How I Ended Up With A Split-Top Saw Bench

It all started when I went to the walnut store.  I needed some for a project that shall not be mentioned.  While I was there I noticed that they had a pile of 4-foot long select pine on sale and you know how it is.  You’ve just got to paw wood that’s on sale.  And this got me to thinking – an all too dangerous proposition.  I bought some.

You see, I have had saw bench envy.  I have a saw bench.  I built it long ago, far away.  See here for details.   I built it when I was more of a hybrid woodworker than I am today.  Back then I used handsaws for all my cross-cuts but when ripping stock I uncovered my table saw and, well, let’er rip.

But now I’m not doing that.  My table saw has become a very expensive assembly table and I’d come to covet Shannon Roger’s split-top saw bench, which is great for ripping stock.  Every time I watched him use it to rip stock in his Hand Tool School, I told myself I needed to build one.   Also, I had come to want a bench that was a bit wider than my original.

And so I began one Saturday morning.  The boards I’d gotten were all 6″ wide, 4/4 rough-cut stock.  All of the boards in my sawbench are about 6″ wide, edges planed flat.  I’m not opposed to using a thickness planer so I shoved the boards through it and followed up with a jointer plane to achieve flat surfaces.  I tried to go light on the pieces that became the bench top and those are still nearly an inch thick.  The others a bit less.  The only dimensions I can provide is that the bench top is 32″ long and the bench built to be 20″ high to match my shop bents.

Those were the only two measurements I made.  The legs are two 6″ boards joined together and the sideboards  cut to allow some overhang on the ends.  It took me a little over two hours to generate the rough parts.

It took another two hours of fiddling around, smoothing the surfaces, though not to furniture grade, chamfering the edges of the top pieces, cutting the rabbets in the legs for the sideboards, and finally screwing it together with 1 3/4″ wood screws.

It was fun doing a project without setting up a camera every 20 minutes.  I’m pretty happy with it.  Anyone want an old, used saw bench?