The Cosman Workbench – Cheap, Easy, and BEST WORKBENCH EVER

hi I’m Rob Qasim welcome to my shop the Cosman workbench without a doubt the most important tools a hand to a woodworker it’s a workbench and if you go out and try to buy a good one you’re gonna find out they’re quite expensive and if you try to build that same good one it’s quite complicated I solve both problems I designed a workbench that is both cheap sturdy and easy to build stay tuned I’m gonna introduce you to it I’m Rob Kozma and welcome to my shop here’s the three things that I think you have to find in a good workbench number one it needs to be mass heavy doesn’t move around on you nice and stable number two it’s got to be flat this becomes your reference surface everything you do is going to be referenced off of that bench top and number three you have to have a vise it will securely hold your work so that it doesn’t move around on you where you’re trying to do something precise this is my bench a lot of money involved and it took a long time and a lot of skill in order to build it and that’s maybe beyond what the average new guy getting into this is gonna deal with so let me show you the cosmic bench and address those same three issues with this it’s made out of MDF and plywood and I’ll get into that a little bit later but you end up with a top that is three inches of MDF solid heavy if you’ve ever moved a sheet of MDF you know how heavy it is can you imagine something three inches thick it’s flat one of the best biggest advantages of MDF is it’s nice and flat it is dimensionally stable which means it’s not going to move like solid wood does heavy flat and a great vise the vise we chose to use on this is made by shoberg the nicest thing about it is it has a system that allows for the removal of any racking racking is when you clamp something on one side and the vise twists leaving the inside clamped tight and the outside flopping around that can all be taken out of this and that vise is I think it’s the best commercially available vise that you can find takes about 15 minutes to install it’s absolutely perfect for this particular bench you let’s go back to my bench and we’ll compare and see how the cosmic bench adds measures up to it at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the build time and a fraction of the required skills to build it my bench is patterned after a Scandinavian style workbench it’s made out of maple and mahogany a lot of it is bird’s-eye maple it has what’s called a shoulder vise over here nice thing about a shoulder vise is that there are no obstructions you put a board in there and when you clamp it it tightens it all across the width that means when you’re cutting the dovetail out here there’s no vibration when you’re cutting in the middle there’s no vibration and when you’re cutting on this end there’s no vibration it’s fantastic it has a double star thread moves really quick but it’s also extremely expensive down on this end you have what’s called a tail vise so there are bench dogs along the length of the bench and move them up and down trap your piece that you’re planning to work on in between the two holds it firmly and now sitting on a nice flat bench you can go in there and plan your work nothing moves nice and solid it’s great that two is expensive again double star thread very precise parts the top made out of maple it’s three inches thick and there’s probably in excess of $2,000 and with just materials alone without the including the vices it’s heavy solid great all right I want to tell you a little bit more about the actual construction of this bench and then we’ll try to go toe-to-toe with the Scandinavian bench and see how it measures up the top is made out of three pieces of one inch MDF now that’s not always easy to find it can be four pieces of three-quarter inch either way you’re dealing with at the end three inches three inches of MDF which is nice and heavy those three pieces are glued together we have a system that we have in our video whereby you can do it with three or four clamps and still come up with a great result the base because mortise and tenon joinery especially on big thick Timbers like this is difficult for someone just getting into this so the base is actually made out of Baltic birch plywood no it’s nice about Baltic birch plywood instead of using inferior materials on the core with just the expensive hardwood on the outside this has the same material on the outside as it does on the inside so it’s essentially a solid piece of birch it just happens that every other layer is going a different direction what I do when I built this is rip that strip into multiple in those pieces that are approximately three and seven eighths of an inch wide and then they’re cut and glued together held in place with staples and inexpensive staple gun while the glue is setting but it’s like Lego almost this piece on the outside stops here and it stops right here this next piece goes all the way down and all the way up the next one goes all the way down all the way up and this one goes to here to here this piece down here is built the same way except this beast goes all the way over this piece and this beast stops short here another piece picks up from here and goes over which creates the hole or the mortise that these two pieces go into all of this is done while you’re building the whole thing the staple simply hold the two pieces together until the glue dries and a good glue joint results in the strut and a joint that is stronger than the wood itself so you end up coming out with two and a quarter inch thick birch for your base nice and solid we’ve got our tool tray but let’s talk about the vise because you can have a great nice flat heavy bench but if you don’t have a good bite then it becomes very difficult to work so first I’ll tell you what we did initially we were going to have two vices on here but those vices are actually more expensive than all of the other material that goes into building the bench so by removing one vice you subdue s’ the cost of this bench and we realized that one vise could actually do the work of two so if you’re planing using the one-inch bench dog you simply find the setting that you need bench dogs by the way have a canted face so you can put them down into a 90 degree hole and that slight can’t forward makes it so that