I have a (maple) bench that I made 20+ years ago from the Tage Frid plans in Finewoodworking. This is similar to mine, but not my web site. I have been very happy with it and was glad I built it as nearly every kind of joint in woodworking was used in that project, so it was a good learning exercise.

Chris Schwarz of Popular Woodworking has recently published a book based on his two-year long experience of finding and building what he considers the best of a workbench. Chris is a "hybrid" woodworker being equally likely to use hand or power tools on a project.

See also Scott Landis' book

Here is a link that might be useful: Workbenches

Here is my unfinished workbench. It still needs end caps, a back tool trough, and the front and tail vises, but I've been able to work around it for now. Its made completely from southern yellow pine --just didn't have the finances for maple or oak.

The circular foot pads are attached with a carriage bolt into a threaded insert so that any unevenness in the floor can be compensated for. You can also see the pegs that secure the legs' mortise and tenon.

In these next pictures you can see the hex bolt/captured nut setup that secures the stretchers. There is a stub tenon on each end of the stretcher, about 3/4", that fits into a mortise in the leg. That helps a lot in assembling the base.

My padauk bench dogs --they've seen better days. And those are bullet catches. They keep the dogs up when I need 'em.

If you have any questions about my bench, fire away.

Mine was built from Tage Frid's plans as well, from hard maple, and a bit longer than Frid suggests.

If you want both a bench and a project, one of these classic cabinetmaker's benches with a wooden tail vise is a great choice. If you're primarily interested in having a bench and you value your time, there are commercially available models at prices that are hard to beat.

Oh, and another good, fast, cheap workbench. The original posting of this article prompted Chris Schwarz to do a similar one (Mark 1) quite a while ago.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bob and Dave's Good Fast & Cheap Workbench

Thanks a lot guys. Some nice ideas there.

We built this neat workbench from wood salvaged from our garage demolition. The workbench is designed to store sheets of plywood and quite a lot of stuff. It provides a bit of workspace and a bunch of space to store wood we salvaged from our remodel. I found the inspiration at the Family Handyman website, but we made a few changes as we were building it to accommodate our space requirements.

Here is a link that might be useful: Workbench built from salvaged wood

Wow.
And I found my two on the side of the road.
magnumv8, yours is a piece of furniture, not a working man's bench! [LOL] Talk about a Cadillac of work benches. :)

I love these benches. I'm even taking out some console tales in my house, putting some finish and detail on the work benches and putting them in the house as furniture. I've never been very good at being a girl. These appeal to me in their strength and usefulness.

Hey Swanz, I built the traditional bench out of the Landis book with tail vice, etc. The vice boxes and faces are made of hard maple but the bench top is from laminated 3/4 MDF (4 layers epoxied together) for a 3" top and then wrapped with 1/8" Masonite glued on using contact cement. The base is made of some nice doug fir that I had lying around. After over 10 years, the top is still dead flat and has hardly any dings. I can now say without reservation that this works very well and is dirt cheap compared to a top of solid wood.

Nice idea to share all these.

Check the Kreg jig site - they have a nice basic workbench.