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I am planning to build a workbench. Due to space constraints it will have to have one side against a wall. I was thinking something about 30" wide x 8' long and 42" high since that is my waist height (I'm tall). I'm wondering how much a face vise and dogs are used for guitar building, our would hold down slots on the table top be more useful? Do you agree with the tips that Frank Ford has on his site?

What features do you find MANDATORY?

What features are in the "NICE to have" category?

What features are a WASTE and should be avoided?

Thanks for any input you have.
Ed

I am not the most help here, but I am just finishing up my new workbench. I found 30" depth for the countertop to be perfect, and I lined the bottom side of the countertop (which is a 2x4 frame) with plywood for clamping. My bench is 12 feet long and I dedicated 4 feet as a go-bar deck with a melamine surface, all the rest is G1S plywood. Just some ideas.

One feature of most work benches that I feel could be inproved specifly for use by guitar builders is a wider spread between dog holes. most comercally available plans and prebuilt benches have two rolls of dog holes on 6" centers which is good in the length direction but width wise I made mine with three rolls width wise also on 6" centers. If I had it to do over I would have made them on 9" centers width wise and 6" centers length wise. Also a built in guitar vice (troje') (sp?) at one end is handy as well

Ed-
A few quick points- (if you post a brief list of the features from Frank Ford's site you will probably get more comments- I don't go to Ford's site if I want to get any work done (!)- it is so easy to just follow from one interesting topic to another over there- great site.)

For guitar building, I don't think a end/face vise and dogs (or dogs in the benchtop) are necessary. You will need some kind of vise, though- with wood-lined jaws. A machine vise can work and you can swap in the metal jaws if you are doing metalwork for jigs, etc. And, as Michael has pointed out, a guitar-holding vise of some kind- attached or free- is very handy when you are scraping sides, working on binding, etc.
Make sure you have a good solid overhang for clamping.
Your bench dimensions sound fine, depending on your work style. - 42" is really tall, but if you never work sitting on a stool, it will prevent stooping. If you have a tool board on the wall, make sure you can easily reach your tools across the bench. This will limit the depth.
8' is plenty long- I took a class and the workspaces for students (and apprentices) were only about 4'-5' wide (it does require that you keep organized and keep tools off the bench.
If I had 8' for one bench, I'd consider adding a protruding 'peninsula' in the middle- something 18-24" wide, perhaps. Sometimes it is very convenient to have the work available from both sides. I use a 'workboard' clamped to the 'L' end of my traditional bench for this.
Whatever the height of your benchtop, you want to think out your go-bar setup in advance (it's easier to work up at the ceiling without the bench in the way, if possible) - a strong shelf (ie 2x4 frame attached to ceiling joists) is the usual for the top surface (good for storing molds, etc). You don't want to have your 'sticks' for the deck too short. If you plan to use the deck for gluing on tops/backs,then you need (workboard+sides height+caul+ 'stick working height') between the benchtop and the 'lid' of the go-bar-deck. Also,you don't want the shelf so low that you bump your head on it, obviously.
So do some experimenting with the go-bar-setup.

Make the bench solid- attach it to the wall and put shelves or drawers under and load 'em up with stuff. If you adopt the modern jig-intensive style of building, collect wood, and machine your own parts ("I might as well cut a few dozen more lining strips while I'm at it") you will need a lot of storage space.

Folks here are very helpful- if you post a sketch/pic of your workspace some more-experienced builders than me will give you some good ideas, no doubt.

Cheers
John

The shop I'm in now is my sixth, and each one has lead to improvements, particularly in the benches.

I'm a big fan of the peninsula: it's often really helpful to be able to get at all sides. If you can put the short side against the wall with the go-bar deck by the wall, you will have four feet or more of usable bench top while something is in the deck, and you can still get at the deck from three sides. A really nice configuration is an L-shaped peninsula, with the 'foot' on the side away from the wall, but that takes up a lot of space.

Most of my benches are just plywood boxes, like kitchen counters. On my penultimate move I had to get ten benches together in ten days, so I could have my class, so I worked out a way to mass-produce bench parts, and then just screwed them all together with sheetrock screws. It was really easy to knock them down for the last move, but one or two of the tops were _heavy_. Level the base, and the rest is easy.

