It took me around five hours to make this workbench, and I did it for well under $100. It's a basic design, but it's extremely sturdy. I came up with the design based on a sketch I found in a book. The top surface of the bench is 36 inches off the ground. It's 6 feet wide and about 23 inches deep. I took pictures of the process so I could document it when I finished.
Derek Melton, also know as “dmelton” in the forums, took the day off and came to visit me in the shop. We spent the morning working on a small billet to be used for a couple of folder blades. One of our main goals was to see how well the $45 forge press was going to weld a billet. I welded great! Here are the pictures from our day.
This is a 35 second video demonstrating my prototype of a scale release automatic. The video quality is poor, but you should be able to get a good idea of the knife's size and action. The video is a 905kb mpg.