Question: I am building my workbench, and I have a couple of Arauco softwood plywood that I glued together. On top of them, I want to place a hardboard that I can remove when its beat up.

I am considering different ways to place this hardboard on top of the plywood, and I want to avoid gluing so it's easier to replace when needed. I am not familiar with the concept of edging, and I would like to understand how to install a solid wood-edging to hold these pieces together, and make it easier to remove the hardboard.

Notice that I asked this question based on the explicit unknowns on how to do the solid-wood edging written on [this answer](https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/questions/7291/affixing-masonite-to-plywood-by-example/7292?noredirect=1#comment31427_7292).

Answer: 
Edging is typically glued. Wood glue is not the best option for this due to the plywood edge not being a great surface to glue to, so contact cement is more typical (and most ready made edging use some variation of that).

However, for a workbench I would forgo edging entirely and just bevel the plywood edge a bit to avoid the sharp angle (that would also be fragile). If you do want to edge the plywood on your workbench, I would glue and screw (or staple/nail) or even just screw - exposed fasteners are okay for a workbench, in my opinion.

For the hardboard, either leave it floating (trapped by the edging) or screw it down with a small amount of fasteners (I'd probably use 1 in each corner and maybe a couple more in the middle if the workbench is wide enough). As you said, the hardboard should be easy to swap out when its too beat up, so gluing is off the table (no pun intended) and fasteners should be easily removable (so no nails or staples).
It's probably worth highlighting that, as mentioned in the linked Answer, solid-wood edging provides a solid bump in the looks department as well as protecting the relatively fragile edges of the MDF or plywood:

[![Solid-wood edging on workbench tops](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rt6xl.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rt6xl.jpg)

I've used straight hardwood plywood extensively for temporary work surfaces and the edges do get chewed up pretty badly by many operations, leading to flakes and splinters; even banging into them with your clamps takes its toll over time. This could only be worse with softwood ply.

So while it's not absolutely necessary I would think it would be very beneficial for your bench to add edging.

> 
> I would like to understand how to install a solid wood-edging to hold these pieces together, and make it easier to remove the hardboard.
> 
> 
> 

I think you're overthinking this, you're just attaching strips of wood to the edges of a rectangle after all.

I'm sure this is one of those things that if you set to doing it it would just come together — you'd problem solve as you went, and before you knew it the first strip would be attached. The rest would just follow naturally.

Some tips and suggestions:

* Ideally for durability the edging should be a decently strong hardwood, but many people (including myself) have used softwood1.
* Use tempered hardboard if you can get it.
* You can glue, glue-and-nail, glue-and-screw, nail or screw the strips into place as you prefer2.
* If you don't manage to get to top of your edging dead even with your hardboard insert you can scrape it flush if it's just barely out. If there's a bit more to remove a handplane can work well, just a few shavings might be enough. This can also be done very accurately [with a router](https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/questions/13636/aligning-table-top-veneer-with-solid-wood-frame/13638#13638), and this would be the fastest method if you leave yourself a generous allowance on the edging.
* After you're flush, chamfer or round over your arrises. The softer the wood you use the more important this is.

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1 Even common pine was acceptably durable for me.

2 I used screws only for my edging strips because, like the hardboard they hold in place, they are intended to be sacrificial and can easily be replaced when necessary.