My First Workbench

workbench with shou sugi ban

This is the first workbench I have made.  

The construction is 1 sheet of 3/4 inch plywood and 5-2X4's

When building this I used an interesting technique called shou sugi ban.  A japanese wood burning method.  I show you more of this method in in the finish section of this website.  

I also used stain on part of the bench as well as painted the shelf then painted and waxed the top.  

work bench frame
burning the wood or shou sugi ban
shou sugi ban on the frame
installing the plywood

In the first image I have built part of the frame.  

In the second image the frame is complete and I started the shou sugi ban process.  

In the third image the burning is complete and I have sanded the wood with a steel brush.

In the fourth image I have the work table in my basement workshop and I have put the 3/4 plywood on the top as well as on the shelf.

work table mishap


This is where I show my inexperience as a wood worker.  

I built the frame and burned the wood out in garage then took the table into the house.  BUT...I couldn't get it around the corner past my laundry room LOL...  I had to take it out again and dismantle some of it to get it into the house.  Not sure what I was thinking as I also had to get the table around another corner to get it into the basement. lol  If you can't laugh at yourself then who can you laugh at anybody?

work table with black top
table top with chalk paint and wax

In the first image you can see that I painted the top and the shelf a semi gloss black.  I wanted something a bit more rustic so in the second image I flipped over the top and used a grey chalk paint with a black wax.  I like this finish better.

Then to protect the rest of the table I used a satin varathane that unfortunately turned my shou sugi ban white!

I wasn't happy with this at all so I found a really cool tool called a restorer tool.  I was able to take all of the burned part of the wood off and leave the nice grainy texture.  I then used a grey stain to try to get that rustic look again.  I chose grey as I tried many other stains on sample pieces of wood that just didn't work the way I wanted.  

Probably a bit overboard for a work bench that doesn't have anything fancy...but it functions well lol

Thanks,

Kelly