Fast forward half a year from my workbench build, and I have since purchased a few real nice hand tools. Sure enough, I find a great deal of enjoyment in planing, chiseling, sawing, etc by hand. I especially enjoy and appreciate quality tools, such as all of the Lie-Nielsen items I have since obtained. Now that I have a respectable hand tool collection, I figured the next logical step was to build a good storage cabinet for them. So here I am.

I didn’t want to do a huge 10-part blog for this cabinet, because I figured it will ultimately be relatively straightforward. But still, I don’t plan on having the cabinet completely finished (and filled with tools in their final resting spots) for a year or so. I’m afraid my meticulous and perfectionist side will continually re-layout where all of the tools should go multiple times before I commit to final spots. As such, I thought I’d do a couple of blog entries along the way and then post up the final product as a Project here on LJ.

After searching through all of the hanging tool cabinets within the LJ community, I felt that the one made by dpow here is the kind that would best suit me, my tools and the space where I’m going to hang it. And I was thoroughly impressed by the layout and craftsmanship of dpow’s cabinet.

I’m using 3/4” thick Sapele and 3/4” Birch plywood. I wanted to use very contrasting wood colors for aesthetic purposes. And normally I would just use lots of pocket screws to build basic storage cabinets, but for this project, I wanted to be a little nicer and more artistic. There are going to be a lot of nice tools in there, so I figured the cabinet itself should be equally impressive. I wanted to use dovetails and dado’s where possible, and hide any screws as much as possible.

So far, I have the main cabinet done, and the doors are started, but not yet trimmed out or finished. And the main cabinet is already finished – just a few coats of boiled linseed oil to make the colors of the wood pop. I hung the main cabinet on the wall and will slowly make the little brackets and hangers that will hold the tools. But again, it will take me a while to figure out where to put all the tools. I already built in the storage spots for the hand planes, but other than that, I have yet to account for any particular tools.

Here is what I have so far for the main cabinet:

Constructed, but before applying the boiled linseed oil

Oiled and hung on the wall

Here’s one of the two doors, not yet finished. This is the front of the door. The birch panel is rabbeted into the door frame, glued and pocket screwed in. I didn’t want to pocket screw from the inside of the door, because then you would see the screws when the door is open. And obviously, since I screwed from the front side, you will see the screws when the doors are closed. So I’m going to use some thin Sapele strips to make a faux frame, mullion and transoms to glue on the front of each door to make each look like a little six-panel door. The mullion and transoms will cover the screw holes.

Close-up of the dovetails used to joint the sides, top and bottom of the main cabinet:

So that’s it for now. As you can see, the sides, top and bottom of the main cabinet are dovetailed together. As are the four sides of each door. There are going to be three little drawers on the bottom of the main cabinet. And since the main cabinet is about 8” deep, I might make some kind of swing out divider wall to the left of the plane storage, so I can have two walls to store stuff on.

Roofing paper went up:

Shingles done:

This morning we started doing some of the landscaping around the playhouse. We got a good start, but are not completely done yet. My wife also wants to do some sort of finish for the walls inside the playhouse. At a minimum, she wants the whole inside painted white. We may do some sort of panels on the walls instead. I’m debating drywall, 3/8” plywood, melamine plywood, slat boards, etc. If/when I do get something up on the inside, I’ll post pics at the time. But otherwise, I’m considering this blog done. It’s been fun. Until the next project…

- Andy

I have a book on framing, and it tells how to measure, mark and cut hip rafters and intersecting rafters. But after reading it twice, I decided it would be quicker and ultimately easier to just manually mark and cut everything with my own eyes, pencil and compass to scribe things. It seemed like the amount of trial and error it would take to get the proper technique would be more time that I was willing to spend. There weren’t many compound cuts needed, given how small the structure is. So I thought I could just use brute force to get through the tricky parts. I have a 12” dual bevel miter saw, and it came in extremely handy. In the seven years I’ve owned this saw, I think this is only the second time I’ve used it to make compound cuts. Go figure.

I took me three tries to get the valley rafter cut properly. The hardest part was cutting the multi-dimensional bird’s mouth. I know ideally the valley rafter should be two pieces of lumber sistered up, and it should be wider than 4” nominal. But again, considering the size of my structure, I thought a single 2×4 would suffice (all of my roof joists are 2×4s).

Here’s my final roof framing. I’m assuming it is not exactly how a pro would have done it, but it’ll do. After seeing how tricky the valleys and surrounding joists were, I now have a new found respect for professional framers. I can’t imagine doing a huge house with a real elaborate multi-surface roof.

Here’s a close-up of how I framed the wall that will have the adult-sized door in it. I don’t know if this is how a professional would have done it, but I think I schemed up a decent way to adequately support and carry down the load from the ridge beam. Any feedback from a pro on this would be greatly appreciated. I’m curious to see how else this wall could/should have been done.

When I was on the 2nd season of All American Handyman, I got eliminated on a challenge where we had to build a shed. One of the two reasons I got eliminated was because I didn’t keep 16” OC spacing around the entire shed. I know studs are supposed to by 16”, and I know WHY they are supposed to be 16”. But I feel in certain circumstances, it is more logical to not stick to 16” for every cavity. Unfortunately Holmes and Scott didn’t like my rationale, and held it against me. But I still feel I went about it the right way then, as I again did here with this project. Instead of belly-aching about it here, maybe I’ll put up a separate post just about this topic. I’d love to hear everyone else’s opinion on the matter.

Anyway, moving on. If you notice in the pictures below, I did only a single top plate. I could have easily done a double top plate, but I feel a single plate is fine in this case given the structural requirements of this relatively small structure.

One of the other unconventional things I did was the way I framed the wall where the larger (ie adult-sized) door will be. The height of the door needed to be higher than the 4 1/2’ top plate height that the rest of the walls have. So I couldn’t have a continuous top plate across that wall. I basically framed up the rough opening of the door, and then continued 4 1/2’ high top plates flanking the door opening. My door is going to have a three-sided top (like the top half of a hexagon), instead of being square and straight across. I spent a lot of time planning out how the ridge beam will connect to the top of the door opening, and how the load will be carried down. I think I came up with a pretty good design here that will adequately support the load from the roof. I’ll elaborate more on my next post – after the roof is all framed up. As for now, here’s what I got:

In an ideal world, I would have used poured concrete footings as the supports for the structure. But I’m not too concerned about minor shifting around. So I’m just going to have the whole structure rest on pavers, on grade. The first step was to take up all the grass where the structure will go. After the playhouse is all done, there will be planting beds around it, so I’m not making final lines around the grass. I’m just scraping up enough grass to have room to work.

