Have also a finishing-bench (Fig. 91) if possible, - if nothing more than a shelf or box, - to keep the regular work-bench neat and clean for its proper uses, for even a skilful workman can hardly avoid making a mess when it comes to using paint and varnish.

Now, while there are many of you who can afford either singly or by two or three clubbing together to fix up a shop in first-rate style, there are also many who cannot afford even so cheap a bench as that just described. What can you do in such a case? Only one thing - patch up a bench out of whatever old stuff you can find. Patched-up makeshifts are not to be recommended, except in case of necessity, but when it comes to the pinch, and a matter of having a bench made of whatever old materials you can find or having no bench at all, by all means make one of boxes and anything that can be worked in. For of course the boats, skis, squirrel-houses, and so on, must be made!

But, whatever you patch up, make it solid and strong. Do not try to work at a rickety, shackly apology for a bench that shakes and jumps and sidles all over the room every time you saw or pound or plane. You can probably get all you need in the way of boxes, packing-cases, and such material, at very little or no expense. The illustrations (Figs. 85 and 86) are merely suggestions, for you must use your own ingenuity, according to the materials you can find. Most experienced workmen have often been obliged to work at much worse benches than these, frequently with no bench at all.

Those of the boxes which you do not use whole you should take apart carefully (see Withdrawing Nails). This will add to your supply of nails. Use nails freely in fastening the boxes and boards together and to the wall or floor wherever allowable. A few screws will add much strength.

Fig. 85.

Fig. 86.

The bench shown in Fig. 86 calls for one good board for the front of the top.

Some of you live in the crowded parts of the city, in flats or small houses where there is no possible chance for a shop of any kind. Whatever woodwork you can do must be carried on in the kitchen, or some other living-room, where even a small bench may be out of the question. Still you would like to make such small work - model boats, for instance - as can be carried on in such limited quarters. If you are forced to use the kitchen table for a bench, try, for the first thing, to brace or block or screw it to make it steady, for unsteadiness is the greatest hindrance to doing good work at such a bench.

You can fit a good board to the table-top with cleats, and a stop to hold the work (Fig. 87). If you can now get a common iron vise, you can get along quite well for small work, and the board and attachments can be quickly taken off and put away when the table is needed for domestic purposes. You can easily contrive some way to attach wooden pieces or leather or rubber to the inside of the jaws of the vise, to save marring your woodwork. A fairly good bench can often be made from an old table (as a kitchen table) by screwing a plank on top and a board on the front side, and bracing the legs (Fig. 88). The plank should be screwed on from underneath.

Fig. 87.

Fig. 88.

If you can get hold of an old bureau or chest of drawers you can arrange a serviceable and compact little "parlour shop" for small work. If you cannot fasten permanent attachments to the bureau, you can fit a removable board (Fig. 87), and you will be equipped for such work as can be suitably done under such circumstances - and that includes quite a long list of small things. The drawers can be fitted with compartments and trays, according to what you have to keep in them and your own ingenuity, but make the arrangement simple. Figs. 89 and 90 are merely suggestions.

Fig. 89.

Fig. 90.

The best way to arrange your tools and supplies depends somewhat upon the circumstances, but the main point is to have the most convenient place for each thing and always to keep it in that place when not in use. The first part of this proposition is almost as important as the last. It is nearly as bad as being disorderly to keep the glue-pot in one corner of the shop, the glue in another corner, the glue-brush in the third corner, and the water in the fourth, - which is no exaggeration of the way some very orderly people stow away things, and is about equal to the arrangement of the person, of whom you may have heard, who always kept everything in its place and that place the floor! The workshop interior shown in the frontispiece and in Figs. 91 and 92, and the various other illustrations, furnish suggestions which may help you in the arrangement of your shop.

Have everything where you can lay your hand on it in the least possible time, the tools used the most the nearest to you, tools that go together, as bit-brace and bits, kept near together. Have all the common tools right within reach, and not put away in chests and out-of-the-way drawers, just because you have seen somebody pack away his tools in a highly polished chest, inlaid with forty kinds of wood, and containing ninety-three separate compartments and trays and seven secret drawers, the whole cornered and strapped and decorated with shining nickel plate! Do not bedazzled by that sort of thing, which is not an evidence of true system and orderliness, but merely shows poor taste and a great lack of appreciation of the value and importance of time. Time may not be exactly money in your case, but it may be even more valuable, and can be spent much better than in running around after tools and supplies, and making ingenious tool-chests. To be practical, five minutes a day saved by having things convenient and in place means about twenty-five hours in a year - which means a boat, a sled, or a lot of Christmas presents. So study out the best arrangement for your particular shop and then keep things in order. When working keep only the tools in actual use lying around on the bench. As soon as you are done with a tool for the operations actually in hand, put it back in place, and so avoid the confused litter seen in so many shops.

Fig. 91.

Fig. 92.