Download SketchUp Drawings
Of 3 Historical Workbenches

During the last few years I built several workbenches while doing research for my book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" (Popular Woodworking books).

Two of these designs – the French Roubo Bench and the English Nicholson Bench – ended up in the published book. A third 19th century design, for a hybrid bench that we call Holtzapffel's Cabinetmaker's Bench, appeared in Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine.

I've had many requests for SketchUp drawings of these workbenches, and thanks to draughtsman Louis Bois, who made the excellent technical drawings for my book, you can now download SketchUp files of all three for free.

NOTE: All of these files are compressed in .zip format so they can be easily transmitted over the Internet. They should decompress automatically. Also, you will need Google SketchUp to view these files. SketchUp is free, very useful for woodworkers and can be downloaded here: SketchUp.

If you want traditional dimensioned plans, I suggest you go to the source. The book and Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine have pages and pages of detailed dimensioned drawings. But if you want an electronic file that shows how all the piece go together and can be altered to suit you’re your shop, I think you'll find these files ideal.

SketchUp is a free program available from Google. Once you download SketchUp, I highly recommend you take the short and informative tutorials that go with it. They'll get you drawing projects in almost no time.

All three of these files are fairly large, and so they have been compressed (you can upzip them after you download them). And you definitely will want to download these over a high-speed Internet connection.

Thanks again to Louis Bois for making these files. His dedication to this workbench project is one of the things that made the book possible.

I hope you find the files as useful as the workbenches themselves.

— Christopher Schwarz
editor, Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine




The Holtzapffel Cabinetmaker's Workbench. Click here to download the SketchUp file of this workbench via Google 3D Warehouse.




The English Nicholson Workbench. Click here to download the SketchUp file of this workbench via Google 3D Warehouse.




The French Roubo Workbench. Click here to download the SketchUp file of this workbench via Google 3D Warehouse.