Wood Workbench

Different Types of a Wood Workbench.

Most workbenches are made out of solid hardwood, because they are the most desirable, best looking and expensive. There are tradeoffs in making solid wood workbench, of course. The advantages of solid wood are strength, and appearance. Another advantage ofwood workbench is that they can be resurfaced, which is needed after some time of use. It is easier to work with plywood or hardboard, especially if you are not handy with hand tools. They are cheaper and easy to work with compared to solid woods, but they cannot be resurfaced, are weaker, and more unstable.

It may be surprising that some people actually use old bowling alley lanes as their bench top material for wood workbench. They are made out of high-quality maple. But you have to watch out for nails embedded in bowling alleys, and its silicon covering. Silicon, and waxy substances may give you trouble on your finishes.

There is wood workbench that uses different species of woods together. When you doing this, make sure you use woods that are compatible with each other. If you don't, the lamination with your bench top can be a problem after a few years. Of course delamination can happen even to the same type of wood if you mix face-sawn and quarter-sawn pieces.

So be sure to check out our pages about Workbench Kits, Workbench Design, how to build a Garage Workbench and Shop Workbench elsewhere on this site.