After pulling up all the grass and digging out the bush, I put down heavy grade landscape fabric underneath where the final structure will be. Before putting down the fabric, I leveled the four spots where the pavers will rest. I stapled down the fabric and put down the pavers.

Next I built the floor frame. It is pressure treated 2×4s, resting on two pressure treated 4×4s acting as skids. I made sure the 4×4s were all leveled prior to building the frame on top of it. The main frame is 9’ wide by 6’ deep. There is a little 1’ x 3’ bumpout in the front where the kids’ door will be. I just built a separate little box and screwed it onto the larger frame. Ideally, I would have actually ran joists all the way through the main box, and cantilevered them out to make the bump out. But structurally speaking, I’m confident that the way I did it is plenty sufficient. The plywood flooring will be continuous pieces that cover the larger box and the bumpout. That is some extra support. And the wall framing will all interconnect at the corners, providing more rigidity. And finally, the exterior sheathing will run down the walls and overlap the floor box/frame, thereby further tying everything together. It will be fine.

I made sure the frame was squared up (measuring diagonal corners and making sure the two measurements were identical), and then attached the floor joists to the 4×4s by toe-screwing the joists to the 4×4s.

Finally I screwed down the 3/4” tongue-and-groove subfloor and cut off all the overhang with a circular saw. Sure enough, the bumpout is plenty strong. I’m about 185 pounds, and when I stand on the bumpout, I don’t see, feel or hear any sagging, creaking, etc. It will be fine for my two kids who both weigh probably less than a fifth of what I do.

It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow (Sunday), so I don’t plan on making any more progress this weekend, hence the tarp in the picture above. After this upcoming week, I’m off from work for a week. I plan on hopefully finishing the whole project, or at least getting close to finishing it, during that week off. Until then.

- Andy

With the exception of paint, hinges, tar paper, LP smart trim and door latches, I have already purchased everything I need. I’m big on having lots of various size and finish fasteners on-hand. So I’m basically all set with screws and nails. Total bill thus far: already right around $1,000. It was about $400 from the lumber yard for the majority of the lumber. Another $300 for 8 sheets of LP Smartside panels (the lumber yard didn’t carry that, but I really wanted it, and the shed in my yard used that stuff. I had to order it from Home Depot, but they charge $65 for delivery…jerks). About $200 for two bundles of 30 year dimensional roofing shingles, and a bundle of matching ridge caps (I bought the same shingles that we have on our house so the playhouse will roughly coordinate with our house. Our shed has the same shingles too), and about $90 for two pre-fab aluminum shed windows and a vented skylight. I figure I’m still looking at another $300 or so all said and done. Not cheap, but still cheaper than the pre-made kits of comparable design. And I know the construction will be rock solid.

Here’s all the lumber dropped off in my driveway this afternoon. The LP panels are off to the left.

I had to bring it all into the garage/shop after I got home from work. All the treated stuff is in the back on top of the table saw. The non-treated stuff is up front.

Lumber list:
70 – 8’ lengths of 2×4s
2 – 4×8 sheets of 3/4” T&G subfloor
3 – 4×8 sheets of 1/2” CDX roof sheathing
8 – 4×8 sheets of 3/8” LP Smartside panels
10 – 8’ lengths of treated 2×4s
And about a dozen miscellaneous lengths of treated and non-treated 2x’s and 4x’s

Given the dimensions of the playhouse, I’m going to unfortunately have A LOT of big cut-offs. The walls are going to be 4 1/2’ high, so there will be lots of 3 1/2’ long cut-off 2×4 pieces. Same thing with the roof joists: they will have close to 3’ long cut-offs. So I’m going to have lots of left over pieces of 2×4s after this project. I’ll have to come up with something good to do with them.

I have two kids, both girls. They are four and a half and two and a half, and have since accumulated lots of stuff that takes up lots of space. My 8’ x 10’ shed outside is already full to capacity. A lot of its floor space is taken up by the kids’ bikes/trikes, motorized Jeep, wagon, etc. I decided I need more storage outside. But instead of making it just another shed, I thought it would be more useful to make it primarily a playhouse that doubles as a shed for the kids’ stuff. I figure the kids will be able to get good use out of a playhouse for the better part of the next 10 years. And the stuff they have will come and go (for example, the wagon and Jeep will probably be gone within a few years, and replaced by other outdoor toys).

Above is a Sketch-Up of what I plan on building. Yes that is my wife in the picture, and yes she doesn’t have any facial features. She doesn’t talk very much. I’m taking off from work the first week of April, and I think I can get it finished – or close to it – all during that week. It is a 6’ x 9’ footprint, and the peak of the roofline is 8’. The roof will have a 45 degree pitch. There will be a dutch door, approximately 4’ high, on the front for the kids. On the side of the playhouse (the side that is NOT shown) I’m putting a larger adult-sized door so I can put things in and out of it. That door will be 3’ wide by about 6’ high.

So that’s it for now. See you again in a few weeks when I start the project.

- Andy

Since my last post, I had to still flatten out the top, put in the stretcher shelf, make the jaw pad for the face vise and put some sort of finish on the whole thing. If you recall from previous posts, if you looked at my top across it’s length from the end, it was shaped like a “V”. I previously flattened out the bottom, but I obviously had the top to deal with too. As with the underside, I used a power planer to take off the majority of the unevenness. Then I used a #7 jointer plane until the whole thing was flat, and then a #4 smoothing plane to touch it all up. Below is the mess of shavings just from the hand planes – the power plane chips went into a collection bag.

I used straightedges to make sure there were no twists and that the top was flat and true. Here is the final flatness check…dead on.

I then gave the whole thing a quick sand with 220 grit on a random orbit sander.

I next made the shelf for the stretchers. I was tired of planing and jointing at this point in the project, so I just bought some 1×6 select pine boards from home depot, made some quick tongues and grooves on them on my table saw, and then laid them out across the stretchers. I didn’t mechanically fasten them, as I want to be able to take them out and/or replace them if I ever need to.

I then drilled a few more 3/4” dog holes in the top for holdfasts or other dog accessories.

Finally, I finished the whole thing with a 4-to-1 mixture of boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits. I gave it all two coats, three on the top. And here she is…the final product:

The Rockler face vise I used came with a handle. However, the vise screw I bought for the wagon vise didn’t. Fortunately, Rockler sells extra handles, so I bought another one to use on the wagon vise so I can have matching handles on the two vises.

And here’s the stretcher shelf.

