allencrane Posted January 10, 2012 Report Share Posted January 10, 2012 I’m a brand new guild member as of today and I just finished Chris Schwarz's Workbenches book last night. I'm willing to bet that I have the most spartan current workbench of anyone out there - a slab door on an aquarium stand, no dogs, no vises - so I should win the most improved award, assuming I can finish! But it was the purchase of a jet quick release vice on craigslist that started my journey. The guy I bought it from didn’t need it anymore, because a year earlier he had decided to build a Roubo instead, using the Benchcrafted hardware. His bench was awesome, massive and heavily used. He pointed me to Chris’ book. I still bought the vise, but that same day ordered Chris' book from Amazon. I checked in again with the guy about his hardware and he told me about the Benchcrafted site, where I found mention of this project. So here I am. I consider myself a serious beginner, with a real desire to learn. Mostly jewlery boxes, pens, weather stations, cutting boards, and the obligatory bookshelf or so. In the last few months, I've been more and more drawn to hand tools, mostly because they are mysterious to me and I have no idea how to use them well, or sharpen them. They intimidate the heck out of me, but I'm really in awe when I see videos of those of you who know how to use them well. I long to be one of you, so I'm jumping into the deep end on this project, in hopes that it will accelerate me into the world of hand tools, yet still be a solid bench for any tool project - powered or otherwise. I am torn on one item though. Just before I joined the guild last weekend, I bought some fantastic 12/4 soft maple for the bench. Being 3″ thick and in 8.5 and 10.5 widths. I was planning to rip it to 4″ width and face joint the sides to laminate the top, but in Chris' interview, he comments about preferring a monolithic slab. It appears that I could do both sides of the split top (with one thin lamination on the wide side) using just 2 of these massive slabs. My question to you is this: Does the integrity of the monolithic slab compensate for being 1″ thinner than spec? That is, will a slab top that is 3″ thick be noticeably less rigid (bouncier) than if I were to rip the slabs into 4″ widths and laminate to spec? Best Regards, Allen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Pants Posted January 10, 2012 Report Share Posted January 10, 2012 Chris refers to a monolithic slab cause he's lazy . Seriously his point on the monolithic slab, iirc it's been a couple of months since I read it, is simply because it lessens the number of glue ups not due to some inherent integrity of the slabs themselves. As to the second question, I'm guessing it would be bouncier for the simple fact that the 3 inches would be face grain, lamination would be on edge and would be more rigid. How big an issue that would be I've no idea, but I doubt it would be significant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allencrane Posted January 10, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2012 Thanks Kevin. I think that I'm going to do the ripping so I don't have to modify the design. As this is my first major build, I think I'll do the prudent thing and stick to spec as much as possible, and not design as I go. Thanks again for your post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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