Make the top heavy and _flat_. These days I'm using three layers: plywood, MDF, plywood. Screw them together and you can take off the top layer and flip it when it gets messed up.

Height is a conundrum: I find it handy to have several different bench heights. The old advice about having the top two finger widths below your navel is a good rule of thumb. I have students of many different statures, and having different bench heights works well for them.

I, too, use a box on the ceiling as the top of the go-bar deck. I keep the bars in it. On mine the bottom surface is 3/4" plywood, and I used ply dividers every 4" or so, which makes it stiff. With several different compartments, I have three or so different lengths of go-bars for different purposes. Be careful about making it parallel to the bench top, or some of the go-bars will fall out.

Either a woodworkers vice or a metal vice is good, and both have advantages and drawbacks. These days (oh the luxury!) I have both. Don't forget that parallal clamps can be clamped to the bench top and used as temporary vices.

I'm also in the process of designing a new workbench. I like this design from FWW. http://www.finewoodworking.com/Workshop/WorkshopArticle.aspx?id=28530 I figured I could use the "side vise" for rims, tops, and backs, and the "front vise" for holding the guitar body or neck. I plan to put cabinets underneath for storage and put it on locking wheels for when I need to work from all sides.

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- Ben Pak
North Wales, Pa.

Ben-
Thanks for the FWW link. Interesting bench-especially for furniture/larger work. FWW (Taunton) also published 'The Workbench Book' which has lots of ideas- check your local library.
I have a similar (removable) pipe-clamp-based 'guitar body holder' on the front of one of my benches. I learned (the painful way) to hang a jacket or similar item on the pipe clamp ends to 'remind' me that they are sticking out there.

re: Wheels on your bench. I have 'locking' wheels on my (small) thickness planer stand, and they really don't hold very securely. There are 'jacking' type wheel arrangements which 'lift' my tablesaw 'off its feet' and on to the wheels for movement. This might be a better bet for a bench. A home-built variation would be pretty simple to improvise, I think.
http://www.stephensawyer.com/content/Woodworking/MobileBase.htm

Trying to plane/file/rasp on a bench which moves (at all) is a frustrating experience. I like them heavy and fixed- if possible. That can be tricky in a small shop.

Cheers
John

John,

I have considered some of the issues you've brought up regarding wheels. I have wheels on some of my machines and I do have issues with movement. I was thinking of using something like this http://www.castercity.com/cm3a-plate.htm or Ive also been considering something like this http://www.castercity.com/floor-locks.htm. I agree that a workbench that has any movement while using it, would be annoying to say the least. What do you think of these ideas?

_________________
- Ben Pak
North Wales, Pa.

I don't have a clue. My entire workspace is the top of my go-bar deck.

Philip

_________________
aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

Ben-
Thanks for the links.
The 'Floor jacks' might do the job. The 'Locking wheels' wouldn't be a good bet, IMO. The thing I notice with my planer stand is that the wheels can 'skid' on the (rough concrete) floor even if locked. Perhaps this wouldn't be an issue with a much heavier item like a bench.
The homemade version in the link I posted looks like it might work, and it would certainly be cheaper.
You could probably secure a wheeled bench by bolting it to the wall/floor with a couple of alternative locations, but I've never tried this.

Cheers
John

The vises I use are: 1 regular side vise,similar to a Record,and the vise like in Todd Stock's post. It is really a gunstocker's vise,but is dubbed a universal vise most often. Make up some spare wooden jaws,too. That is the vise I use most of the time as it holds tapered parts,or straight.

I bought my German universal vise for $40.00 in 1970. They got up to $220.00 before they vanished from common supplier's catalogs. Fortunately, Asian copies came out,and are fine UNLESS the horizontal sliding black bars fit too loosely in their slots. I had to put brass shims on each side of one vise we got for my previous job. Each shim was 1/32" thick. The movable jaw was loose as a goose. Most fit well,but go to Wood craft and hand select one if you can. By now,we have about 3 such vises. One for my shop,and 2 for my wife's jewelry business.

Many years ago,another shop bought a Canadian copy of the same vise,and it was just HORRIBLE!!!!!!! VERY loose fitting. MUCH worse than any Chinese vise I've ever seen!

