The BARN Workbench is named for a community group of woodworkers and other artisans. BARN is the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network located on Bainbridge Island. The island is directly across and a 35 minute ferry ride away from Seattle. Started by a group of enthusiastic woodworkers, the group has grown to include artisans with a number of interests, including fabric artists, metal workers, jewelers, writers, printers and more. After years of organizing and fundraising, they’re opening an incredible facility so that all the groups can share knowledge, tools and a great space to work in.

A great maker workspace

The woodworkers at BARN have built an incredible workshop with a little help from local professionals including Bob Spangler, Hugh Montgomery and myself to guide them through various tasks. Being the workbench junkie that I am, I took on the project of designing a workbench for the woodworkers’ bench room. The result is the BARN Workbench.

Every workbench project comes with a number of requirements or limitations. The BARN bench is no different. The bench is designed for hand tool woodworkers who might occasionally need to use a power tool like a Domino. It also had to be made at a moderate cost, assembled quickly with help from woodworkers with various levels of experience. And, there’s nine of them to make.

As the benches are being built, I’ll get into more details, but for now here are the basics of the design.

To benefit working with hand tools, I put an emphasis on quality hardware that serious woodworkers can appreciate. Each bench is equipped with a Benchcrafted Classic Leg Vise with a Criss Cross mechanism. The tail vise is a simple, well made 7” metal quick release model from Yost.

Rather than gluing up nine bench tops, the BARN bench uses a pre-made 25” x 72” x 1-7/8” thick maple top from Perfect Plank. The base is squared and milled 4×4 fir from your neighborhood home center with the legs doubled in width. Chris Schwarz took this approach with his excellent 2-day workbench plan. If you’re spoiled by building out of hardwood, you’ll find that working with flash kiln dried material is tricky, but doable if you take your time. Lots of expansion and cracking if you’re not careful. The results are plenty strong and inexpensive.

At this point, a question on a number of regular readers’ minds is where’s the digital woodworking in this bench? Was a CNC used? The answer to both questions, of course, is yes. Mounting a Benchcrafted vise requires a fair amount of work to create a large hole and a deep mortised pocket in the front left leg and vise chop. Certainly, this can be done by hand or with other power tools but with nine benches to build, a CNC makes the process simple, accurate and fast. Same for cutting and chamfering the very accurately placed dog holes in the top. In this case, for some of the special features of the top that I’ll get into later, accurate dog hole placement is particularly critical. Definitely, you can do this with other tools, but for this project, the CNC saves time and delivers accuracy.

As Steve Jobs used to say, “…there’s one more thing”. The vise chops. Being a designer, I thought it would be fun to make each bench unique and so using Rhino3D, I created a special 3D design for each vise chop. Then I milled them using 3D milling techniques I programmed in RhinoCAM on my CNCs. I used hard maple, local western maple, and eastern walnut. Why not make the vise chops fun to see and touch? Here’s a sneak peek of the six of the ten vise chops (9 + 1 spare) waiting for completion.

On the next BARN Workbench Post, I’ll take you on a video tour of the prototype bench and the BARN Bench features.

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Low cost, no cost, easy entry digital woodworking…

It always starts with a design

Digital woodworking is using digitally controlled tools in your workshop as an addition to hybrid and handtools. Most often that means owning and operating a CNC and learning to use CAD programs. For many, committing to a CNC is also a big step financially.

Here’s the thing, you can mine a nice chunk of the benefits of digital tools at little or no cost; with no long-term commitment and with very little fear of technology on your part by using a technique I used for many years.

It doesn’t matter how you approach woodworking; power tools, hybrid or hand tools, you can immediately benefit with this approach. This is a good trick any woodworker can use. I’ll show you how in this three-part series.

Start With Paper Patterns

The trick: If you have a computer, and if you’re reading this blog, likely you’ve got one then you can make a computer-generated drawing. Armed with a drawing, you can make patterns. With accurate patterns, you can make accurate parts. Wherever the direction of your woodworking path is taking you, I’m sure we all can agree that accurate parts are important. Patterns are the trick.

From the time I started woodworking as a hobby in the mid-1990’s, I created all my designs for my projects on a computer using graphic design drawing software. In the beginning, I used the same vector-based drawing tools I was already familiar with as a graphic designer. Most of the time it was Freehand and Adobe Illustrator. Both are similar, with Freehand, a long gone, favorite program that was a bit better at precision CAD control. I loved that program. Using either one, I would draw my furniture parts, full size. Once you have a full-size drawing, you can make a pattern.

If you already have Adobe Illustrator, it’s a good place to start. Worked very well for me. But, for a lot of people, the software cost of Adobe software is prohibitive and the time to learn is limiting — after all, it is a professional drawing tool. There are alternative drawing programs that are simpler to learn, cheaper and sometimes, free. But, no matter your choice, it does need to be a certain kind of software. Drawing software.

