Well, enough of you have asked enough questions that I decided it was best to dig out some photos and tell the whole story of my workbench/storage area.

First off, people have asked "why make it out of cherry?" Good question. Well, I can get cherry for about $3.30/bd ft for select and better cherry (4/4). Maple costs me more, and I hate oak, which I call vomit wood because of its smell. I also spend a lot of time in my workshop, typically 10+ hours per week. Add to this the fact that my dogs hang out down there each day and I figure cherry is as good a wood as any to make the workbench out of. Besides it also served as good practice for working with one style of cabinet. A lesson I will not revisit, vide infra.

As you will see I spared no expense on quality either. The carcuses were made out of 3/4" baltic birch plywood. I biscuit joined a strip of cherry to the front of each piece of plywood so that when one looks between the cracks of each drawer front, they will see cherry. There aren't even any nails to hold the face frame on. Thus the front of those cabinets are 100% cherry. I also used KV drawer slides with full extension. This alone set me back almost $400, but these cabinets will be in use from now to eternity, and I want the drawers to move easily even if they are filled with lead bricks - or more likely 100 pounds of C-clamps. I got the slides on sale at www.woodworkershardware.com

So how did I begin? Well, I painted the walls and the floors of the space that I wanted the workbench to go into. The floor was painted with Benjamin Moore Epoxy-Ester Industrial paint which has worked very well for me. The floor is a little slipery when wet or covered with sawdust, but one just has to adjust to it. Because my shop is in my basement and I have two dogs in the shop, I tend to vacuum the floor daily or after each use with my dust collector. I have a 50' long black hose that I add a 4 to 2.5" adapter to, and then I stick on a floor cleaner for Rigid Shop Vacs (obtained at the Borg). So here is the space before I filled it up.

Next I made the carcuses. As I said they were made out of BB plywood which is really nice stuff. It is the same price or cheaper than the crappy birch plywood that my local stores carry, yet it has no voids. It is close to 3/4" thick (19 mm) and it is much more stable than traditional plywood. You can click here and see how the cherry fronts are added onto the bb plywood. We will also come back to this picture later during the dovetail construction.

Then I moved on to the drawers. All the drawers are made out of ash with bb plywood for the bottoms. Some of the drawers have walnut and or cherry fronts and backs. Before you go screaming that I am an idiot for using walnut in such places let me explain. I got some walnut at an auction once that was warped to beat the band. From end to end, each 10' long piece had 4" of twist or more. With that much twist there simply was no way one could get the boards flat. Thus I cut them up into nice little short pieces, joined one face, and then made both faces parallel using a planer. Viola! Nice drawer fronts that accent dovetails and Isolock™ joints.

Now for the dovetails. Each and every drawer is either dovetailed or has Isolock™ joints on the front and back. I also used every size and style of dovetail that the Leigh jig could make out of 1/2" thick drawer sides. I have 3/8" and 1/2" half-blind and through dovetails, Leigh Cloverleaf Isolocks, and Leigh Key Isolocks. The very small 1/4" half-blind dovetails were made on a Porter Cable 12" dovetail jig with a special template plate. My wife loves the 1/4" dovetails the best. She thinks they are cute. Here and here are two pictures of the dovetailed drawers all stacked up after finishing.

Next I put the carcuses together and installed all the drawers as is shown here. The narrow drawers do not have drawer slides. They are simply boxes placed into cubbies with about 1/8" or less clearance in order to make things slide ok. Next I planed up a bunch of #1 common cherry that I had and I glued the boards all together so as to make a bunch of panels that could be sliced to make each individual drawer front. This is where things got tricky. All those cracks between the drawers and doors need to be perfect. If they are not parallel they look like crap. Here is a picture midway through the process of adding the fronts. The cutie in the picture is Anna, my little helper. She had just come back from brushing her doggies (aka The Killer Brown Dogs of Death). The black and orange pole in the picture is a Gizmo™ laser level. It is probably the handiest tool I have bought in a long time. For getting the vertical and horizontal cracks on all those doors and drawers just right, this thing does the job perfectly. No more holding a level up on the wood and scratching it. The Gizmo projects a line that is easily visible and exactly level and or vertical every time. Once all the fronts were added it was time to trim the bottoms and apply finish. To trim the bottoms I just set the Gizmo on the floor, turned it on, marked the line and then followed the line with a saw.

The finish is two coats of Watco Natural Oil followed by three or four coats of Minwax Wipe On Polyurethane. I know I will be killed in my sleep for saying this, but I have tried Paddy's Bug Poop (Shellac) and I have not been happy with it.

Next I got the maple for the top and it was inspected by my little inspector. She approved, even though I had to pay wholesale prices of $5.10/bd ft for the stuff (8/4 thickness). OUCH! She really won't need to go to college anyway, right? I got the maple at Youngblood Lumber over in Minneapolis. The cherry I also used in the top came from Grange Hall Hardwoods over in Plum City, Wisconsin. That lumber only cost me $3.50/bd ft back about 2 years ago. I riped and planed the maple and cherry for the top into nice 2.5" wide strips and then I glued the top together in two halves. Each half was planned in my 20" Grizzly planer (arr, arr, arr) that my wife bought me for my 40^th birthday (drive by wife gloat). Really, she bought it using her own money, no house account money. After the two halves went together, I lightly sanded the seam and I finished the top using the same oil/poly combo I used for the front. I actually put on about 10-12 coats of poly so as to get a good durable top. Here is a photo of the top after it was finished and looking down from the end. You can see the cherry accent pieces running down the length of the top. Don't it look purty? BTW it is 12.5' long and 27" wide and I guess it weighs about 500#.

So here is the finished beast. And, lest you think I am the Anal-Retentive Woodworker from Saturday Night Live, here is a photo taken a few days after I stared to use the new bench. See, it is already beginning to disappear. Oh, what is on the inside you say? Well, here is what is in one of the pull out cubbies that I built. I always need the right size wood or metal screw. In order to solve the problem of not having the right size I finally broke down and spent a few hundred $$$ at McFeely's. So the theory now goes that I should have every size screw that I could ever need. Well, it is a good theory, but it is not a theory that has any basis in fact. I still never have the screws that I need, even with over 75 sizes on hand. Sorry for the bad picture, I am just getting the hang of my new digital camera.

So there you have it the whole scoop on my storage/workbench. I hope you enjoyed the show.

Regards,

Brook