This is my new workbench. I designed it based off the Anarchist’s Workbench described by Christopher Schwarz, and the Festool MFT. It aims to hold work pieces firmly for planing, sawing, and chiseling with hand tools. As well as providing a fence, rail, and enough surface area to cut 1200x600mm plywood panels.
The Anarchist’s Workbench uses thick timber components to create a heavy workbench suited for hand tool woodworking. The bench-top does not overhang the legs at the front, providing a large clamping surface. A leg vice, benchdogs, and holdfasts provided workholding.
The Festool MFT is a lightweight portable workbench designed for jobsite power tool use. A fence and guide rail hinge allow for fast, accurate, and repeatable tracksaw cuts. Workholding is mostly done through small clamps that thread through the holes or the aluminium extrusions on the edges.
My workshop is in a spare bedroom. A table saw requires infeed and outfeed space on either side of the blade. The track-saw lets me cute larger panels than I could fit through a tablesaw in the same space. I also like the track-saw for the safety, dust collection, and reduced noise. The fence lets me accurately set stops, and repeat cuts.
A power board and some cable management are mounted on the back of the bench. This powers my lamps but most of my tools are battery powered.
My lamps are modified Ikea Tertials. A 3d printed holder lets them sit in any of the 20mm holes on the benchtop.
The benchtop pinned to the frame using dowels. It’s not glued or screwed, so it can be lifted easily if needed. The top surface is black laminate over a 25mm MDF core. There’s a walnut edge banding that has been planed down to be perfectly level with the top. The edge banding’s front face has been stained black, as has the pine vice shop. The bench frame is made from Tasmanian Oak (which is actually Eucalyptus).
The leg vice has a lot of space to hold boards vertically or horizontally.
Work can be clamped to the apron to provide extra support if needed.
Though the leg vice alone is able to hold even large panels.
The leg vice uses a Benchcrafted Crisscross to hold the chop parallel to the leg. The weighty wheel of the vice acts as a flywheel, pushing the chop along the acme thread with little effort. The inside face of the chop is lined with crubber for more grip. The mouth of the vice opens to about 8 inches, holding much more than the bench vice I used to use.
The leg vice chop has dog holes that can accept bench dogs that will clamp against dogs in the bench itself.
Festool MFT clamps can be used in a similar way. They can be spaced out using any of the dog holes.
Bench dog hold down clamps replace traditional holdfasts.
I have self-retracting castors for more easily moving the bench around. I don’t recommend them one of the bearings failed and has been dropping steel balls. Also having to lift the bench in order to deploy the castors is a struggle when it’s fully loaded.
Here are some shots of the bench as it was being made.
Initially I thought I could laminate some boards and hand plane them flat, and square, for the legs. It was a huge amount of effort and I wasn’e able to achieve the accuracy I wanted.
I didn’t own a jointer or thicknesses so next I tried a router jig. Unfortunately my trim router doesn’t hold it’s bits well and the slippage was clearly visible in the leg. I ended up buying a benchtop jointer, thicknesser, and 100mm dust extractor. They produced much more accurate results far quicker than I could do by hand. The project would’ve taken months less time if I’d just bought them to begin with.