My bench top went from wobbly to solid in one weekend

I got sick of my workbench rocking every time I used a hand plane. So last Saturday I finally did something about it. I added two diagonal braces on the back legs and a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood across the bottom as a shelf. Before that I had just the legs bolted to the top with no cross bracing. The difference is night and day after maybe 4 hours of work. Has anyone else tried adding a plywood shelf to stiffen up their bench?

2 comments

2 Comments

zara_hill4616d agoMost Upvoted

I saw this old woodworker on YouTube once who said a lot of bench wobble comes from racking front to back, not side to side, and that a bottom shelf is way more effective than people give it credit for. In my experience he was right I put a 3/4 inch ply shelf on my own bench a couple years back and it locked everything up tight. Your mileage may vary but I bet that shelf did more work than the diagonal braces honestly. I have a friend who skipped the shelf and just added braces and his bench still flexes a little when he really leans into a plane.

jones.brooke16d ago

The bottom shelf trick is solid advice, @zara_hill46, but I'd argue that diagonal braces work better if they're actually connecting the legs to the benchtop in both directions, not just front to back. Your friend might have only braced the long side, which leaves that front-to-back racking untouched. A shelf does do both directions at once since it ties all four legs together in a box, so it's hard to beat that for simplicity.