So that’s it, the project is done. For anyone who’s interested, here are some stats about the project:

DIMENSIONS / WEIGHT:
- 34 1/2” high
- Top is 63” wide, 24” deep, 3 3/4” thick
- 5” thick square legs
- I don’t know the weight, but it is best classified as “friggin heavy”

COSTS:
- $200 in wood (nine 2×12 x 12’ Douglas Fir joists, four 1×6 x 6’ select pine boards, three 3/8” x 3’ oak dowels)
- $180 in vise hardware ($100 Rockler quick release face vise, $70 Lie-Nielsen small Scandinavian vise screw and – $10 extra vise handle from Rockler)
- $25 in glue (gallon of Tite Bond extend glue…I used almost all of it)
- $30 in boiled linseed oil (I bought a new large container of it, but only used a small fraction of it…figure about $5 worth)
TOTAL COST…right around $400 all in

TOOLS NEEDED:
Too many to list, but I basically used the majority of the tools in my shop in one way or another. However, I have to give special credit to the undisputed workhorses of this project: planer, jointer, table saw

TIME:
Not exactly sure, but probably somewhere around 60 hours, give or take 10 hours. And that’s not including drying time after all the glue-ups. I wish I would have kept track of the time, as I’m now curious exactly how long it all took. Oh well.

So that’s that. It’s all over now. My next blog-worthy project is going to be a playhouse I’ll be building for my two daughters in the next month or so. It will be probably 6’x8’ and about 7’ high at the peak. Should be fun. So thanks again to everyone who has followed this blog. I hope you enjoyed and/or learned something from it. It was a fun project to do, and I’m really looking forward to now doing more hand work. Until next time…

- Andy

My drawbore pin arrived from Lee Valley recently, so I was able to finally connect all these mortis and tenon joints. As I had previously mentioned, I bought the Lee Valley drawbore pins instead of the Lie-Nielsen pins because I thought the Lee Valley pins were a third the price. I pulled a bonehead move and thought I read that the Lee Valley pins were $30 for A PAIR. Whereas the Lie-Nielsen’s are $90 for a pair. After the Lee Valley pin arrived, I realized it was just one pin. After checking their website again and reading it in better detail, sure enough it is only ONE pin for $30…not a pair. But the Lie-Nielsen’s are definitely TWO for $90. So therefore, the Lee Valley’s aren’t as comparatively cheap as I thought they were. But still, I don’t know why you’d need two of the same pins. So I still don’t regret my decision to NOT buy the Lie-Nielsen set of pins. Just thought I’d share this meaningless story with you. Sorry.

For the mortis and tenon joints between the stretchers and legs, I thought one 3/8” drawbore pin/dowel would suffice. I measured the center of the pin 7/8 ” from the shoulder of my tenons. Each tenon is 2 1/4” long, so 7/8” seemed like a decent distance from the shoulder. No hard science here, just a subjective decision. I bought a brad point 3/8” bit, and drilled all the holes through the mortises in my drill press.

After drilling through all the mortises, I then placed each tenon in the joint, and marked the center of the hole with the drill bit.

This picture isn’t great, but it gets the point across – after I marked the center on each tenon, I then marked an offset closer to the shoulder by about 3/32”. According to Schwarz’s online tutorial about drawboring, you generally shouldn’t offset your tenon hole by more than 1/8”. Since this was my first time drawboring, I didn’t want to push any limits. So I played it somewhat conservatively and did 3/32”.

I then drilled each tenon on the drill press.

Next I dry fit each joint, and used the drawbore pin to prep each dowel hole. It took a lot of elbow grease to ream each hole. I ended up with a good blister on each of my palms from having to push and twist so hard (that’s what she said).

I bought 3/8” oak dowels from Home Depot, and cut them all to length. Using a box cutter, I tapered the tip of each to allow me to driven them through the offset drawbore holes.

Before assembling each joint, I applied a liberal amount of glue to the mortis, put the tenon in, and then drove in the drawbore dowel with a deadblow mallet. There was a healthy amount of resistance in driving in the dowels, but not as much as a I thought there would be. I definitely could have gotten away with doing 1/8” offset on the drilled holes. Maybe even a little more. I guess since my tenons are so large and I’m using relatively thick dowels, I could have used a bigger offset. Oh well. The joints all still came out PLENTY strong. I cut the dowels so that there was some extra that I’d have to come back and saw and plane down flush.

Here is the finished assembly of the legs and stretchers.

Now the top was ready to be put on. I should mention that I had previously drilled the drawbore holes through the mortises in the top slab. Since the top slab was too big and heavy to try to maneuver on the drill press, I drilled those with a hand drill. I then marked and drilled the holes in the tenons on the legs. I did those on the drill press. Anyway, with some help from my stronger than I thought wife, we lifted the top onto the leg assembly, and I drove in all of those drawbore dowels. And here it is…

It was awesome to see it all together. There are still some finishing touches that I have to do to get it completely done, but as you can see, the project is basically finished at this point. It’s kind of sad – putting the top and legs together was more anticlimactic than I thought. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe some balloons falling from the ceiling. Possibly some confetti? Perhaps some loud sirens and disco lights, as if I was the one millionth customer at a supermarket and won a prize for the random accomplishment. No, I had none of that. But still, it was a great feeling to see it all together. I guess it is better than balloons and confetti. After all, those would have just been more things I would have had to clean up off the floor.

So now all that left is:
- Flatten the top
- Make a wooden jaw pad for the front vise
- Drill some more 3/4” dog holes in the top and possibly some in the legs, for holdfasts
- Apply some sort of coating/finish to the whole thing (I need to research this more to see what sort of product would be best). I’m thinking Danish oil at this point, but we’ll see
- Put on tongue and groove decking on the stretchers to turn that into a shelf
- Make some bench accessories: bench dogs, sliding deadman, batten, maybe some other stuff
- I’m sure I’m forgetting something else that I’ll realize later

I guess that’s it. The next post will presumably be my last. I’m getting a little teary-eyed that this whole thing is drawing to a close. I need to go find someone to hug. As always, thanks for reading!

- Andy

I needed to plane down about 1/16” down the whole center of the underside, and then smooth that out to edges. I could have hand planed the whole thing, but I fortunately have a power planer, which would save a lot of time by roughing out the majority of the material.

Sure enough, one 15 second pass down the middle at a depth of 1/16” took out a nice clean strip. Removing this much material by hand would have been at least 15 minutes and lots of arm fatigue, especially since I don’t have a scrub plane or anything else than would easily and safely remove lots of material quickly.

I then worked outward toward each edge, overlapping the first pass, with the depth set at 1/32” to help fan out the thickness as necessary.

After the few passes with the power planer, I busted out my new Lie-Nielsen #7 jointer plane and smoothed out the whole surface. As I mentioned in a few previous posts, I did not have any other hand planes, besides a block plane, prior to starting this project. So I hit up Craislist and eBay to find good condition Lie-Nielsen planes that that I would need to complete this project. Over the course of two weeks I bought a bronze #4, a large shoulder plane and this #7 (with the cocobolo knob and tote). All were effectively brand new, and priced accordingly. It was an expensive couple of weeks…

I did a series of overlapping diagonal passes across the whole thing, and then used my #4 smoother to clean it all up a little bit. The end result, after about 45 minutes of total work surfacing this thing, it ended up well within my tolerance of acceptable flatness for the underside.

