You’ve heard me rant and rave about French, English and Scandinavian workbenches since
the day this blog was launched. But what about American benches? Is there even such
a thing?

As we are a nation of comparatively recent immigrants, many of the old American workbenches
I’ve seen are spiced heavily by European and English forms. But not all. The Shakers’
had a distinctive bench – a massive cabinet below topped by a flat work surface. And
many American bench manufacturers, such as Hammacher Schlemmer, offered workbenches
using this idea; storage below was a key selling point.

Recently Deborah Chalsty, a woodworker and tool collector, acquired an early American
workbench that is an interesting form that has an even more interesting story behind
it.

While rust hunting in Virginia with Lee Richmond of The
Best Things, Chalsty saw the workbench pictured here underneath a bunch of tools
owned by a collector. Richmond has a sharp eye for antiques; he is one of the appraisers
for PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow.”

“Lee told me this bench should really be in a museum,” Chalsty says. So she bought
it.

Overall the bench is quite nice. In some respects it is similar to the workbench of
H.O. Studley, a piano maker known mostly for his incredible tool chest. Like Studley’s
bench, this bench has a frame-and-panel cabinet base made from exotic wood, and the
bench is topped by an enormous lamination of what looks like Cuban mahogany. It has
a tail vise that resides in the massive top overhanging the cabinet.

While Studley’s bench has two banks of small drawers, this bench has only two drawers.
And while Studley’s bench has incredible cast face and end vises, this bench has more
standard European face and tail vises.

But the vises, especially the tail vise, are quite remarkable.

The tail vise is stamped as the work of “J. Thomas,” who worked in Baltimore, Chalsty
says. Richmond told Chalsty that this vise screw dates the workbench as one of the
earliest non-manufactured cabinetmaking workbenches in America. (Update on 12-15-10:
Richmond supplied me with some more information on this bench, which is detailed here.)

And while the bench was in decent shape when she bought it, there were some things
about it that needed work. So she shipped it off to Robert Baker, a toolmaker and
restorer in York, Maine. He was the best in the business and has restored many famous
woodworking tools.

Baker did some structural and cosmetic wok on the bench. The two drawers needed repairs
so they were usable, the end vise needed a new keeper piece, some veneer on the top
needed repairing in two places on the top and the face vise needed a proper handle.

Baker completed the work and died
in July before the bench could be delivered. Two days after Baker died, however,
the bench was on its way across the country to Chalsty, who lives outside San Francisco.

Chalsty says she doesn’t plan to use the bench. Instead it will grace her new study,
a 500-square-foot room devoted to her passions. One wall will be covered in her books.
The other wall will be covered with shelves of her tools. And the bench will be in
the middle.

And some day, she says, she hopes it will find its home in a museum. 

Construction Details of the Bench

For those bench nerds out there, Chalsty was kind enough to supply these photos and
notes on the bench. The benchtop is 86″ long – plus the tail vise – and 30″ deep.
The sliding section of the tail vise is 26″ long and 6″ deep. The face vise is 21″
long and 6″ deep.

The top is an interesting lamination with bolted-on end caps. The front 16″ of the
top is made from two boards face-glued together. At their thickest points, the top
board is 2″ thick and the bottom one is 1″ thick. The rear 14″ of the top is made
from three pieces – a 1/2″-thick piece on top, a 1-1/2″-thick piece in the middle
and another 1/2″-thick piece on the bottom. This construction strategy could have
been a way to conserve mahogany – the middle lamination at the back is a secondary
wood, perhaps oak.

— Christopher Schwarz

More Workbench Insanity

• Have you been bitten by the workbench bug? Here’s the cure: workbenchdesign.net.

• I’ve written two book on workbenches. The 2007 “Workbenches”
book has been one of our best-selling titles for three years and is in its third printing.
It’s companion volume, “The
Workbench Design Book” just came out in September.

• The classic: “The
Workbench Book” by Scott Landis is a great read and a great resource.

Woodworking Magazine

Filed under: Category Woodworking | Tags: American,Early,Workbench by Admin