There’s something special about building the tools and workflow systems that eventually shape every project that comes after them.
At Benchmark Fine Woodworking in Flemington, New Jersey, we spend a lot of time thinking about process, organization, efficiency, and craftsmanship—not just in the furniture and custom woodworking projects we produce, but in the shop itself. A well-designed workspace changes how work gets done. It improves accuracy, speeds up production, reduces frustration, and honestly just makes the day-to-day experience of woodworking more enjoyable.
That’s exactly what sparked this project.
My first major shop build at Benchmark Fine Woodworking is a BIG custom miter station designed specifically for real-world production woodworking. This isn’t a temporary bench thrown together from scraps or a basic contractor setup. This is a full production-ready workstation built to serve as a central workflow hub inside an active community woodworking shop.
And now the entire build process is being documented as part of our new YouTube shop build series. You have seen the shorts and reels, but now comes the BIG youtube series to match the station its self!
Watch the Full Video
The first episode is officially live on YouTube and covers the beginning stages of the project:
- material delivery
- planning and layout
- safety orientation
- Fusion 360 workflow
- sheet goods breakdown
- organization systems
- and building the foundation for the station
If you enjoy woodworking, shop builds, workflow optimization, woodworking machinery, or behind-the-scenes artisan shop content, this series was made for you.
Why We Started With a Miter Station
When building out a woodworking shop, some projects simply make more sense to tackle first.
For us, the miter station was one of those foundational builds, we had a bunch of tools but this was the first real shop project.
At Benchmark Fine Woodworking, the shop is constantly evolving. Between custom furniture projects, cabinetry work, artisan builds, CNC projects, client work, and community shop usage, workflow matters. Materials move constantly. Cuts repeat constantly. Tools need homes. Efficiency matters.
A good miter station becomes more than just a saw stand.
It becomes:
a material processing center
an organization system
a repeatable cutting workflow
a storage solution
and a central production hub
We wanted this station to feel intentional from day one. Durable. Clean. Professional. Something that looked like it belonged in a serious woodworking environment while still feeling approachable and practical.
The goal wasn’t just to build something functional.
The goal was to build something that represented what Benchmark Fine Woodworking stands for.
A New Chapter at Benchmark Fine Woodworking
For me personally, this project marked the beginning of a new chapter.
I’m Eric, and joining Benchmark Fine Woodworking as an artisan felt like the right step at the right time. Benchmark is located right in Flemington, NJ—my hometown—and there’s something meaningful about creating work in the same community where so many of your memories started.
What drew me to Benchmark wasn’t just the machinery or the space itself.
It was the people.
It was the idea of building inside a real creative community where makers, artisans, woodworkers, clients, and ideas all intersect under one roof. You can feel that energy walking through the shop. Projects are constantly evolving. Conversations happen around machines. Skills get shared naturally.
That kind of environment matters.
And when Jon Ritter, owner of Benchmark Fine Woodworking, and resident artisan Bill Stowe started discussing shop improvement projects, the idea for a large custom miter station immediately rose to the top of the list.
This wasn’t going to be a temporary solution.
We wanted something built to last.
Material Delivery Day | Niece Lumber & Local Roots
One of the most meaningful moments of the build happened before a single cut was even made.
Material delivery day.
The lumber and sheet goods for the project arrived from Niece Lumber in Lambertville, New Jersey—a place that carries a lot of personal history for me.
There was honestly never much debate about where the materials for this project were going to come from.
As a kid, I remember walking through Niece Lumber with my father, Gale Casey, who worked as a hometown carpenter. Some of my earliest memories involve those creaky wood floors, the smell of fresh lumber, and standing near the molding display wall while he picked out materials for projects.
Those moments stick with you.
So when this new chapter at Benchmark Fine Woodworking started taking shape, bringing Niece Lumber into the project felt important. In a way, it felt like bringing a piece of that history—and my father’s memory—along for the ride.
That’s one of the things woodworking does so well.
Projects become tied to places, people, tools, and memories.
This miter station may be a workflow build for the shop, but underneath that, it also carries a story.
Planning the Build in Fusion 360
Before any sheet goods hit the saw, the entire station was modeled digitally in Fusion 360.
Planning matters on builds this size.
Instead of improvising dimensions or figuring things out as we went, every cabinet, section, cut sequence, and layout decision was thought through ahead of time. Cut sheets were generated before production started so the breakdown process could move efficiently once materials arrived.
That planning stage may not always look exciting on camera, but it saves enormous amounts of time later.
The goal was batching and workflow optimization:
grouping similar cuts together
minimizing machine setup changes
organizing assembly stages
and reducing wasted movement around the shop
In professional woodworking environments, efficiency compounds quickly.
A few small workflow improvements repeated hundreds of times become massive time savings over the course of a year.
Learning the Felder K 945 S
One of the highlights of the project so far has been working with the Felder K 945 S sliding table saw.
For anyone unfamiliar with professional woodworking machinery, a sliding table saw completely changes the experience of breaking down sheet goods. The support, precision, repeatability, and workflow feel worlds apart from traditional methods.
This machine was actually one of the things that originally drew me toward Benchmark Fine Woodworking.
There’s something inspiring about working in an environment where professional-grade equipment is accessible and actively used every day.
That said—we were all still learning.
The Felder was relatively new to the shop, and there was definitely a team-learning aspect during the first production runs. Bill Stowe kept a close eye on setup and workflow while we worked through the breakdown process together.
That’s part of real woodworking too.
Not everything is perfectly polished behind the scenes. Shops evolve. Systems evolve. People learn together.
And honestly, those moments are often the most rewarding.
Building the Foundation First
After the sheet goods were broken down and labeled, attention shifted toward assembly.
Every part coming off the saw was organized into sections:
left run
center vacuum cabinet
right run
Organization may sound simple, but it changes everything once assembly begins. Instead of searching for parts, the build flows naturally from one stage into the next.
From there, we moved into pocket hole joinery using the Kreg system and began assembling the kickplate base.
The foundation matters.
If the base isn’t level, square, and properly shimmed, every cabinet and surface above it becomes harder to install accurately. So before anything exciting gets built visually, the groundwork has to be right.
That’s one of the realities of woodworking that often gets overlooked online.
The parts nobody notices are usually the parts that matter most.
More Shop Builds Coming Soon
This is only the beginning of the Benchmark Fine Woodworking shop build series.
In the upcoming videos, the miter station really starts taking shape:
- cabinet assembly
- laminated work surfaces
- shaker doors
- T-track installation
- fences and stop systems
- storage integration
- final workflow dialing
And beyond this build, we’ll also be documenting:
- CNC projects
- woodworking shop organization
- lumber storage systems
- dust collection upgrades
- artisan furniture builds
- custom woodworking projects
- and behind-the-scenes life inside the Benchmark shop
If that sounds like your kind of content, we’d appreciate you following along.
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Benchmark Fine Woodworking is located in Flemington, New Jersey and serves clients throughout Hunterdon County, Central New Jersey, and beyond with custom woodworking, artisan craftsmanship, and creative shop collaboration.
Thanks for being part of the journey.