Now that the bottom was well surfaced, it was time to cut the mortises to receive the leg tenons. As with the mortises in the legs (to receive the stretchers), I made a custom guide jig so that I can use a 3/4” spiral upcut bit in a plunge router to hog out the mortis.

Instead of leaving the mortises rounded and then rounding the tenons to match – like I did with the stretchers – I decided I would square up these mortises. No particular reason why I decided to square these but not the mortises in the leg. I just felt like mixing it up a bit. I used a chisel to square up the holes.

It took a little shoulder planing of the tenon to get a good fit on each joint. But after cleaning up each tenon, I tested the fit to see how it looked. Came out pretty good.

Now the leg mortises were all done, so it was time to rout out the dado that will act as the guide/track for the top of the sliding deadman I’m going to make. A plunge router with 3/4” spiral upcut bit and a router base guide worked perfectly.

I have to give credit where credit is due: the 3/4” spiral upcut bit I bought for this project was exactly what was needed for a few different parts of this bench. It was $40 well spent at Lee Valley.

The final step in finishing the underside of the top was to mount my front vise. I bought the Rockler single screw quick release face vise. It is built really well – lots of heft, two well-machined guide rails, smooth operating screw.

Ideally, I would have loved to use the Benchcrafted vises for both the front vise and wagon vise. Those things are ridiculously awesome. But at $300+ a piece, I couldn’t justify it. Even with the two relatively inexpensive vises I used on this bench ($100 for the Rockler front vise and $70 for the Lie-Nielsen Scandinavian screw), the vise hardware ended up costing slightly more than all the lumber I used. Go figure.

Now the top is ready to be attached to the legs. But first I have to put the legs and stretchers together. I need the drawbore pin to arrive before I do that though. Should be any day now. Cool.

And in other news, the Woodworking Shows is in my area this weekend (the Somerset, NJ show). I’m going tomorrow morning. It has been one of the highlights of my year each year since I first went in 2003. Although, I’m convinced that the shows keep getting increasingly smaller each year. I guess the Internet has slowly been cannibalizing the economics of vendors participating in such expos. Anyway, it is still an awesome event for a woodworking hobbyist and tool junky like myself. Maybe I’ll see some of you there…

- Andy

Another great tip I got from reading Schwarz’s book was that he put a small chamfer on the bottom of each of his legs. Since he planned on having to drag the bench around the shop every now and again, the chamfer would help prevent the edges of the bottoms of the legs from catching on the ground and tearing out. Using my router and a chamfer bit, I put about a 1/4” chamfer all around the bottoms of the legs.

Now the legs were done, so it was on to cutting the mortises for the stretchers. I ran into a fair bit of trouble when I started actually cutting the mortises. My stretcher tenons were already done and sized. I’ve never actually cut mortises this big before, but I figured it would be easiest to bore out the majority of the mortis with a Forstner bit on the drill press, and then chisel the hole square. I marked my first mortis, brought the leg to the drill press, set the drill press table’s fence and stop blocks accordingly, set the quill’s depth stop for 2 5/8”, and started drilling with a 7/8” diameter bit. The first hole went as planned – straight down into the wood with no problems. But when I started drilling the second hole, which overlapped the first hole by about 1/2 the diameter, the bit kept wanting to travel to the side as it went down. Unfortunately, even though my drill press table’s fence and stop blocks were real tight, AND the workpiece was clamped onto the table, the drill press table itself kept slowly shifting. After investigating, I realized it is sort of a flaw in the way the table was designed. It is the Rockler full size drill press table. I’ve had it for five years, and up until now, it has performed flawlessly. However, I guess I’ve never before put it to task with something that exerts a lot of lateral force like this. The hold down clamps on the underside of the drill press table that hold the table onto the small metal table that came with the drill press weren’t holding as tight as they needed to. End result, the table felt tight to the bare hand, but under heavy lateral force, it would nudge sideways. Not good.

If nothing else, woodworking is about problem solving. Faced with this relatively large problem, I decided I would ditch the drill press idea and instead use my 3/4” diameter spiral upcut bit in a plunge router to bore out the mortises.

However, using the router bit method meant another slight problem – my stretcher tenons were already 2 1/2” long, but the upcut bit only plunges 2 3/8” below the base of the router. This was a hassle, but not a huge deal. I simply shortened each tenon 1/4”, which would still allow an 1/8” of space between the end of the tenons and bottom of the mortises.

After thinking about the best and most efficient way to guide the router to make straight and consistent sized mortis holes, I realized I should make a rectangular guide jig that would sit on top of the workpiece, acting as a straightedge on each of the four sides of the mortis. I had some 1.5” wide 3/4” popular lying around that fit the job perfectly. After some quick measuring and pocket holing, the jig was done. I also added a guide to the underside of it. This guide served two purposes: 1) keep the jig square to the leg and 2) set the mortis back the proper distance from the face of the leg.

I tried to size my jig so that it would make mortises that had a very small amount of play around the tenons. I made a test mortis on a scrap piece of wood. Unfortunately, the mortis had TOO much play. It was about 1/16” too big around each side of the tenon. This was way too much play…unacceptable. Round 2 – I took the jig apart, sized it down a little bit and put it back together. This time I erred on the side of being too small. Sure enough, after making a test cut with the resized jig, it was about 1/32” too small on each side of the tenon. I was starting to get angry at this point. After huffing and puffing and letting out some choice expletives, I calmed down and came to the decision that I’ll keep the jig as is, and nibble down all my tenons a little bit. I first started to use my large shoulder plane, but it was taking too long. Given my level of frustration with how the whole mortis and tenon process was going so far, I wanted as fast a fix as possible. So I put the dado stack in my table saw and buzzed down all the tenons that way. I now had tenons that were perfectly sized to the mortis holes from the revamped jig. Score. Finally.

Now it was time to take the leap and make the first mortis in the legs. I clamped up the jig onto the leg, and made the cut. It was a mess of wood chips and sawdust while I was making the cut. But all said and done, the mortise came out clean and pretty.

I cut each of the eight mortises needed, and then I had to square up each hole. After thinking it about for a little bit, I realized it would be probably be quicker to round over the tenons instead of squaring up the holes. Since the tenons are so large, there is plenty of room to round the corners and still have a sufficient amount of straight face surfaces to mate with the walls of the mortises. With a sharp chisel, I sliced down each edge to give it the approximately 3/8” radius needed to fit in the mortises.

