Making a jewellery bench

[Milomade]

Going to be making a jewellery bench this week and want to get advice on the size of the semi circle I need to cut out. I was thinking about 15" radius.

[Goldsmith]

My home made bench cut out is 24 inches wide and 10 inches deep.
Below is an old photo of my workbench on a clean bench day.

James

[caroleallen]

I found a dustbin lid was the perfect template.

[Milomade]

I guess it's a matter of getting in place temporarily and trying out a few sizes by drawing them on. Also not sure whether to attach a table leg either side of the semi circle or whether to put them a little further in so I don't bang my knees on them all the time.

[josef1]

I made my bench with a square ish cut out instead of the semi circle, so I could mount my holding tool / vice against it. The bench top is 2 peices of 25mm plywood sheet glued and screwed together its really sturdy maybe a touch over engineered if anything. The legs are away from the cutout about 40cm each side so they dont get in the way

[Milomade]

I've got a really long piece of thick pine (I think) thats quite deep too and the plan is to attach it to the wall at the back and have two 2x2 legs on either end at the front. I've then got two ikea butchers blocks that will slide underneath at each end (the idea is that I can pull them out for extra surface if I need it). Then the semi circle will go in the middle. Going to try and set it up tomorrow without doing any fixing to see how wide a semi circle I can get.

Thanks to everyone who's posted photos. This is really helpful as my hubby doesn't really know what a jewellers bench is meant to look like or how it's meant to function so these are great to give him an idea of what I'm after. He's going to be doing the fixing and cutting etc.

[Fi Wilson]

Remember to factor in space for any other types of jewellery making you do when configuring your bench. I do metal clay work as well as silversmithing so I've offset my semi-circle cut in so that's it's off to one side so I've still got a decent amount of workspace on the other side of the bench to do my metal clay work on too.

[caroleallen]

I like the idea of having pull out butchers blocks.

[Dennis]

I like the idea of having pull out butchers blocks.

Somewhere to skin the proverbial rabbit.

I do feel that every bit you cut out of your bench reduces your valuable work space- so I haven't bothered. Dennis.

[Julian]

Somewhere to skin the proverbial rabbit.

I do feel that every bit you cut out of your bench reduces your valuable work space- so I haven't bothered. Dennis.

I like the basket ingenious. I think ill mount one on drawer slides so it moves in and out.

thanks for the idea

J