) I am really not trying to save money in this situation so much as building a top that would be just as strong as a top with all the wood grain running in the same direction, and perhaps easier to actually cut up and glue.
;~) My whole idea of using Baltic Birch over solid stock is to hopefully speed up the preparation of the materials for glue up. I am not really looking for a cheaper way out although it seems it would be significantly cheaper with new Baltic Birch plywood over solid stock. My thinking is if I buy solid wood stock and rip it to width for glue up there is going to be some bow in some of the pieces after being cut and that will have to be dealt with. Baltic Birch on the other hand should stay straight after being cut and should eliminate some of the problems that solid wood present from the equation during assembly. It's the stability of the product that I am interested in more so than saving on expense.
Yeah he got me there.. ;~)) I guess legitimate was probably not the correct description. I am actually trying to steer towards a bench with less steel than wood. ;~)
I think the first order of business is to determine what the bench will be used for...
For instance, a door or replaceable MDF top might make a good assembly bench or machine table.
If you're going to flatten faces of boards with a hand plane, flatter than the thicknesser leaves it, you're going to need a surface than can be trued up on occasion with hand planes or cleaned with a cabinet scraper.
A surface used for lots of hand work is usually better without a slippery film finish. On the other hand, the right film finish will protect against glue, sharpening oils and water, etc...
I have surfaces ranging from melamine to urethane coated MDF to unfinished pine and ash, depending on the use.
Lots and lots of very nice old benches have pine or fir tops that still survive today. The surface doesn't have to be a hardwood.
I picked up a used kitchen table with an Oak top and put two layers of plywood underneath.
The table top was the standard country style top with running bond blocks of Oak. Cut the table to width and used the remainder to edge band everything, if you didn't look underneath you would think it was
3" thick Oak.
I used cauls to clamp the layers flat using the TS as a backer and ended up with a damn flat top.
That bit of information probably would have been helpful. ;!) I am wanting a "flat" work bench to shape wood and or use for assembly of furniture. I really want to get something bigger than my TS top. LOL
I've built a couple of benches over the past 20 years and the best top was made from a hunk of bowling lane I picked up when one of the local establishments went out of business. I regret the day that I decided to leave that bench in the basement of a house we were renting.
I'm preparing to re-top my primary workbench in the spring. It is 2' by 6'. I'm going to extend the top by a foot. I'll be using a layer of 3/4" ply and then a 1 1/8" thick butcherblock countertop from Ikea. The 1 foot extension will give me a place to install at least one vise (that I already own) and probably a 2nd going the other way and allow a cutout for tools at the opposite end. It'll start out with a good solid flat top and I'll be able to resurface it at least 2 times (and probably a couple more). It'll be easy to remove that countertop layer and replace it if and when the time comes.
I built a very flat assembly torsion box, with a melamine top, that sits on my hand tool bench, outfeed table, painter's steps (for tall projects), or even the floor.
When I'm not assembling, I really prefer an unfinished wood top, with end and face vices, a board jack, and surface dog holes. In addition to hand tool work, the "hand tool" vises and dogs easily clamp router dovetail and pocket hole jigs, and even nicely (and QUICKLY) holds boards for biscuiting!
Whatever you build, don't forget pop-up planing stops, as they work as well with belt sanders as they do with hand planes. Mine are just 4/4 white oak boards mounted in strategic locations with hanger bolts and wing nuts through slots. With the proper screw tension, I can pop them up and push them down without touching the screws.
While you're building stuff for yourself, I also like the mini-bench I built a few years back that brings the work to chest level. I followed a FWW article to build it from 8/4 maple and some veneer press screws. It's nice not having to bend over to use paring chisels and the like. If you end up doing a hardwood top, you could probably build the mini-bench for free.
I've been thinking of building a copy of Popular Woodworking's "21st Century Bench", the Bob Lang bench unveiled last fall. Check that one out, too.
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