re: New bench in the works...

Let’s hold on a second here fellas. You’re almost making it sound like I’m knocking the plywood bench, which I’m not. If you look back, my questions, of which there were two, involved only the wagon vices. I didn’t ask about designing the bench, what to make it out of or how to do it.
I simply saw that Paul used Madrone for the vices, and being that I know nothing about constructing anything with wedges, I thought Madrone was chosen for a particular quality that species offers, above others, beyond availability or aesthetics.
Look, my comment about 1/3 the price was a sarcastic exaggeration brought on by the high cost of decent plywood available to me. I can’t get birch plywood for less than $47 a sheet. I can’t get any decent plywood for less than $47 a sheet.
My bench is not like the one Paul built. My bench is going to be 8 feet long, 32 inches wide and 3 inches thick, with no tool well. I can build that out of solid Ash for $96. Just 3 sheets of plywood would cost me $141. So I guess for 1/3 less is a more accurate statement.
In any event, bench construction wasn’t the question and I don’t know how it ever got to that. As awesome as Paul’s bench is, I don’t want a replica of it. I want my own bench, with Paul’s wedge vices in it.
All I really wanted to know was if Madrone was selected for a particular reason, or would one of my locally available species work as well.
Sorry for any confusion this whole thing might have caused.