Use Vector Drawing or CAD Software

Some background. When I say drawing programs, I’m referring to vector-based drawing programs. Vector drawing programs are different than painting programs. When you draw something in a drawing program, it is not composed of individual pixels, but paths. Vector graphics are based on vectors which lead through locations called control points or nodes. Each of these points has a definite position on the X and Y axes. These points determine the path, that say, a curved line goes through. If you’ve ever used a plastic French curve and maneuvered it around tangent points to smooth out a curve, the idea is the same.

Rest assured that you don’t have to understand the details on what’s going underneath the surface, as all the detail is stored internally in the drawing file. You just draw the shapes or curves or lines you need. What makes drawing with vector based tools special is that no matter how the components of the drawing are scaled, the precision is held all the way through. If a drawing is enlarged or shrunk, it’s all executed, printed or machined on a CNC or other digitally based machines like a laser cutter, the results are perfect. Whether it’s a detail on a cufflink, a sign the size of a semi-truck, or a furniture part cut on a CNC, it doesn’t matter. Perfection is there. It’s not just vector-based drawing software that does this, CAD software works the same way.

Note that you cannot create patterns using painting or raster based programs like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Paint or the painting mode in Corel Draw. This kind of software creates pixels that are subject to scale. You can see this as you zoom all the way in, your drawing gets more and more “jaggy” as the pixels get bigger. Not so with vector based line drawing or CAD software. Some kind of vector-based drawing software is what you need to make paper or CNC cut patterns.

Examples of graphic design drawing software

• CAD software is always the first choice.
• Adobe Illustrator ” Part of the Adobe’s Creative Cloud. It’s a professional tool, so learning is required and expensive. PCs and Macs.
• Inkscape ” An open source (free) drawing program similar to Illustrator. Runs on PCs and Macs
• Autodesk Graphic ” Low cost but pretty powerful for Macs and PCs
• Corel Draw ” Moderate cost for Mac or PC

Start with CAD if you Can

In the world of digital woodworking, a vector-based graphics drawing program should be considered a temporary stop. It’ll get you started, it will work, as I proved for many years, but in the long run, you’re far better off using CAD software. All CAD software is vector based and therefore precise. The fact that it’s designed from the start for precision drawing tasks and has lots of extra tools to make working with it easier for woodworkers make it the better starting point. There are free CAD programs, low-cost programs, middle priced and expensive programs. Down the road, I’ll get into more details on what to look for and review different software but for a place to start making patterns, any CAD program will work.

Making Paper Patterns

Step one is to draw the pattern you want to make, full size. By that I mean if you’re drawing an arm of a chair that will be 35″ long, make sure you drawing of it is 35″ long. Use the tools in your drawing software that provide the information on the size and dimensions of a drawing to help you. Also, makes sure you are accurate in every way. Lines intended to be straight must be drawn straight. Critical dimensions are exact. This is where CAD software excels. You can do it with graphic design drawing software as I have done, but it’s trickier.

My first patterns were output onto paper via standard home/office printers. When larger than standard paper sizes were needed, I printed segments of a design using the automatic “tiling” printing feature that divides a large drawing into pieces that overlap that can be printed on smaller pages. To make it easier to splice them together, I would add targets or a grid to align segments and splice and tape the different pieces together until I had a full-size drawing of a part. Another method is to go to your local office supply or print service stores that offer larger scale output.

Next, I spray glue the paper pattern onto a piece of plywood or MDF, bandsaw to the line, smooth and blend with rasps until the everything is just right, then peel the paper off. This all worked quite well for me, but it became time-consuming as I needed more patterns and more complicated as I needed larger patterns. So, it was time to find a better way. It was time to skip the paper and go from directly from drawing straight to pattern making. More about that in Part Two

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The BARN workbench was designed for the Bainbridge Island Artisan Resource Network. It’s a Seattle area community group that built a wonderful community facility for artisans to share resources, education, and workspace. Being neighbors, I wanted to help and so, I designed a new workbench. Having to build a total of nine benches on a budget presents some interesting challenges. One of the things I’ve done to speed up the process is to use a CNC to for some of the precision work and to 3D carve the vise chops.

The workbench construction is straight forward. The frame is 4″ x 4″ material purchased at local home stores. The legs are double thickness. The bench is put together with Domino joinery to speed up the process for a large group build. The top is a pre-made 1 7/8″ top made out of Western Maple. The front vise hardware is a Benchcrafted Classic Vice and the tail vise is a Yost quick release vice. As you can imagine, the chops are a project in themselves. I’ll have several follow up articles and videos on the process of making them.

Since workbenches have a lot of details and can be complicated, the simplest way to introduce the project is via the video above. Much more to come as we build them.

