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On July 15, I went to Christopher Schwarz's workshop on workbench design hosted at Lie-Nielsen in Warren ME. There were about 30 or so people in attendance and Christopher brought his latest bench based on the Holtzapffel workbench. The workshop started with a slide show on the history of workbenches and Christopher offered his theory on the decline of modern workbenches (see latest Woodworking magazine for details). We spent time talking about various vise designs, holdfasts, proper dimensions for a workbench, and other aspects of bench design. In the end, I learned quite a bit, and Christopher and the people at Lie-Nielsen were gracious hosts. I have not yet built my bench, but I have the hardware, maple and a design (a pretty traditional Frid/Klausz style) ready to go. As a result of the workshop, there's a couple of things I am rethinking: having the front legs flush with the top, using round dog holes instead of square (even though I bought a pair of square bench dogs at L-N) and integrating a bench slave. One change I will definitely make is allowances for using holdfasts, I am completely sold on these after seeing them in use. The face vise on the Holtzapffel bench is definitely intriguing and I will give that some thought as well. Here are some pictures, I wish I had some better shots of the bench, but there's plenty of details on design in the latest Woodworking magazine.
Dave Charnon currently in Maine July 2007
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