In May of 2015 after a year of watching woodworking videos on YouTube and falling in love with the idea of working wood with hand tools only (the way grandpa used to do it), I decided to jump in with both feet.

By this time I had assembled a minimalist set of hand tools and I got to work. I had been looking at different bench designs and read Christopher Schwarz's book Workbenches, I settled on a design that worked for me as far as material availablity and my own skill level, which I admit was close to zero.





OK, as far as the specs for this bench.

The wood that i used was construction grade Southern Yellow Pine.

I used three 12 foot long 2" x 12" for the top. I cut them down to 6 foot and then ripped them into thirds, I planed them flat and then turned them on edge and glued them together. Longer and wider 2"x material has many fewer knots to deal with.

For the legs I used four 10 foot 2" x 6". I cross cut them into thirds, planed them flat and glued them together.

The short and long stretchers around the bottom are 2" x 8".

All of the mortice and tennon joints are draw bored with 3/8" oak dowels

The finished size of this bench is 72" long, 21" wide, and 35" tall. The benchtop is 3 1/4" thick.