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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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.

My CAD software of choice is Rhino3D. My favorite CAM software is RhinoCAM. Now, the names might be close but the company offering CAM software is different than the CAD software company. It’s MecSoft, where Rhino3D comes from McNeel.

Now that we got that confusion out of the way, let me explain a few details. If you’re already using Rhino3D, the best way to go with CAM software is to get RhinoCAM because it’s just a plugin for Rhino. Makes setting up machine routines a piece of cake because you do it inside your CAD program. But, if you’re not a Rhino3D user, that’s okay, too. Mecsoft makes a freestanding verison called VisualCAM. Which means you can use whatever CAD program you’re already using and export the file to open up in VisualCAM. Once there, you setup your machine operations just like I do. Works great. So, if you’re using another CAD program (Fusion360, other Autodesk products, TurboCAD, whatever) this is the soluton for you.

The reason I bring all this up, is Mecsoft is having a great sale on their entry level CAM software package called Xpress. Rather that $595, they’re selling it for $299 until December 16th. That’s a great deal. And, it’s a perpetual license so you don’t have to annually subscribe, unless you want upgrades. You can get this in the freestanding version, the Rhino version and a verison that plugs into SolidWorks.

Mecsoft’s Sale

Mecsoft makes CAM packages for machining all kinds of fancy things up to $10k in price, but I can tell you that for Digital Woodworkers the Xpress package gets you where you need to go for $299. You get the 2.5D routines you really need the basics routines for 3D carving. I’ve done a lot of 3D carving and most of the time I use just the basic routines included with the $299 Express package. And, should you get ambitious and want a fancier version, you just pay the difference.

Bonus: The Xpress package includes Mecsoft’s very good Nesting program.

So, who is VisualCAM or RhinoCAM Xpress for? Well, unless you’re already using fancy 3D CAM routines available in say, Aspire, you might want to have a look at VisualCAM. Particularly if you’re using Fusion360, VCarve, TurboCAD, Autodesk products or using the very limited software available for the Shapeoko this is a major CAM improvement . It’s great CAM software with more than excellent support.

Great sale. Go for it. Mecsoft’s Sale.

PS. Tell them I sent you. I’m not a shill. just a fan of their great software.

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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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On Sunday June 14th I held a Live Sunday Workshop via Zoom. The topic was about how I design a modern hall table in CAD and how to setup your CNC to machine it. On the next workshop on June 21st, I’ll show you how to convert the 2D furniture into 3D carved furniture. Lots to see! Speaking of which, here’s a link to the recording on my YouTube Channel… youtube.com/digitalwoodworking.

June 14th, Live Sunday Workshop 2D Furniture

https://youtu.be/oPzfCgXYbKg

See you at the next Sunday Workshop on June 21st.

The post June 14th Live Workshop Follow Up appeared first on woodworking.digital.

On June 21st, I’ll follow up and take the previous week’s 2.5D design and make it into a 3D CNC carved design using a couple of simple 3D CAD techniques. And, how to machine it, of course. Plus… Well, let’s just say that I’ll give you something to consider regarding future furniture design using the power of digital woodworking tools.

If a question that comes up during the workshop, just use the chat function in Zoom and I’ll do my best to answer it live. I may have a few questions of my own, too and will send out polls during the event. 

See you at the next TWO Sunday Workshops. Part one is 2D design and machining. Part two is 3D design and machining.

To join the workshop, at the time of the meeting click the links below.

June 14th Sunday Workshop PART ONE

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84819051001?pwd=c0oxcHhMVHcxSDlCbzNmMmNkQVRiQT09

Meeting ID: 8848 1905 1001   Password: 239927

June 21st Sunday Workshop PART TWO

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83477019799?pwd=aG5UVTZVU2ZPa01QK3cvRzkwbS9adz09

Meeting ID: 834 7701 9799   Password: 299007

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Okay it’s time. Previous workshops have been filled up, I rarely leave time fAfter 4 Live Sunday Workshops, it’s time for an open Q and A. I’ve been doing a lot of talking that last forr workshops, leaving little time at the end for questions. Now, it’s your turn. On the May 31st workshop, I’m opening up the workshop for questions, advice and quick demos. So that I can come prepared, if you already have questions you’d like to ask, email ahead of time to me at workshops@woodworking.digital.  If it’s something complicated or a process or technique or a demo you’d like to see, email questions ahead of time so I can be ready to show it during the workshop.  But, no worries. If a question that comes up during the workshop, that’s okay, too. Just use the chat function in Zoom and I’ll do my best to answer it live. I may have a few questions of my own, too and will send out polls during the event. 

See you at the next Sunday Workshop.

To join the workshop, at the time of the meeting click the link below.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81959653414?pwd=SFl5MnVZejZHMVNVSTkvbGsxbWMrdz09

Meeting ID: 819 5965 3414   Password: 350891

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