Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

After joining the ranks as senior editor with Popular Woodworking magazine, I was informed that I needed to build a workbench. It seems the bench that was in the shop upon my arrival was taken to its original home, so that left me with a slab of old door bridged across two rolling carts.

Building a Shaker workbench immediately came to mind – Shaker due to the bank of drawers and cupboard storage below the solid-wood top. Of course, I didn’t need anything near the 12- or 13-foot workbenches from either the Hancock or Mt. Lebanon Shaker villages, but I like the look and feel of Shaker craftsmanship and those workbenches have always been something I wanted to build.

I’m not a huge workbench fanatic. I worked without a workbench for the first eight years of my woodworking career. My table saw outfeed table was where everything came together. Later, I brought in a couple inexpensive benches for a bit of teaching and discovered the concept of a workbench with vises. They’re nice to have.

Also, I’m a power-tool guy so the workbench isn’t the center of my woodworking. I need a bench that will hold my panels while I lay out and cut dovetails, provide a clamping area as I use the router, and provide a large flat surface to assemble pieces (if not just a vast landscape for storing or hiding the tools I’ve used throughout the day).

Knowing that my workbench would not face hard use everyday, I decided I would build a bench that would leave future generations questioning if the workbench was ever really used as a workbench – maybe it was viewed as a piece of furniture. I wanted to have fun but also have the results be useful and look good. I turned to my fondness for tiger maple (just the idea of using this hardwood for a workbench makes most woodworkers shake their collective head) and to achieve the Shaker feel, I decided paint was the answer so poplar provided the substrate.

I am in the process of building this workbench in the Popular Woodworking shop. I have the majority of the framing complete although there are a few details left. I have the beaded poplar panels set in the sides and across the back waiting for paint, after which a tiger maple moulding will hold the panels in position. And, the cupboard area needs to be completed; I guess designed and completed would be more apropos.

The drawers look good, right? They’re drawer fronts only. I have the balance of the drawer materials ready to go, so the only obstacle to completion is the dovetails and drawer bottoms. The tiger maple top is in process too. I decided to use a substantial amount of 4/4 material for the top (material that lacks a great amount of stripe).

The 30-something pieces will be a solid top by weeks' end. It has to be because we need to shoot the opening photograph for the magazine article on Tuesday of next week. And I still have to install the hardware, paint the poplar and add apply the finish on the tiger maple. It’s good to know that my “just-in-time” inventory system is alive and well (I hope?). Check out the December issue to see if I make it.

– Glen D. Huey

When my son was in Cub Scouts, we went on field trips on Saturday mornings. One week we went to the woodshop of one of the kid’s grandfathers. It was a nice two-car-garage-sized building behind his real garage; in other words, a dedicated well-equipped shop. The boys went to work on a simple shelf, and after herding the group from the band saw to the oscillating spindle sander, Grandpa decided it was time to impart some wisdom. “If you want to get anything done, use power tools. There isn’t any reason to use hand tools any more. It will take you longer, and won’t turn out as good.” I didn’t say anything at the time, but on the way home I said to my son “you realize that man is a fool don’t you?” Hunter replied, “I was wondering when you were going to say something.”

When he was four or five we started making stuff together: toy guns and rubber-band powered boats for the bathtub. Our main tools were a coping saw and a spokeshave – tools he could handle safely without scaring his mother half to death. One of my proudest moments as a father came when we were at a festival watching a guy build a canoe. When the demonstrator held up a spokeshave and asked if anyone knew what it was called, Hunter shouted out the name and asked the guy if he wanted him to show him how to use it. He stepped up to the bench and, reaching up almost over his head, thrilled the crowd by quickly producing a pile of shavings and a fair curve.

For the first time in months, I got a chance to get back into my shop over the weekend. Boy was it nice. I had a piece to build for a customer, a piece that was promised some time back. (Thank you very much for patient, understanding customers.)

I selected the rough lumber for my project, chopped the piece into workable sizes and rolled the cart to the jointer. As I pushed my first piece over the three-knife cutterhead, I was amazed at how loud the operation sounded. I was caught off guard and wondered if the machine was not properly tuned to work.

Then I realized that the sound was loud because over the past few months, all my woodworking has been in the shop at Popular Woodworking. The magazine's jointer has a helical head. It seems noticeably quieter.

Is that why both Jet and Powermatic added helical cutterheads to a few new machines? I went back to watch the videos from our AWFS Coverage page. Powermatic installed this type of cutterhead on many of its new jointers and planers (click to watch the video), while Jet added a helical cutterhead on the jointer/planer combination machine (click to watch the video). Now my curiosity was piqued and I decided to see if helical cutterheads were best.

The loud sound is what garnered my attention. I decided to start there. The next day I grabbed the sound-level meter and took two readings at the 12" Bridgewood jointer in the PW shop. While running idle, the reading reached 86dBAs on the meter. The next reading was while cutting a piece of 4/4 mahogany. That number was 94dBAs. The difference between running idle and at full work with a helical cutterhead equipped machine was only 8dBA.

After work I loaded the meter and the mahogany board into the truck and headed straight to my shop. There I have a 12" Delta jointer. I repeated the same tests. This time the three-knife head moved the sound level meter to 89dBAs. That’s only a difference of three decibels over the helical head, big deal. But when I jointed that piece of mahogany, that’s when the difference appeared – big time. While cutting the 4/4 material, the decibels jumped to 112dBAs. That’s a significant increase. A helical cutterhead is quieter.

The surface that’s jointed is the telltale sign of a good set of knives. I studied each jointed surface under a magnifying-glass light only to discover no significant difference between the two resulting cuts. Yes the three-knife head left small almost indiscernible ridges in the surface that are easily sanded smooth. But the helical knives left ridges as well. They also were very small and easily smoothed with a sander.

So far, the only difference I've found is the sound level. And with hearing protection, is that an issue? On Wednesday, I’ll look into the costs differences – we know going in that out-of-pocket expenses are higher for the helical – and reveal if I found that one cutterhead is better than the other. (Care to make a guess?)