A Woodworking Bench for 1 Euro 85

That's right - a buck eighty-five!

Curious?  Here's a photo:

My 1 Euro 85 cent  workbench

Oh, gosh! What's he on about now?

Let me back up a bit. Here is a photo of my new shop in Alicante, Spain:

My new shop.

If it looks like a home office, that's because it is. We recently moved to Spain. The Frau went ahead to pick out he apartment. She asked me what my MUST-HAVEs were for a place here. I told her that was easy, only one thing - a shop.

She said, "No."

While our place is beautiful, I am going to have to get creative with furniture building here.

A little aside - I would like to make a shout out to Ethan, the Kilted Woodworker, and to the NAF Benefits Office. And a big "Eff-You" to the Defense Finance and Accounting Services in Indianapolis. DFAS took ten weeks to get me a report I needed for some retirement paperwork I had to get done before I left federal service on Monday.

Since they wouldn't scan me the report or mail it to my German address, I had them send it to the Kilted Woodworker, who agreed to scan it to me when it arrived in his mail box.

Everything finally got submitted two days before the deadline and the NAF Benefits Office processed it in one day. Plenty of time for me to mail off what I needed to mail to them on the last possible day. Thanks, Ethan! I literally could not have done that without your help.

Back to woodworking:

I brought a very modest woodworking kit with me. Basically it was whatever I could fit in a plastic tool box I had. The idea now is to get some good woodworking in with the resources I actually have.

Yes, it's a bidet.

Ever wonder how to use one of these?

Me too. I figured it's the perfect hight to use as a sawbench for crosscutting.

Joking aside, I plan on participating in Reddit's Popular Woodworking School Box Build. My plan is to prove you can do decent work with far fewer resources than you might think necessary.

Today I took the bus (we don't plan to get a car) to a local home center to buy some construction lumber for this build. Their construction lumber was crap, but they did have some plastic-wrapped laminated wood that will work. I picked out two of the nicest boards of appropriate size I could find. As a bonus, this is the kind of laminated wood where the pieces that make up the lamination are full-length.

Some assembly required.

I also got some nice pine strips intended for molding that were clear and relatively straight. these bits are around 1/2", for the bottom and box moldings. If there is enough of something left over, I will do the till, too.

I also bought some brad nails and a couple of really nice brass box hinges, because they didn't have anything like the strap hinges in the article that would work. These should look very nice.

Here's everything in my wheelie bag while we wait at the bus stop.

Now that I am not in my beloved Munich shop (for at least two years), I have decided to focus more on the positives of my new workspace: There's a gorgeous view, plenty of natural sunlight, a computer is in there, and air conditioning.

What more could I want?

BTW, I was serious about using that piece of OSB for a workbench. Wait until you see how this build goes! I was at first tempted for a first project to be a sawbench, a bench hook, or some other piece of workshop convenience, but I decided to try an experiment, and do a full on furniture build without any of that.

Wish me luck!