Tiny Woodshop

Just before the COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020 I became interested in woodworking. I've never really tried my hand at anything, except for a few simple projects to put up some shelves. I spent WAY too much time on YouTube watching people make things.

Getting Started

I live in the UK in a fairly small 3 bed end-terrace with a small-medium sized garden. I don't have a shed or a garage to work in which makes life a little difficult. Space is a premium which also limits what I can get up to.

I started out needing a workbench, so I found this small workbench design by Octavian Dan. It gave me the idea for my bench, I wanted to create one without any nails or screws just using wood joints and glue. After also looking at a lot of the laminated 2x4 workbenches I thought that having a 2x4 laminated would make it heavy enough, and their dimensions seemed like a good starting point. It measures 1000mm long, 200mm wide and 500mm high, it weighs about 20 kg which is easy enough to move around and most of my work can be done while sitting on the bench. I drilled dog holes in the top to accept the standard veritas bench dogs, and it also accepts the wonder pup which works well to clamp objects to the top.

The main thing it's missing is clamping options so I put a moxon vice on the side. I think it's not a great implementation but works well enough.