I tested the fit of each tenon as I went along. Most of them were all a little too snug the first go around, so I used a rasp to knock a little extra off each edge, where needed. Each tenon ended up rounded pretty well.

I’m very happy with how everything came out. The tenons all fit well, with just a touch of play. Again, since I’ll be drawboring, it’s okay to have a little play in the fit (or at least that’s what I’m told by Schwarz’s online video lesson on how to drawbore. Let’s hope he’s right…)

I dry fit all the legs and stretchers to see it all together. It feels GREAT to see these basically done. Especially considering the bumps along the way in trying to do the mortises. I’m glad this part is over.

All I have to do now to complete the leg/stretcher assembly is drawbore the joints, which should be pretty easy. One problem though – the drawbore pins I ordered a week ago from Lee Valley have not yet arrived. I’m surprised they’re not here yet. Maybe I’ve come to expect faster ship times that I should. Even with Amazon’s free “Super Saver” shipping – which is supposed to be 5-10 business days or something – the stuff usually arrives within 3-4 days of when I ordered it. Even when I ordered the spiral upcut bit from Lee Valley a few weeks ago, it was here within 3 or 4 business days I think. Oh well. The pins should be here in the next day or two I’m guessing. And for the record, I went with the Lee Valley drawbore pins over the Lie-Nielsen pins because they were a third the price. I love Lie-Nielsen stuff, and their quality is top notch. With almost all tools, I’m never hesitant to pay up for good quality. But in this case, it is literally a set of steel rods with a wooden handles. I don’t think the $90 Lie-Nielsen set can possibly be that much better than the $30 Lee Valley set. Sorry Lie-Nielsen.

That’s all for now. I’m REALLY starting to feel good about this whole thing now. The end is definitely within sight! Lovely. See you next time.

- Andy

I then did the rough glue-ups of each stretcher.

Since the deadman is going to slide on a simple wood-on-wood track system, I figured now would be a good time to make sure the deadman guide on top of the front stretcher is as true and smooth as possible. As I mentioned in the last blog entry, I’ve been looking for good used Lie-Nielsen planes on eBay and Craigslist over the last couple of weeks. I was lucky enough to find on Craigslist an unused #4 smoother, in bronze, from a guy a half hour away from me. I picked it up yesterday morning, and used it last night to smooth the deadman track on the top of the stretcher. It’s sort of funny – in order to plane the this piece, I really could have used a bench with dog holes to hold the material. However, I don’t have a bench, which is why I’m doing this project in the first place… Using a few clamps as a makeshift planing stop, and my table saw outfeed table as a bench top, I was able to get the job done. I did a few passes with my new plane, and the track/top of the stretcher was as smooth as glass.

I then cut each stretcher to length on the miter saw. The next step was to cut the tenons on the ends of each stretcher. I set up my dado stack, adjusted the depth of cut and rip fence accordingly, and started cutting the cheeks and shoulders. Dadoed one side, flipped it and dadoed the other side, and then flipped it again and dadoed the tops. I had to change the depth of the dado blades at each flip since I wanted/needed different depths on each side of the stretchers.

All said and done, I ended up with nice chunky tenons.

After making all the cuts on each piece, the four stretchers were done.

At this point, I definitely have the end of the project within my sight. Not that I’m wishing it was over – I’m enjoying this whole process a lot – but it is always exciting to be nearing completion of a project. The next step will be to mortis the legs to receive the stretchers, and then drawbore all the joints together. That’ll be the next blog posting. Hopefully I’ll be able to get all that done over the course of this coming week. I hope everyone is enjoying all this so far. It has been almost therapeutic to blog about my progress during this whole thing.

- Andy

Anyway, after some more relatively monotonous jointing, planing, gluing, clamping and waiting, the rough legs were done.

After yet MORE jointing and planing, and cutting the tops and bottoms on the miter saw, the legs are all sized to final dimensions – exactly 5” square.

I’m going to be using drawbored mortis and tenons to join the legs to the top. The tenons on the tops of the legs will be 2 1/2” long. I set up a stop block on my crosscut sled, and set the blade height to my desired shoulder depth, then ran the fronts and backs of each leg through.

After making all the shoulder cuts, I adjusted the crosscut sled stop block and blade height, and then made the cheek cuts.

As I mentioned in the inaugural post to this blog series, I didn’t own planes other than a cheap Stanley block plane, and the Lie-Nielsen adjustable mouth low angle block plane. But after reading Chris Schwarz’s workbench book, I became very inspired to get into doing more work by hand…which is largely why I decided to build this bench. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been all over eBay and Craigslist looking for great condition Lie-Nielsen planes. I figured a shoulder plane, a #4 or # 4 1/2 smoother and a #7 jointer – in addition to my low angle block plane – should meet the vast majority of my planing needs. I think I’ll eventually need (i.e. want really bad) a low angle jack plane, but not immediately. At least, I don’t think I’ll need it to build this bench. But I know I’m going to need a shoulder plane, smoother and jointer to properly finish this bench.

I was able to win myself a barely used Lie-Nielsen large shoulder plane on eBay a few days ago. It showed up today, and I put it to use right away. After I made all the cuts for the tenons, I had to neaten up the corners a little bit…the perfect task for the shoulder plane. Worked like a gem.

The legs are done for now. After I make all the stretchers, which will join to the legs via drawbored mortis and tenons as well, I will then have to mortis out the legs. But for now, there is nothing else I can do with the legs at the moment.

Next I’ll tackle the stretchers. I plan on putting tongue and groove decking on the stretchers to make a shelf on the bottom. And I originally wasn’t going to make a sliding deadman. However, after some thought, I figured it would be cool to make and convenient to have, even if I don’t use it much. So I’ll have to incorporate these things into the stretchers accordingly. See you next post. Thanks for reading along so far.

- Andy

It was tricky maneuvering the two parts in the final glue up, as each section was heavy and somewhat awkward given their size. But with a little help from my wife, I was able to situate, glue and clamp the two parts together. Here is the top prior to trimming the ends.

In order to cut the ends to final length, I used a clamped straightedge and a circular saw.

I set the blade as deep as I could (the motor of the saw was virtually resting on the top of the straightedge), and made the first cut.

I then flipped it over, and cut the other side. Unfortunately, the depth of the cut was just a hair shy of reaching the halfway point of the 3 7/8” thick top. So there was a thin fin of remaining material.

So I chiseled off the rest, and hit it with a block plane to smooth it all out. It ended up pretty flush and smooth in the end. Plus, I plan on doing a final touch up and smoothing after the whole bench is assembled and done. So this particular cut is good enough for now.

