Workbench Build. Standing on it’s own.

Now that the holiday dust is settling and things are getting back to a semi normal schedule, I recently had time to get the legs of the workbench “fitted” to the bench top. I use the term “fitted” loosely because as you can see by the picture, the tool used to “fit” is not the most delicate tool in the shop. Forget the previous sentence. I recently had time to “persuade” the legs to mate with the bench top.

After about an hour of pounding the remaining legs into place, I finally had all four installed into the top. One concern I had was being able to remove the legs later after fitting the stretchers. These are REALLY tight fitting. It was hard enough pounding these legs in one at a time. I am having a hard time imagining doing all four at the same time once the stretchers and legs are assembled as one piece.

Now that the legs are installed, it was time to flip it over and see how it sits on the ground. I enlisted the help from my loving wife and together we flipped it over and placed it on the floor.

First thing I noticed was that this bench, although small in size compared to most benches, is a beast. Even without the stretches installed it is very heavy.

Second thing I noticed was that the back left leg sits about 1/8 in. off the ground. So now the bench rocks and not in a good way. I double checked all my leg dimensions and they were all the same. Double checked the thickness of the bench on all four corners and found out that the back left corner is a little thinner than the rest. I was very careful in planing the surface of the bench to make sure that it was flat but thinking that the bottom wasn’t as important didn’t pay as much attention. I failed to realize how this would affect the legs.

I drove myself crazy thing about how to fix this. I can’t have a bench that wobbles. What’s the point in having a bench this heavy if it is gong to wobble.

I could re-plane the bottom of the benchtop to bring the legs to the same plane. Now I am going backwards, back to where I was about a year ago. Lots of work there.

I could cut the remaining legs down to match the shorter one. That would bring the bench down a little and there is the possibility of screwing up one of the other legs in the process.

Screw it. I just cut a shim and put it under the leg. No more wobble. Now it ROCKS. (in a good way)