Sjoberg's Nordic Plus 1450 Workbench - $300 at Woodcraft

[mpc]

I did buy the mid-sized bench (1660) from Rockler over the weekend. They're unloading the Sjobergs to bring in their own benches. My store had 3 Rockler benches still in boxes; the manager said he hadn't looked at them yet, didn't know what the prices would be, etc. They just showed up basically... He'd already sold out of the larger Sjobergs, had about 5 mid-sized ones, and 3 or 4 of the 1450s left.

Anyway, to add to Rob's note:
I'm just getting into hand planes which is why I bought this bench. I had plans to make my own but the price (about 50% of normal retail while Rockler clears them out) for the bench with two non-quick-release vise setups was worth it to me. Using it to hand plane I did get a little "hopping" on the floor (bare garage concrete) that was fixed by gluing strips of an old mouse pad to the legs. Mine doesn't rack unless I've got the plane blade set to take "chunks" instead of proper shavings - my bench seemed rigid enough to suite my needs. The picture in Radhak's post isn't quite what my bench is though: instead of two skinny sticks joining the bottoms of the two leg assemblies, mine has 1x6 boards (oriented vertically) at the mid-points. Maybe that extra height helps stiffen things? These boards also hold a hardboard shelf for tool storage. These boards are held only by a single bolt on each end; it'd be easy to add dowel pins so they'd do even more to prevent racking.

The two leg assemblies (squares of pine boards joined by mortise and tenons, reinforced with a screw) join to the top with a single lag bolt (per leg set) though. That is probably the weakest point leading to the racking possibility. It'd be simple to add some extra buttressing if necessary. I ended up adding 3/8ths dowels to my tabletop to "index" into the leg assemblies because I have to collapse the whole thing for storage. Plus, with 4 dowels poking down from the tabletop, I can plop the tabletop onto my garage work bench: a beefy structure great for working on car parts but lousy for woodworking - especially lousy since it has no dog hole capability nor vice capability. Most of the time I'll be using the Sjoberg this way - and not using the leg assemblies. The dowels fit into holes drilled into the garage bench and lock it down sufficiently.

mpc