Finally after an anamnesis of note, we will proceed with the task of documenting the process of building an interim work surface with some proper work holding options. As stated in chapter one, most of the design features came from the Festool MFT table, but also included a smattering of random internet-generated ideas.

Due to my lack of tools to mill and laminate fairly large chucks of wood at the time I decided to get a steel structure made by a friend. In the pictures below you can see my rough hand drawn sketches to the welder. I apologise for the coloured lines running through the sketches, it must be some problem with my scanner. You will also see some gibberish mixed with english in my handwriting. This is Afrikaans, which is my first language. You have probably picked up that english is my second language.

This became the carcass of the table to which I added all the bits over a ten month period. The steel frame was designed with 20mm threaded rod at the bottom of each leg in order to adjust the height of the table. The idea was that in this way I can get it on exactly the same level as my table saw (which I still did not have at this stage and therefore unsure about exact height) in order to use the assembly table as an extension table with the table saw.

In the above photo you can see what I mean with the height adjustability. While the steel base was being built, I started the process of drilling the ‘dog holes’ in the plywood top. The problem I faced was that I did not have a functional router at the time and therefore had to use a handheld drill. In order to do a semi-descent job I decided to manufacture a guide jig for this purpose. I took a 2 meter piece of heavy angle iron (5mm thick) and drilled holes of 20mm diameter spaced 96mm (centre to centre) apart. This was stolen directly from the Festool MFT version as I thought there must be a fairly good reason why they decided on these measurements.

The idea of this jig was to get the holes lined up as close to perfect as possible given the method. It worked quite well in terms of getting it lined up square and straight. The weakness of my approach came as a result of using a handheld drill rather than a router. Using a handheld drill makes it very difficult to drill a hole that is exactly 90 degrees to the work surface in all directions. The dog holes of my table are therefore slightly off 90 degrees in a pretty random fashion. This leads to dogs that sit in the same way, but so far it has not really caused any hiccups from a functional point of view apart from reminding my obsessive compulsive daemons that it is imperfect. As this will eventually become a dedicated assembly table, the holes will be used primarily to accept F-style clamps through the top, in which case the slight error in alignment would have no effect. A router would have done a better job non the less. In the pictures below you can see the alignment of the holes and it being used to accept F-style clamps and my own version of bench dogs. I will write a post at some point in time about these dogs.

The next step in this riveting ordeal was to create a heavy sleeper made up of laminate strips of Rhodesian Teak. The proposed purpose of this sleeper is to stabilize the metal carcass/frame in it’s length, especially for tasks such as hand planing. I bought some Rhodesian Teak boards that were harvested in Zambia. Apparently the harvesting of this wood has been stopped completely since I bought these boards about 18 months ago. In the last picture my son Didier pose with a hunting top and water boots in a town with an annual rainfall of 360 millimeters (14 in)!!!!

In the next few photos you can see how the sleeper found it’s resting place between the two shelves underneath the table. The gap you see in the bottom shelve is meant to get rid of sawdust easily as the angle iron sides stands proud of it’s surface. You will also notice the colour difference of these two boards. I used scrap bits of chipboard that was recycled from the crates my father built to safely transport all the workshop equipment from George (RSA) to Windhoek (a journey of 1800km or 1118 miles).

I think this will conclude chapter two. In the next chapter we will look at the cumbersome process involved in adding all the paraphernalia to the top of this table.

I decided to build an assembly table that doubles up as a workbench as a first option. The plan is to extend the workshop at some point in future, at which time I will build the proper bench and have the benefit of having two dedicated areas for each task. For now I have to live with something that can do most of what a good bench can do (but not quite) and all that can be expected of an assembly table. At the moment I am thinking that my dream bench will probably be a variation of the so called Holtzapffel design. I am slowly working through the two books by Christopher Schwartz on the topic.

The main reason I decided to go for the assembly table setup first was that I thought I could get more out of it as an all-round working surface. This is obviously open to debate and as these things go, I have learnt about the shortcomings of my setup only since using it. I will get back to that later on in this particular novel.

As this was my first project in my current shop after a 3 year hiatus away from any shop work, I thought it would be better to do something less involved before building my dream bench. This way I will have a surface to work on and get an opportunity to first hone my skills a bit. It also provides time in the shop to find out what type of bench would work best for me. I also had a serious lack of tools at that point in time, as everything I collected over the past years (in Kiwiland) were stolen between New Zealand and Namibia when we moved here.

The assembly table I designed included heaps of ideas from past frustrations with not having a proper bench and ideas found on the internet. However the bulk of the design came from the Festool MFT worktables.

So let’s go back to first explore where this so called experience/frustration with inadequate benches comes from. The first attempt at setting up a shop of my own was back in 2000 in the garage of our first house. This was in my home town of George on the south coast of South Africa. The bench I used was one that my father built many years ago. It has a steel carcass, cladded with wood. As my father used to be mainly a power tool woodworker it served him well. It served me well in those early years too, but later on while living in New Zealand I was force to become more hand tool orientated due to the cost of having to set up a new shop from scratch as I did not take any tools along. The bench is not ideal for hand tool work due to it’s limited work holding options. It reminds me of another reason I went for the assembly table setup as a first step and that is that I still have the green bench when I need to whack the daylights out of a piece of wood. Please note that this photo was taken while the shop was dormant during the 8 years we lived in New Zealand and only acted as a wood storage facility.

Below you see it in it’s new home in Windhoek.

In the pictures below you can get an idea of the frustrations I faced in the small single garage where I tried to do some basic work in New Zealand. The bench is a fire door on a hinge and two legs that can be removed quickly to enable the door to swivel down when the car wants to get back in it’s little house. The same goes for the Mitre saw which swiveled up during the vehicle’s sleeping hours. You can clearly see how this so called bench also lacked work holding abilities. This might be one reason why my current working platform has work holding options coming out of it’s ears.

In my current shop I started off working on a piece of plywood on top of collapsable sawhorses that I built in 2000. This is obviously an frustration in itself. The sawhorses were even more keen than my dogs to take a walk (due to their collapsable nature) when ever pressure were applied in a horizontal direction.

With all of that done you should have a good idea of what I have been through with ‘benches’ that might influence the design of the next working surface.

In our next thrilling chapter, we can then get on to the building of the actual bench and I am pretty sure you are going to have several sleepless nights waiting in ecstatic anticipation for it.