Ok here is some with all done. New bench dogs, brass a dozen. New vise suede purple to match the Purple Heart. Clamp rack and jig area close to the bench.

Now complete with chest of drawers for all my hand woodworking tools. It’s the greatest bench of all time!

The drawers contain all my woodworking hand tools except hammers and clamps. Thanks to everyone that has followed and made comments. Here are some pics of the drawer contents.

Correction the leather is purple suede deer hide. As promised here are some updated pics. After 10 months use now I have some wear and tear but overall it’s in great shape. The drawers are a huge step forward. It’s the greatest tool over ever had and the greatest thing I have ever built.

I have some updating to do… All of the vises are trimmed in Purple Heart but all now have been faced in deer hide swade the same colour as the Purple Heart. I have replaced all the wooden dowel bench dogs with brass ones over twenty, Father’s Day birthday etc… I have built a drawer cabinet that fits underneath the bench and has 6 drawers, it holds all of my woodworking hand tools and is made from birch plywood and birch wood. Next time I go to the workshop I will take my iPad to follow up with pictures.

Congrats on an excellent build Thorreain. A beautiful bench. I would probably want to keep it in my living room for fear of scratching it up. Now you can work in the way you envisioned when you designed the bench and I’m sure a lot of great projects will come off it, the sooner the better!

Start to finish this project took around 3 months. Their were some challenges and changes along the way, some good some not. I will attempt to go over some. First the table top wood was rock hard maple, I would liked to have a thicker top, the final thickness was 3-1/2", I wanted it to be 4" and seeing it now I wish I had made it 5-1/2" the size of the legs. Next, I found a video on u-tube with a better designed joint for the legs that has even wedges for the top. This was the first time doing any joinery of this type and it turned out better than expected, but the size of one piece of the oak laminate threw the mortises for the sliding dovetail off a bit. I should have gone and got another piece of oak the same dimension. Next, was the way the general cabinetmakers Vise fit. I like that it is even with the top of bench. The metal is part of the bench top, whereas most people would have dropped it down a bit so the bench top was only showing, on mine it allowed me to trim it out in Purple Heart like all the other vises. Next, when doing the top glue up it was my first time laminating such a large devise. I should have only done one set of four boards then added to them instead of making the two sets and trying to space them together as they would not bend after glued. This ended up making some cracks in the glue lines bigger than I would like, but functionally they are alright. I added a pair of stretchers right under the table top to make sure they won’t get any bigger. In a true split top they are part of the design, I just added them after the fact. I had changed the sizes of the plane stop holes, this was a great improvement. To then trim them in small pieces of Purple Heart worked out well too. I wish I had enough oak for the stretchers to match the legs, but the birch was much larger dimensionally and makes it look more massive and adds weight. I had purchased handles for the vises, they had goofy knobs on the ends and I ended up building one anyway but could have just made them all myself for way less cost. I had originally planned to cap both ends off with boards using dovetailed joints. After doing some milling with my small saw and router I decided it was best to just bolt them on with lags and cap the holes with dowels, this worked out well but it’s not as decorative as some benches. I am very happy with the way all the vises and battens work, it is great to finally have a woodworking bench purpose built. As always, any questions I will try to answer as best I can. Thanks for following along.

At the very start lanwater, you express an interest in following along because you were looking forward to see how interesting and different this bench would turn out, so, what do think of the design, function, and uniqueness of my bench man? Is it as different as you thought it might be at the start?

Pretty bench. Congrats on the build and the blog. Now it’s time to get in there and make some dings so it looks used (loved).

Thanks you guys. I didn’t plug any holes, had some drip below. The second coat I heated to 110 deg F. It flowed great, and still looks wet!

That is the Cadillac, La Creme de la Creme, and la sans pareil of work bench creations. Beautiful. If that doesn’t win creation of the year, we will riot. As the good ole boys in the south of in the USA say, “you done good.”

Chris – and you’re going to actually use that beautiful thing? Seriously, it is well designed, well equipped work bench. I like the epoxy top. Did you have to redo the holes or did you put plugs, or a dam in them before you used the epoxy? Anyway, excellent blog, impressive documentation along the way. I appreciate YOUR hard work.

The finish on the top is epoxy by the way. The rest will be sprayed with water based nitro cellulose. Thanks to everyone that followed along and offered suggestions. It was great therapy sharing this projects. Thank You.