A workbench is more than just a flat surface—it’s your work partner, your creative platform, and, let’s be honest, sometimes a very expensive junk collector. The bench is where projects come to life, tools pile up, and good ideas (and bad ones) get tested. But what a workbench should be has changed a lot over the years, and that’s exactly what I’ll be talking about.

Gone are the days when every respectable workbench had to be a massive slab built from three oak trees and weighing more than a small car. Don’t get me wrong—I love a classic Roubo bench as much as the next hand-tool nerd. But somewhere along the way, we started acting like bench design peaked in the 18th century and that anything lighter or different was somehow inferior. 

Enter the modern workbench—more specifically, the MFT (multifunction table). These benches are amazing in the modern shop. They’re lighter, often modular, and designed to handle a variety of tasks, whether you’re hand-cutting dovetails or breaking down a sheet of plywood with a track saw. They’re not just a surface to work on; they’re a workholding system, a clamping grid, and a flexible platform that adapts to the job at hand.

What I love most about the MFT style is how approachable it is. You don’t need a 400-sq.-ft. dedicated shop to make one work. If you’re a minimalist working out of a single-car garage, an MFT can fold up, roll away, or even double as a finishing table. It’s the bench for people who want function first.

But here’s the thing: The workbench conversation isn’t just about tradition versus technology. It’s about rethinking what you actually need from your bench. Do you plane boards by hand for hours on end? Or do you mostly cut, sand, and assemble with the help of power tools? Are you moving your bench around, or does it live in one spot? Your answers to those questions should shape what your bench looks like—not a 250-year-old drawing from a French woodworking manual.

In my lecture on this topic at Woodworking in America this year, I like to mix in some laughs, a few strong opinions, and some live demonstrations of just how capable these modern benches can be. My goal isn’t to convince you to throw out your Roubo, but to get you thinking critically about the bench you have—or the bench you plan to build—so it actually suits the way you work today.

Because at the end of the day, a bench isn’t just a piece of furniture. It’s the heart of your shop. And whether that heart is a traditional beast or a lightweight MFT, the important thing is that it works for you.