When the machine shop where Dave worked for 22 years closed down, he was given first pick of anything that wasn’t going on the liquidation truck. He took a heavy steel-topped machinist’s bench – the kind with a 1-inch steel plate work surface, a 6-inch precision vise bolted to one corner, and a lower cabinet of steel drawers with ball-bearing slides. It weighed approximately 600 pounds. Getting it home was an adventure. Adapting it to woodworking took the better part of a year.
The first challenge was the surface. A flat steel top is ideal for metal work but hard on wood – any soft piece you set on it dents immediately, and plane soles ring off the steel instead of cutting wood. Dave solved it with a sacrificial maple panel: a 1-1/2-inch slab, surfaced flat, that sits on top of the steel plate and is held in place by recessed bolts. It can be lifted off, resurfaced, and replaced. The first maple top lasted five years before he planed it too thin. The replacement is curly maple he milled himself.
The metal vise stayed. He made wooden jaw faces for it – 3/4-inch maple lined with cork – and it’s now his primary face vise. The clamping force is extraordinary. He says he can’t break a workpiece loose even when he wants to. The steel drawers became his hand-tool storage system, organized by task: layout tools in the top drawer, chisels and gouges in the second, saws and planes in the lower two.
The hybrid result is, arguably, better than either a pure machinist’s or woodworker’s bench. The mass is extraordinary. The storage is perfect. And the steel base means the bench will still be standing long after every wood joint in any traditional bench has given out. What unexpected object have you repurposed into a shop fixture? Share below.