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My 19th Century Philly Style Woodworking Bench

🕑 Added 2019-02-27 03:25:43 +0000 UTC

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It's a style of American furniture of very simple, straightforward design. It was originally made by the Shaker religious communities. In this case "Shaker" mostly refers to the plain, square legs and simple drawer fronts of the base.

Pardon my lack of Philly history, but what is mend by 'Shaker'?

I have never seen a bench with "spring" wooden bench dogs. That is an extremely cool feature. Great, old bench!

veritanuda

It is so true that they don't build them like they used to. I will never forget our old upright Air compressor made in 1962 1/4" thick shell with 1/2" end caps. It was just so solidly built that lasted 60 years with no issues and could probably last another 60 years if the people we sold it to looked after it as much as we did. The advantage of the upright versions is the condensation drains straight out of the bottom instead of laying against the shell. When it comes to tools made to last for sure past artisans designed the best if not the most functional ones.

Ewen McNeill

That’s a really intriguing bench. As you showed it looks very helpful for doing woodworking compared with a basic “table top only” bench. Thanks for the YouTube link in the description! It let me watch the video from the email link even when Pateon was “down for maintenance” earlier :-) Ewen