Next was to cut the wagon vise end. As I mentioned in the previous post, the end block of the wagon vise WAS already cut to final dimensions. Since the vise screw is sticking through the end, I didn’t want to attempt to have to cut neatly all around the screw. So I just have to try to line up the cut so that it is flush with the end of wagon vise’s end block.

As with the other end of the top, the cuts weren’t able to go all the way through. After some chiseling and block planing, this end was done too.

And here’s the final top. 23 1/2” wide, 61 1/2” long and 3 7/8” thick.

After the bench is complete, I’m going to flatten the top. There is a bit of a cup across the width. So all said and done, the final top will probably be more like 3 3/4” thick when it is complete. And unfortunately, some minor checking and splitting has started happening along the grain of some of the pieces of the top. I thought everything was sufficiently dry – the lumber was already kiln dried, and it all sat in my shop and aired out for a few weeks before I started using any of it. I don’t have a moisture meter, but I figured it was all dry enough. Apparently not. Anyway, the checks don’t go all the way through the top, so I’m not concerned about the top splitting in half or anything. But I will try to fill the cracks with glue, or a glue/sawdust mix to fill them in before I do the final finishing of the top surface. I also plan on putting in a few more 3/4” dog holes in the top, toward the back side of the bench, for holdfasts. I’m not going to do a full row 4” on-center like the existing row. I’ll probably just do three or four holes in a row, evenly spaced across the length of the bench.

So that’s it for now. It is a great feeling to see the top done. I’m at about the halfway point in the project, and feeling good. Other than the checks that developed in the top after the final glue-up, there haven’t been any real surprises or problems so far. Yay.

- Andy

I hadn’t planned out the exact dimensions of the vise ahead of time. It wasn’t until I first decided on which specific vise screw I would use, and got the screw in my possession, before I worried about final dimensions. After looking around online at hardware for the vise, I absolutely fell in love with the Benchcrafted hardware. It is built like a tank, glides effortlessly, clamps with significant pressure AND I really love the wheel instead of traditional vise handle. However, the thing costs $360! Considering this is the first time I ever built a real bench, I haven’t historically done a lot of hand tool work and the wood for my bench is only $132, I thought it was excessive to spend that much on just one vise. So I then narrowed it down to the Lee Valley and Lie-Nielsen small single vise screws. At $70, the Lie-Nielsen was more than double the Lee Valley, but I know the Lie-Nielsen will be great quality, and $70 isn’t breaking the bank, so I sprung for it. After it arrived (only about three days after I ordered it), I took it out, sized it up, and figured out the dimensions for my wagon vise.

As I mentioned in the last blog entry, the vise screw is constructed such that I wouldn’t be able to put the screw in after I built the bench top. I had to literally build the screw into the bench top when I was laminating the top together. The swivel end of the screw (i.e. the end that attaches to the wagon block), does not appear to be able to come off of the screw. There is an allen screw that holds the end onto the screw, but I couldn’t get the screw off for the life of me. Maybe it is because I am worthless and weak. Or, what I hope is the real answer, is that I think there must be thread lock substance on it. So long story short, I wouldn’t be able to thread the screw in through the outside of the bench, and there wasn’t going to be enough distance in my wagon opening to angle the screw in from the inside of the bench. So it had to get permanently built into the top.

The first step in making the wagon vise was to finish the lamination of the three strips of wood that would create the rows that would make up the wagon block. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I drilled the dog holes only 3” into my 4” thick top pieces because that is the maximum depth my Forstner bit. So I ordered an extension bit, which showed up a few days later. I couldn’t use the bit and extension in my drill press, because my drill press does not have enough quill travel to go all the way through the 4” piece. So I resorted to using a hand drill drilling guide and finishing the holes by hand.

After I finished drilling the dog holes, I jointed and planed the laminated top piece to get it to final glueable width. This way, both stationary pieces of the top and the wagon block would have dead flat sides and all line up perfectly in the final laminated top. I then cut off the wagon block and the stationary end block.

Next step was to decide where to mount the stationary guide nut for the vise screw. I’ve seen some people mount the guide onto the outside of the bench. But that doesn’t seem like the best way to do it, since the the force of the wagon block pushing against the material being clamped wants to push the guide nut away from the bench. Under this scenario, the screws that attach the guide nut can theoretically blow out of the end of the bench. So I decided to mount the nut on the inside of the bench. Then the only structural concern would be the glue joints that keep the vise’s stationary end block attached to the rest of the bench top. I’m confident there is enough surface area of glue that this shouldn’t be a concern. The Lie-Nielsen vise mounting nut is a large hex nut welded onto a thick round washer/flange.

I could have saved some time by mounting the guide with the nut sticking out into the opening of the vise. But instead, I decided to go about it the proper way and bore out a recess in the stationary end block for the nut to recess into. It took a speed square, fractional dial caliper and protractor to get the the proper layout marked on the wood.

I then used a 1 5/8” Forstner bit to hog out the majority of the mortis. And I did it on my drill press to make sure the hole is plumb.

Next was some chisel work to clean out the rest of the mortis

After that, I marked and drilled the holes for the mounting bolts. Also, I had to chip out some material to make room for the three welds that attach the nut to the flange/washer. Finally, I drilled all the way through the block so the vise screw can go through it.

I next screwed in the bolts, and it was officially mounted.

Next step was to drill the dog hole in the wagon block, and attach guide blocks to the sides of the wagon block. I then assembled all the vise parts.

In designing the wagon vise, I wanted to make sure there were no obstructions or guide rails protruding into the vise opening. I’ve seen some people mount their wagon blocks on continuous rails that stick into the vise opening. However, if you wanted to clamp material into the vise opening (like clamping in a drawer side to cut dovetails, or something like that), the guide rails would be in the way. So I decided I’d mount guides to the side of the wagon block, and have those guides ride inside dados. Furthermore, I wanted to construct it all such that I can remove/replace the wagon block if I ever need to. So I put a 3/4” straight cutting bit in my router, and routed out the dado and a large area where a removable block would screw in from the underneath of the bench.

So the vise was now constructed, and it was time to glue up the rest of the top sections in that half of the top. I plan on laminating up two 12” sections for the top, and then give each of those sections a final run through the planer (which maxes out at 13” wide) before gluing together the final finished top. Here is the wagon vise half of the top.

One problem that came up along the way with the wagon vise is that since the vise screw had to get built into the top, I wouldn’t be able to easily do a final cut along the edge of the top as I had planned. If you noticed, I let the lengths of my top boards all run a little wild on the vise end of the top. After the top was all glued up, I planned on running a circular saw along a straight edge to cut the end straight and clean. But now the vise screw is sticking out of the side. So what I did was cut the stationary end block of the vise to the final size. Now I don’t have to cut those three strips of wood that make up the end block, and therefore don’t have to worry about trying to neatly cut around the screw without hitting it with the blade.

