Yesterday we introduced our new 5’ workbench yet today we’ve been putting the finishing touches on more of a Wadkin grade bench! This is our 8’ Nautilus but built with a bit of a difference using what is pretty much quarter sawn oak. To top it off the customer opted for two snazzy hand wheels teamed up with our pinless shaft system. The top is built out of two large slabs with beautiful quarter sawn figuring.
Below – Just for fun and to show the strength of our pinless shaft system (I think we need a better name for that!). A large length of 2” thick ash was held with just a light nip and then a cast iron glue pot hung from the top of the timber! Richard thinks we could have hung the morticer off it but I told him to stop wasting time! This levered weight is a pretty sound test for any vice, especially considering no effort was made to tighten it up.
We’re building a Nautilus workbench very similar to this that we’ll be taking along to the European Woodworking Show. This time it will be teamed up with our much preferred wooden screws.
Update: At the present time we’re not making any workbenches for sale, however we have many resources on this website that will help guide you with your own workbench build.
Our English Workbench Video Series takes you step by step through a traditional bench build, starting out with a discussion on choosing the ideal dimensions, demonstrations of how to cut the joinery, right through to flattening your workbench top and building the face vice from scratch.
If you’d like us to guide you through your build with detailed videos and PDF plans, then you can find full details for this Workbench Series here.
Lovely bench.
How about the Maguire PSS for a name?
Hi Patrick, thank you. I like the name, it sounds very technical!
Would you please tell me who makes or sells the hand wheels on the leg vises in the pictures? I like them better than the Benchcrafted hand wheels. I can see an initial on the hub of the wheel, but I’m only guessing it’s an “em”. A search did not turn anything up for those letters. – Thank you.
Dean, the intial on the hub is a fancy ‘M’ for Maguire. We make as much as our own hardware as possible and we’ve made quite a few of these handwheels now to install on our workbenches. We don’t have any plans to sell them on their own though I’m affraid, we’ve also used the Benchcrafted ones previously and can say that they’re definately worth a look.
Are the metal hand wheels available with the painless leg vice kit those things are beautiful.