Lots of chops. Rather than a traditional vise chop, I’ve chosen to 3D carve ten vise chops for the BARN workbenches

On the next BARN Workbench Post, I’ll take you on a video tour of how the 3D carved vises are made.

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I have a confession. I love workbenches. My first project as a hobbyist was a workbench and ever since, I’ve been in love with all the things a good bench can do to help you be a better woodworker.

Workbench 1.0

My first bench was Tom Caspar’s Build a Workbench in a Weekend that appeared in the October 1996 issue of the excellent, but long past Woodwork magazine. Tom later revised the bench a bit for in article in American Woodworker. Excellent bench and for me, it was a platform that inspired a passion for woodworking that turned into a career.

Workbench 2.0

I learned from that bench and after a few years, I designed and built a new bench. Workbench 2.0, I call it. Classic Norther European style with a modern twist and a few Frank Klausz details. I’ve been using it daily ever since. By the way, Bench 1.0 is still alive and in daily use in a friends shop.

My passion for this essential tool never abated and I built a website in 1999 dedicated to helping woodworkers build their own benches, workbenchdesign.net. Though the website is in need of a make over, it’s pretty popular. The site has had over 3.3 million visitors to date.

Since that time, I’ve used the bench daily. Along the way, I’ve collected dozens of new ideas for a new workbench design with the idea of building a new one some day. Though Workbench 2.0 has been a trusty tool, there’s things that I’d change and just too many benefits to Roubo and Holtzapfel style benches and modern bench hardware. We can all thank Chris Schwarz for bringing these classics to our attention.

With a new bench in mind, 8 years ago I bought a massive Copper Beech tree from a local sawyer, aged it, slabbed it, and kiln dried it with the goal of using all that hardwood for new benches. That lovely stack of wood just stares at me in my shop but I still haven’t built that bench.

A career as a furniture maker grew and consumed available time leaving little left to work on projects for myself. Certainly, being a furniture makers is a good thing, it’s fun but it’s really time consuming. When you’re too busy building work for other people, it seems that personal projects fall by the way side. More furniture for my own house is one thing, but that new workbench is the project I think about most often. That stack of beech needs attention.

The BARN Bench

A recent project reignited my passion for benches, once again. It started innocently enough. I volunteered to design and build a new workbench for a local community organization. The Bainbridge Island Artisan Resource Network (BARN) is Seattle area group who’s focus is to sharing tools, facilities and knowledge amongst local woodworkers, jewelers, metal crafters, fiber artists and more. They’re completing an amazing new community workshop and the enthusiastic woodworkers needed workbenches. So, armed with a notebook full of ideas that I’ve been dying to try out, I created a new bench. The BARN bench.

Like all interesting design projects this one came loaded with a number interesting goals and limitations. The biggest challenges are budget, limited time and simplicity of design for group construction. As to the bench’s practical goals, I just wanted to make a great hand tool workbench that also excels as a platform for modern power tool woodworking. Some new ideas for making benches work better ergonomically have been included. As a final detail, my goal is to make each of the 9 BARN benches unique.

I completed the prototype a few months ago and have continue to add some additional improvements. It’s time to build these benches so I thought that Popular Woodworking readers would be interested in seeing the project in real time. Over several upcoming Popular blog posts, I’ll introduce you to the new design and take you though the process of building the BARN benches.

The post BARN Workbench Part One appeared first on woodworking.digital.

A workbench designed for hand tool woodworkers but made (partially) with a CNC. Each bench features a unique 3D carved leg vise. Here’s a video introduction into how they were made.

The BARN workbench was designed for the Bainbridge Island Artisan Resource Network. BARN is a Seattle area community group that built a wonderful community facility for artisans to share resources, education, and workspace. To give them a hand, I designed a new workbench. Having to build a total of nine benches on a budget presents some interesting challenges. One I added for myself was to make each workbench unique. So, in Rhino3D I designed and then used a CNC to 3D carve a vise chop for each bench. In this video introduction, I’ll show you how I did it.

In future posts, I’ll get into more details of the different vise designs.

Much more to come as we build the benches.

The post 3D Carving Vice Chops for the BARN Workbench appeared first on woodworking.digital.

And, I apologize for the poor video quality. Limited bandwidth options where I live makes broadcasts challenging. Next time I’ll try another connection method.

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Why does design matter for woodworkers? Because the difference between good woodworkers and great woodworkers is not about training, craft or physical skills, it’s about exceptional design applied with excellent craftsmanship

Topic: Design Skills for Woodworkers

Time: Aug 16, 2020 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

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On Sunday July 19th, I held a Live Sunday Workshop via Zoom. The topic was about the parametric plywood bench that was featured in the December 2019 issue of Popular Woodworking magazine. I showed how to vary the design and several methods to construct it. Speaking of which, above is a link to the recording on my YouTube Channel.

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