when you tighten it up it doesn’t the your workpiece doesn’t pop up you can go ahead and tighten that in place and then your work is held securely as you go in and plant or do whatever you need to do now because the bench has the vise on this end it can also be used for work tasks like dovetailing now because it’s such a good solid vise you can actually make the jaw considerably wider in this case I’ve got about an extra I’ve got five and a half inches extra on either side so I can go in there and grab most of this board not quite as efficient as the Schobert vice but still held over shoulder vice still held securely so that there’s no vibration and that one vise does the job that would have been done by two otherwise there’s two bolts on eat on this one side that actually squeeze these rectangular tubes between a cup of phenol a couple of phenolic strips and that’s what removes that racking fantastic advice I can’t say enough good about it you’re going to build a bench and you want to do it in a weekend seriously look at this whether you use our design or not but that vise is number one we first designed this bench five six years ago and we actually used them now in our classroom but over the years of building them and working with them we’ve made a few changes and added some accessories that made it even easier to work with the first thing we did that I didn’t mention earlier was we have normally just one row of dog holes so if you’re a right-handed woodworker you’re going to be planing in this direction there’s no reason to have dog holes over there but if you’re the other segment of the population and a left-handed it’s nice to be able to work on a friendly bench that accommodates the left hand a woodworker so for the sake of actually drilling another roll foot world holes you can accommodate left hand or right hand we put it down underneath here at a piece of plywood with a lip on one side of it gave you a nice space to store tools work wood whatever it was just a easy and inexpensive way of adding a new dimension or another dimension to this the utility of this bench the bench lamp if you’re an older woodworker there’s nothing like having a tunnel light so we find these lamps at IKEA and the downside is they have a Verity have a weak link which is that piece of the of the lamp right here so we solved it by turning what I call a mushroom which is a nothing more than a piece of one inch wood with a head on it and that fits down into any one of the dog holes so that you can get that lamp exactly where you want it and pour the light on be able to see everything on this end which typically is not an end that it has sees a lot of use we’re down here dovetailing we’re planing in this direction this end of the bench really doesn’t get used this is where we put our tool pardon me our sharpening station now we’ll get in another video we’ll talk about how we use this and the whole philosophy behind sharpening at a lower height but it’s nothing more than a piece of plywood glued and screwed onto a piece of hard wood cantilever it on there and it works as a great place to sharpen I typically have all of my gear sitting there all the time so I’m never more than a couple of steps in a few seconds away from having a sharp edge now finally in thinking about those who would work as a hobby and probably have to share a garage with somebody’s car you need some mobility well these are heavy benches and the casters that were readily available were too light they would Bend under the weight of these benches the first time you hit a bit of a bump they’d bend and you could no longer use them so we bring these in we have a piece of steel added to them to strengthen them you put them on there and just step on that lever and within a matter of a few seconds and with very little effort that heavy bench which by the way is right around 200 pounds now becomes extremely mobile and you can put it anywhere you need to it doesn’t take much to move it if you’re just getting into hand tools and you’ve discovered that yes you need a workbench and you’ve gone out and as I said found how expensive a good one can be or how difficult and the amount of tools required to build that same bench you might want to look at this and look at it seriously now to help you we put together a 4-hour build video now what do I mean by that well we didn’t leave anything out we go through the entire process nothing is left to the imagination some of the details may be overkill but we’d rather give you more than to give you less so if you follow the link right here you can go onto our site find that build it’ll tell you everything you need to know there’s also plans available with the video and you can purchase three-dimensional plans in addition if that’s your style of work if you’re serious about hand tool woodworking you have to have a good bench I promise you that this bench in one possibly two weekends will have you at a point where you no longer have to worry about your bench all you have to worry about are using learning how to use your tools and be able to create that our heirloom quality furniture that you’ve been looking forward to if you find this interesting subscribe to our channel down here in the lower left don’t forget to hit the bell that’ll notify you whenever come but we came up with a new video and in the description we’ll also put a way where you can get connected with our newsletter comes out monthly gives you all kinds of information every month there’s a theme there’s always one or two videos specific to that theme and they’re only for the newsletter folks if you like this and you’ve got some comments that’s your turn tell us what you think what have you found to be the most important aspect of a workbench or if you’ve already built one of these tell us about your success either way we’ll see in the shop real soon if you like my method of work and enjoy my style of teaching if you click on any one of these videos it’ll help improve some aspect of your woodworking now you can do a lot better work a lot easier if you have good tools if you click on the picture of the plane and the chisels it’ll take you to our site where you can find our tools our classes both online and in person don’t forget to subscribe and most of all enjoy your time in the shop …

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