I put together the leg assemblies for the folding workbench today.

The uprights are red oak and the cross-pieces are ordinary Home Despot pine. Doing it all out of oak would

1. be more expensive.
2. considerably increase the weight of the bench. This thing is supposed to be portable. If Roy Underhill offers to arm-wrestle with you, politely decline.

When you are working wood without electricity, you really notice the differences between species. Oak is a lot harder than pine. Even with a traditional hand drill, the drill bit get quite hot. Ripping (sawing longways) a board is much tougher. The difference is not nearly as striking for cross-cut sawing or planing.

Roy Underhill’s design calls for half lap-joints for the top cross-pieces and mortises and tenons for the lower ones. I wimped out and used half-laps for both. Extra screws should make it strong enough.

So now I have a bench top and bench legs. The next step is to put them together and see if the whole thing is viable. There are a lot of other things to do if that proves to be the case. No point in worrying about them otherwise