So that’s it, the wagon vise is done. It was as fun to build as I thought it would be. And its operation is very smooth with hardly any play. I forgot to previously mention that before I laminated together all of the top parts, I hit the sides of my wagon block with a few light passes of a block plane. I did that just to take off a little bit of thickness so that the wagon block wouldn’t bind up on the sides of the vise opening. And I spent a lot of time making sure all of the hardware was mounted with precision, and that the guide blocks and dadoes were straight and square. Since there wouldn’t be any way to true up any errors after the fact, I had to make sure every part of the wagon vise was dead on the first time around.

I’m very happy with the final product, and I can’t wait to actually use the vise when the bench is done. My next entry will be about finishing the top, which will consist of running the two 12” top sections through the planer, doing the final glue up of those two sections, and trimming the edges straight. Should hopefully be pretty easy. Thanks for reading!

- Andy

Since the top of the bench is the most important – functionally and visually – I first cut each of the pieces I need for the top, using what I thought were the best boards. I’m going to be laminating 18 strips together. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get EVERY single top piece to be completely clear and free from all imperfections, but I wasn’t planning on there being as many hidden imperfections as there were. There were a few pieces that looked completely clear on both faces, but once I ripped it to size, there were little knots right at the cut line, buried inside the board. Jerks. I tried my best to make sure my final top is as clear as possible. I even cut a few more top pieces than I needed, hoping to get as many clear ones as I can. But I still ended up having some sort of knot showing in probably about a third of my top boards. They aren’t horrible looking by any means, but nonetheless, I’m let down that I won’t have a pristine and flawlessly clear top. Oh well. Since I cut more top pieces than I needed, I sacrificed pieces from elsewhere in the bench. I originally bought eight 12’ 2×12s, but I now have to get one more. I have all of the rough pieces cut for everything but one leg. I need more wood for that. But my extra top pieces won’t be wasted – the stretchers are going to be made from those pieces.

After making all the cuts, I again carefully examined the approximately 24 pieces that could be used for the top. I picked the 18 best, and laid them out as I want them ordered in the final product.

After internally debating the square-vs-round bench dog hole issue some more, I finally decided that I’m going to use round holes. All said and done, I feel they are more versatile in that they allow you more options of dogs and other accessories. I took the strip of wood from the top that I wanted the row of dog holes in, and I used my drill press and a 3/4” forstner bit to drill holes 4” on center.

I didn’t think about this beforehand, but my pieces for the top are over 4” high, and I need the dog holes to go all the way through. It wasn’t until I took out my forstner bit last week that I realized its length and that I’ll only be able to drill about 3” deep. I tried using a 3/4” spade bit (on a test piece) to finish the hole depth. But my spade bit is actually slightly larger in diameter than the forstner bit. As such, I couldn’t get it inside my existing forstner holes. So I went online and ordered a forstner extension bit. It was only $8, and arrived within a few days from MLCS. Not bad. Gotta love the Internet. But anyway, I drilled all the holes as deep as I could with the forstner bit, and left them at that for the time being. I planned on just finishing them later after the extension arrived.

Next step was to start gluing up the top. I decided I’d first glue up the three strips that would be the rows that make up the wagon vise. I jointed and planed those strips, and then set out to glue. I bought a gallon of Titebond Extend, and was ready to make a mess. I laid out the first strip, poured a line of glue down the center of whole piece, and then used a scrap piece of wood to spread it, making sure I covered the ENTIRE surface of the board.

I layered together all the strips, and clamped it with Bessey K-bodies about every eight inches. There was a ridiculous amount of squeeze out, but at least I’m confident that everything is sufficiently glued.

After the first glue up was done and clamped, It felt good to start to see some progress on the bench. It was only a small amount of progress, but it was a big moral victory. Since I’m doing a wagon vise, I only drilled dog holes in the part that will be the stationary section of the bench. The undrilled section will later be cut off to make the wagon block and the end block.

Since I only have eight K-body clamps (and some Irwin quick grips and some wooden screw vises, but I wouldn’t want to use either of those on a glue up this big or important) I can only do one glue up at a time. And since I want each glue up to be less than 6” wide so I can run it through the jointer when its done, I need to do multiple glue ups for the top, and then glue up those glue ups… I actually spent some time each night during the last week doing a glue up. At about 9 or 9:30, after the kids were asleep, the garbage was taken out, etc., I’d joint, plane, glue, clamp and then go to bed. I’ve since gotten all the smaller sections of the top glued up. After planning further, I realized the wagon vise is going to be trickier than I originally thought. Because of the length of the Lie-Nielsen Scandinavian vise screw I bought, and the length of the wagon vise opening I’m going to have, I physically won’t be able to put the screw in after the top is finished. So I’m actually going to have to build the vise into the bench during the laminating process. This means that once the top is done, the vise screw won’t be able to come out without cutting the top apart. Anyway, the next blog entry will be dedicated just to the wagon vise, so I’ll talk about that more next time. For now, it is time to soak in the satisfaction of having actually made some progress on this project.

- Andy

Unfortunately, I don’t have a pick-up truck. My wife and I have a mid-sized SUV and a Jeep Wrangler. Neither is safely able to bring home 12 foot lengths of anything. So I debated whether I should A) rent a truck from the store or B) examine each board at the store, layout a cut line, have it rough cut there and then put the pieces in our car. I didn’t want to spend hours at Home Depot carefully going over every board to try to strategically lay out a cut around all the knots and imperfections. I’m sort of anal about things, so I figured I’d spend forever combing over each board (which is why it is something I’d rather do at home, instead of in the aisle at the store). Therefore, I decided to go with option A. I’ve rented a truck at Home Depot many times before, so I know the drill well at this point.

I have a job that affords me literally no free time during the week. And I have two small kids, a house, errands, etc. that give me very minimal free time on the weekends. My first bit of free time was on Jan 3 – I was off from work, and the kids were in daycare…SCORE! I went to my nearest Home Depot, but their selection of 12’ 2×12s was horrible. They had some respectable looking 16’ lengths, but I didn’t think it would be too safe to put 16 footers on the back of the truck. I then went to Lowes, but their selection was even worse. I was frustrated and angry, so I left. I was defeated and without lumber. Workbench: 1, Andy: 0.

I then went back to Home Depot the next weekend, hoping they had dropped a new bundle of 12 footers down in the depleted bottom rack. But they hadn’t. I was in a time crunch, so I didn’t want to ask them drop a new bundle. Again I left. Again defeated. Again without lumber. Workbench: 2, Andy: 0.

