I am in the design stage of a new solid maple workbench. I have purchased the material, 8/4 soft maple, and it has been sitting in the shop aclimating for the past few weeks. I have been doing a lot of reasearch, both online and in print, on the different styles and construction methods for a traditional workbench. I have also purchased and completely read “The Workbench” by Lon Schleining and found it to be a great reference.
I do have a question however. My bench will be constructed with trestles on each end and will be connected with stretchers between them. In a vast majority I have noticed only 1 stretcher on either side of the bench, but in some I have seen 2. Is there any advantage in adding a second stretcher?
Replies
forces on courses
Stretchers dampen racking forces to which the bench will be subjected. End stretchers deal with front to back forces, center stretchers deal with those along the length of the bench. Whether you want one or two center stretchers depends, I think, on the dimensions of the materials being used, and whether you plan to add storage under the bench.
Shelf Support
As the first poster already pointed out, the stretcher is there to prevent the bench from racking and up to a point the more the better, although a single wide stretcher is typically adequate. Sometimes two smaller stretchers are used to provide a support for a shelf.
New workbench from solid Beech
Hi there, this is my first attempt at building a new bench as the old one i had was built by my daa who was 80 at the time
and the top was far from level.
I decided to just remove the old top and replace it wit a solid beech one. I bought 10" wide 2" thick pieces of
beech ( 8 feet long ) .
I need to know the best way of doing the top. Do i need to slice up these pieces length ways and then glue, what was once the top surface, together. Does this increase stability and durability??
Manny thanks for any advise
Rich
tranditions
Yes, the traditional method would be to rip the planks into strips and glue face-to-face, so the edge grain becomes the work surface. Placing the ripped boards on edge reduces the amount of flex/bounce the top might otherwise have when doing things like chopping mortises. The resulting thickness can range from 1.5" to 4", with thicker usually being considered better. It is often advantageous to do the glue-ups in groups such that sections can be fed through a thickness planer prior to the final glue-up of the sections.
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