Over the years I’ve done some classes on how to use and tune hand planes. While you can use hand planes without a dedicated bench, it makes it much more efficient if you do have one. I made this bench out of a big hunk of white pine for the top and apron, and maple scraps from the shop for the legs and bracing. In order to make it fully portable I avoided a vice and instead used some very primitive work-holding methods like a birds-mouth that captures the corner of a board or a simple planing stop that fits into holes drilled in the benchtop. Finally, I visited the forging coop here in Duluth to have them make a holdfast, the black iron piece in the last pictures. It fits into the holes in the benchtop that are a slightly larger diameter and wedges in when you wack on the top of the curve. A device that is brilliant in its simplicity.