My next bit of free time was this past Monday, MLK day. Again I was off from work, and daycare was open. This means I had another precious free day. I was determined to make sure I used the free time wisely and did not let the day end without me getting the stuff – no excuses. One of the benefits of living in the country’s most densely populated state is that within a 10 mile radius, there are literally at least 12 Home Depots or Lowes. I went to my go-to Home Depot. They still had the same worthless selection of 12 footers down on the rack. So I went to another Home Depot. They had a good selection to choose from, but both of their rental trucks were out. I then went to a third Home Depot. As I drove up, I saw they had two rental trucks in the parking lot – it was looking good so far. But their entire batch of 12 footers looked like it sat out in the rain for a year – no longer looking good. At that point, it was near lunch, and I was hungry and frustrated. I figured the only remedy to both problems was a sandwich. I figured I’d come home, eat lunch, and then go back to the second Home Depot. By that point, I figured at least one of their trucks should be back.

After lunch, I went back to the second Home Depot. I saw both rental trucks in their parking lot. Victory appeared to be within reach this time. Knowing the process for renting a truck, I walked into the rental area with my license, credit card and insurance card in hand. After looking at my insurance card, the guy said they can’t take my insurance! He might as well have kicked me in the balls. I had rented trucks from Home Depot probably 10 times before, most recently this past summer, and I never had any problems. He said it is a new policy. Apparently my particular insurance company doesn’t extend coverage to commercial rentals, and never did. However, up until recently, Home Depot never enforced NOT taking that insurance. So I called my insurer from the Home Depot parking lot. Sure enough, they don’t cover commercial rentals. This means I can’t rent from ANY Home Depot or Lowes…EVER! This was not good. So I left. Once again defeated. Once again woodless. Workbench: 3, Andy: 0. Things were not going as I had planned.

After going home and wallowing for a while, I realized that if I don’t get the stuff that day, I likely never would. So I decided I had no option but to spend the time carefully examining each board at the store, marking a rough cut, and having them cut it. Again, I always knew this was an option, but I figured it would take me hours of analyzing each board – something I would have rather done at home instead of in the aisle at Home Depot – before cutting them down.

After feeling dejected for a while, I man’d up and went back to the second Home Depot (the one with the good selection of stuff). The process ended up not being as bad or long as I thought. I took about 30 minutes to cull through their stack of 12’ 2×12s to pick the eight best, and then another 30 minutes to examine and mark a rough cut for each board. Add another 20 minutes to actually buy the wood, then have the guy cross cut each piece, and it was under an hour and a half all said and done. Much better than I expected. So $132 and about 90 minutes later, I loaded the stuff into the back of our car, and home I went. I should mention that I had to take out one of the two car seats to make room. I absolutely despise putting in and taking out car seats. Call me lazy, but that was another reason I wanted to rent a truck instead – I friggin’ hate moving car seats. I know, you probably think this whole car seat side story is a waste of words as far as this blog is concerned. But my loathing of having to move car seats is strong enough to warrant a few sentences here in my opinion. Sorry.

The wood was already kiln dried, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to stack it and let it acclimate and dry out a little more. And besides, I’m not going to have time to actually start working on the bench for the next week or two anyway.

So that’s it for now. The elusive lumber is finally in my possession. I feel like I’m over a big hump, and now the project should hopefully be enjoyable going forward. I was starting to develop a complex, sort of like the big box store gods did not want me to get my stuff. But in the end, I won. I think…

- Andy

I’ve had various bench-like structures that I’ve used as assembly tables, clamping areas, clutter storage, etc. My current “bench” is basically a large custom cabinet base with a formica top and an integrated Kreg measuring fence built on it that I use for making cuts on my miter saw. But I’ve never had a traditional workbench.

I’ve been woodworking for nearly 10 years now, and I’ve basically been just a power tool guy to this point. I’ve since built-out a full workshop in my 10’ x 24’ one-car garage, and I essentially now have every portable and stationary power tool necessary for a fully-functioning wood shop. However, I’ve never gotten into doing much hand work. I have a Lie-Nielsen adjustable mouth low angle block plane that I got four or five years ago, and a I have a cheap block plane from a big box store. I also have some other relatively basic and cheap miscellaneous hand tools, but no other planes. Other than playing around at the Lee Valley exhibit at The Woodworking Shows each year, I’ve never used a bench plane or specialty planes in my work. Part of the reason for me never getting into hand tools and joinery was that when I was building my tool collection, I always found that the additional power tool I wanted would be more valuable to me and my work than a $300+ bench plane. Now I’m at the point where I feel like I’ve come close to mastering power tools and their functions, and I want to start getting into doing more work by hand. So I’m going to start building-out my plane collection now, and will soon have a bench to properly use them all.

I’ve built a lot of built-ins, cabinet-style storage units, and other large and relatively boxy things. But I want to start doing more intricate and skillful pieces, and with nicer materials. After reading through Chris’s book, I realized just how much planes and other hand tools can add value and enjoyment to woodworking. In addition to letting you do certain tasks that you can’t do as easily (or at all) with power tools, I realized how much more fulfilling and satisfying working with hand tools can be. Maybe it is corny, but I feel like I will be more intimately involved with a project if I cut, shape and/or smooth pieces by hand. I think doing more by hand will a) improve my overall skills and abilities and b) most likely provide more enjoyment to the hobby.

So after taking into account all of the valuable information and insight the book has, I thoroughly thought about my own workbench wants and needs. Not just my wants and needs now, but my wants and needs going forward. I’m not saying this will be the last bench I ever build, but I don’t want to find myself down the road regretting my choice of style, size or functionality in this bench.

So I’ll be building a Roubo-style bench, with a single screw face vise, and a wagon vise on the end. I like the idea of a leg vise (like in the book), but I personally feel the hassle of bending over to turn the screw or reset the peg in the parallel guide outweighs the value such a vise provides…at least for me and my occasionally half-baked opinions. For my hobbyist needs, I feel a traditional single screw face vise with a large jaw pad (4” high by about 12” wide) will do me well. Due to size constraints in my shop, I’m limited to a top that is 5’ long. But it will be 2’ wide, and roughly 4” thick. So still plenty of beef. The legs will be approximately 5” square. I’ll be doing drawbored mortise and tenon joinery at all joints. The material is going to be Douglas Fir. The only thing I haven’t already decided on is whether my dog holes will be rectangles or circles. I’m leaning towards rectangles, and making my own wooden dogs. I plan on putting a few 3/4” round holes toward the back of the bench, and in the faces of the legs. These holes will be for holdfasts.

So that’s that. My next post will be about my adventures (more like misadventures) in trying to get the material. I finally got the wood today. I don’t have a firm timeline for this project, but I’m guessing it will take me months, considering my only free time is a small bit here and there on the weekends.

-Andy