As many drawers as you can possibly fit under it. I built drawer banks that slide in and sit on the bottom shelf. It has 6 drawers and there is enough shelf space left to keep most of my glues on one side and a couple sanders on the other. I just raised it to 39". My back is thanking me.

It also has a couple of outlets wired in and plugs in.

I second Alan's recommendation for an L shaped peninsula. The bench can just be a couple of particle board boxes screwed together and topped with a couple of 3/4" particle board or Melamine sheets. Definitely do the peninsula, you'll find that's where you'll wind up doing most of your work. Get the Stew Mac vise or similar pattern makers vise from another vendor. Worth every penny. You can drill holes in different parts of you bench to move it around or put it on an extension like Todd's. Stick a Go bar deck above some part of the setup and you're ready to go.
If you have room you can make a nice setup bench from a couple of cheap kitchen base cabinets from Home Depot topped with a couple of layers of particle board.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

If it is guitar specific and you will be at this for the long term, i would suggest that for all the money involved with vices, dogs, jigs and whatnot that you instead bite the bullet and consider going straight to vacuum clamping and be done with it. I say this because the foot print is small, the systems are very adaptable and you can clamp an instrument safely and get at it from every aspect without things getting in your way.

I still reckon you need to have a place to lock a radius dish in place though, and as Allan suggest, a peninsular allows access from the sides. My solution is to have a 600mm sq x 38mm thick drop leaf hinged to the middle of a longer mdf bench. When needed, (which is a lot) the leaf is swung up into position and secured with a single prop angled at 45deg back to one of the support legs of the bench, it takes all of 5 seconds to drop and then reposition the leaf. The 600mm leaf does not sound much but you need to consider that it swings out from the main bench which is 700mm wide, in effect this gives you 1300mm if you want it but i generally find i work from one side of the leaf with the neck hanging over the other. The leaf also has a hole in the centre and a "T" nut had been epoxied into the bottom. This allows a headless bolt to be screwed into the leaf and the required radius dish to be secured to the middle of the leaf via a central hole in the dish. The dish can then be moved like a lazy suzan, or you can lock it in place.

What is i like about this idea is that once in place, the drop leaf aligns with an over head 600mm sq x 38mm thick slab of mdf suspended from the ceiling by 7/8" allthread and this forms the top part of the gobar deck. There is also a length of storm water pipe attached to the allthread supports in which i store the fiberglass gobars for quick access. The top surface of the suspended deck is used for storage of various clamps and the current mold but also, as it is hard wired, there is 6 switched power outlets along the rear edge which does away with extension leads and a light built in the centre which is protected by a small 10mm thick piece of glass let in flush with the underside. This all works well as there is no uprights on the gobar deck to get in your way and the light lets you see what you are doing.

WARNING: If anyone tries this at home, just be sure to drill some good size vent holes in the mdf around the light fitting to let the heat of the lamp out or you could end up with a real fire hazard on your hands. I also sealed the mdf with thick old shellac to bond the fibers and lessen the risk, it works well.

Cheers

Kim

I too am very tall and did the same thing you're talking about. My back loves it, but there are some other concerns. I work in a small space and am pretty crowded. The height of the bench gets in the way of all the other tools when I'm doing something that uses a piece of wood longer than guitar size. I'm getting ready to redo my shop and will do a few things differently.

I like the peninsula, but it does use more room and interferes with out-feed or in-feed for most of my tools. If I decide I have the space to do another, it will be the same height as the tools, either low, or platforms for everything to bring them up to bench height.

I'll incorporate the go-bar deck into the bench / ceiling. Currently I can use the space below my bench, but then I have to clear it out. I also built a portable deck that I usually use, but I build so slowly, most of the time it is just taking up room. Plus I way over built it so it's super heavy to get up on the bench. Last time, I just sat on the floor.

Radius dish. I don't need bench space for my radius dishes any more. My dishes still have the corners on them. I drill 1.25" holes in the corners and clamp the whole thing to my table saw with "mag switches." Works great. Holds the dish flat if it warped at all. Occasionally I whack my knuckles, but I think it's worth it.

I'll second the others on the gun stock vise too. Mine is mounted in a hole in the bench top. Takes 5 seconds to remove.

Finally, thanks for using a fancy word like penultimate, Alan. My students will be pleased to hear there really are people who no just have, but actually use a large vocabulary.

Mike Lindstrom

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Mike Lindstrom