A workbench is a human-made work surface for standing craft work: a heavy, flat top at standing height, braced against the forces of cutting, driving, and filing, typically fitted with a vise to hold the workpiece and storage (drawers, pegboard, tool rail) for the tools in use. Parameters: (1) the top — hard, flat, thick material (wood, metal, composite) sized to the task; (2) the height — standing work height, fixed or adjustable; (3) the hold — a vise, clamps, or bench dogs fixing the workpiece to the top; (4) the brace — legs, stretchers, or mass resisting the forces the work applies; (5) the tool storage — drawers, pegboard, or rails keeping tools at hand. It persists as a workshop fixture because it is built as a durable object, sold and maintained through cycles of use, repaired, refinished, and handed down — outliving the individual jobs it supported. [formal: bancus | substrate: matter | horizon: generations | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.2]
Accepted ontology entry
workbench
A workbench is a human-made work surface for standing craft work: a heavy, flat top at standing height, braced against the forces of cutting, driving, and filing, typically fitted with a vise to hold the workpiece and storage (drawers, peg…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made standing-height work surface for craft work, built to persist as a workshop fixture that holds material and tools for hand-tool shaping.
Names and aliases
- workbenchen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrcj4wn4005994757onk3gv3SERVES →
A workbench is built and maintained for the sake of craft work: its standing height, vise, and bracing exist to support hand-tool shaping. Per Law 8d SERVES points servant→master; remove craft and the bench is just a heavy table with no intended use.
- cms56vcuy011bi9iq9tpibh0wSERVES →
A workbench is built for the sake of the workshop — it provides the central working surface that makes the workshop functional. Law 8d: for whose sake? The workbench is the servant; the workshop is the master. Direction: servant→master.
- deskINSTANCE_OF →
Nearest kind (Law 9/11e): a workbench is a kind of desk — desk's accepted definition is 'a hard, flat, dimensioned surface for a person to sit or stand and write, compute, draw, or craft at it', and a workbench is exactly the standing/craft end of that parameter space (hard flat top, standing height, built to hold material for hand-tool shaping). furniture is the next rung up (desk->furniture accepted), so desk is the correct rung, not a leap. Law 9a: a speaker would call a workbench 'a kind of desk' (work surface, dimensioned for a person).
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Sep 13, 2026, 3:02 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 1ab07f661e95cb27728a283d5f3fa12cd566f2a3ea065f228f75c7fe5acfc80f