Official Luthiers Forum!

The Grizzly catalog sports a few really nice work benchs that I am considering but I have not found any other suppliers for them to cost compare. Any site suggestions?

Harbor Freight has a nice one on sale for about $170.

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

I've got a (homebuilt) 'European-style' bench which was built from plans in FineWoodworking - about Issue #2, so that dates me for sure.

The recessed 'tool tray' area in those benches is a great place for shavings and sawdust to collect. Unless you are super-neat in your work habits, go for a bench with a flat surface.

You don't need anything extremely sturdy for instrument building, but it is nice to be able to plane wood with out having the bench move. If you can't bolt it to the floor, you can always arrange some storage in the base to increase the mass.

Just my two cents worth-
Happy shopping!
John

Building your own work bench can be done in a couple or hours or it can be a month long project depending on how ambitious you are about it, but they can be equally functional for most things. I have an old Scandinavian workbench (hovelbenk=planing bench) that is low, has a lot of mass and two sturdy vices, which means it is great for planing and for holding many of the other jigs and fixtures that I use. It is free standing in the middle of my work space so I have access to it from all sides. However, the bench where I do most of my work is higher, which is better for detail work, it is wall mounted so it is very sturdy, and one part has a white high pressure laminate surface which is easy to keep clean, it is very flat and I have my parrot vice nearby.

Lots of good ideas for different types of benches, including plans in this book:

The workbench book

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I used a grizzly bench top 36X96 on a kitchen Island projects, pretty good quality top, but not a flat as I would have liked. 20 bucks and a few minutes of muscling around at a friends shop with a 40" wide belt and I had a perfectly flat (within any reasonable specs) top It was significantly less expensive then it would have been from any of my local suppliers. I would definitely consider using one of there tops for a workbench especially considering the hours I have in the maple work bench top in my shop.