Beginnings of a Workbench

As I mentioned in my last post, I've decided that my next project would be to build a workbench, specifically  one that is based on the 18th century design of Andre Ruobo.  The design will be very similar one built by Chris Schwarz in his book The Workbench Design Book.  It will consist of a thick bench top (up to 6 inches) as well as stout legs.  In the book, Schwarz uses two slabs of cherry for the top and glues them together for a 20" wide bench.  This sounded like a good idea, except no way would I be able to find two slabs of hardwood like that.

The only large pieces of lumber that I was able to find was fir timbers, which I sourced from a local lumber yard.  I ordered two eight feet long 6" x 12" timbers for the workbench top and a 12 feet long 6" x 6" timber to be used for the legs. Usually these timbers are supplied green, but I had them kiln dried so that they wouldn't be shrinking after I built the bench and I didn't have six years for them to dry naturally.

One side effect of the kiln drying is that the two large timbers developed some pretty severe checks, as you can see by the picture at the left.  I think they may have been dried too rapidly and I hope that these checks don't cause me problems down the road because they are pretty deep.  If I had to do it over again, I would probably use four 6x6 timbers instead of the two 6x12's.

I hope to post soon about some of the tools that I've acquired recently in order to build this bench.  And hopefully I can put those tools to work soon and start turning these timbers into something useful.