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In 2005, I loaned my French workbench to a friend to use in his booth at a woodworking show. As I rolled the 350-pound behemoth onto the show’s floor, I heard a couple wolf whistles (really?), then one of the show’s vendors stopped me.
“How much for the bench,” he asked. I didn’t know what to say, and I just looked confused.
“Would you take $5,000?”
When I recovered my wits I declined the too-generous offer and kept rolling forward.
Though I’ve built more workbenches than I can keep track of, I’ve never sold a one. Instead, I give them away to friends and family.
I gave my dad the “Power-tool Workbench” that I built in 2002. My best friend has my Nicholson workbench from my book “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.” And so on.
When I completed the massive hand-tool workbench on the cover of the August 2010 issue (“The Return of Roubo”), I already had someone in mind as I chopped every mortise and sawed the enormous sliding dovetails.
My 9-year-old daughter, Katherine, has a natural knack for the craft. The first time I showed her how to sharpen her block plane, the results were perfect. I’m not that great a teacher, but she had watched me enough that she practically had the skill already soaked into her hands.
She’s begged me to let her use the 18-gauge brad nailer (don’t tell her mother, but I caved and let her).
Last fall she took her Millers Falls block plane to school when she had to give a report to the class on one of her favorite things. Heck, she does her homework every night on one of my sawbenches.
So in October, Senior Editor Glen D. Huey and I drove my newest workbench from our shop in Cincinnati to my home in Northern Kentucky while Katherine was in school.
We put the workbench in my sunroom then returned to work.
That evening as I was pulling into my driveway, my cell phone rang. It was Katherine, and she was calling me from the sunroom.
I got out of my car and could see her through the windows, holding the phone to her ear and standing before the huge workbench, which she had helped me assemble on weekends.
“Dad, what’s this workbench here for?” she asked.
“It’s for you, sweetie,” I replied.
“Really?” she said. I could see her jumping up and down in the sunroom and skipping up to the massive leg vise screw to give it a spin.
“Thanks Dad!” she yelled.
A few seconds later I walked through the door and got the fiercest hug her 9-year-old arms could muster.
And that is why I’ll never sell one of my benches.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine.
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