Ok, on with the build. I haven’t taken as many photo’s with this most recent progress because a lot of it is redundant work. Cutting tennons, drilling out and chopping mortises, fitting parts together… there is only so much of that that I can show, without putting the readers of this blog to sleep. I can tell you this however, I find myself getting much better at chopping out the mortises by hand, and enjoying it! I still start the large mortises with a forstner bit, but I find myself using my chisel and mallet much more, which for me, is the whole point of building this bench like I am. I’m also already using the bench for much of the work, as it is, upside down. Even sitting on these sawhorses, the bench is solid and a great surface to pound away on the chisels.

So I cut and installed the rear lower rail. The distance between the legs is just shy of 50”, and the rail is 1 3/4×3 1/8”. It is solid birch, as is the front lower rail that the sliding deadman (hehe) will slide along. An interesting note on installing this rail… without some adjustment the tennon interferes with the side panels. So what I had to do was cut a notch into the inner side of each tennon. Then, with the rail in place, the side panels can slide into it, which essentially locks the rail into place as well. The same is true for the front rail, which makes the whole assembly interlocking and VERY sturdy. Here it is installed.

And with the hole for the drawbore pin drilled. For those who may not be familiar with how to properly drawbore a mortise and tennon joint, there is plenty of instruction on the matter already out there. I won’t regurgitate it, you can look it up yourself if it interests you further.

Here is a little tip that may help you out. Most of my tennons, mortises and drilling locations are marked with a marking gauge. Often, because I’m not too concerned in my work with making thicknesses exact (like 3/4” or 1 1/2” for example), the locations are odd measurements, carefully calculated to line things up. In order to set the marking gauge exactly to the odd measurements, I use this simple trick. Set the measurement I need on the digital caliper and lock it in place, in this case, it’s 0.3665 inches. Use the end of the digital caliper to set the depth of the marking gauge, like so. And then your marks are exactly where you want them.

Hope that helps you out. It’s probably something that lots of you already do, but thought I’d share it anyway. :D

So my next step was to install the front rail. Again I cut the tennons, a little trickier on the odd shaped rail, but got it nice and solid.

I got that rail installed too, but I guess I didnt take a picture of it. It was particularly improtant to line this lower rail up with the groove in the underside of the bench top, so that the sliding deadman (hehe) won’t bind as it moves.

With that done, I decided to start working on the “chop” for the leg vise, the part that moves and does the clamping. I wanted a nice thick chop, and I wanted to use up some lumber I had on hand, but still make it look nice. Other than some birds eye, I didn’t have any maple on hand wide enough to make the chop (needed 9” width), but I did have some nice birch and walnut. So I decided to glue that up and make the chop a nice lamination. Here are the three boards planed flat and ready to glue up.

And here it is after glue up, jointing and ripping to width.

Now a plain old rectangular chop is kinda boring, and this is not a boring bench. So I brought out the taper jig and cut a taper on each edge, starting at about 9 1/2” down, which is also where the vise screw will be located, so it’s a good place for a transition. The top of the chop remains 8 5/8” wide, and the bottom is now just over 5 1/2” wide, which is also the width of the leg. See how it all makes sense? After cutting the taper, I set the table saw blade to 45* and cut a bevel half the width of the thickness of the chop, which reveals the walnut center board to show from the front.

Now THATS a chop! What do you guys think?

Thanks for looking, and if you’ve spent the time to read all this, please leave a comment or a question, I enjoy the feedback! Thanks!

The posts were thick enough to get 3 full 1” boards out of them, but not 4. So for these 1” thick panels, I used two bookmatched sets each. Gives it an interesting look I think. Once the panels were glued up, I sanded them flat and cut a rabbet at the bottom to fit in the rails. The legs themselves will act as the stiles.

Here are the rails cut with the groove to accept the panel. I cut the tennon on the ends. On the top rails, I cut another groove that will help hold it to the top with table top clips, one of the few metal components that will be on this bench. I put a nice roundover profile, not only because it looks nice but because less dust / shavings will settle on the lower rail that way.

And here are the matching grooves and mortises on the inside of the legs to accept the panel and rails.

On the bottom of the leg on the right (this is the one that will have the leg vise) you see the large notch I cut to house the lower sliding guide for the vise. We’ll see more about that later.

Here are the side panels assembled with the legs. At this point everything is just dry fit together. I will be gluing and drawboring all the peices together, except skipping the glue where it will cause issues with wood movement of course.

The last thing I did was to cut a bevel on the bottom of each leg, around all four edges. Given it’s heft, this bench won’t be moving much, but when it does, I don’t want to have wood splitting out on the bottom of the legs…. This prevents that, and gives it a nice visual touch too.

Well thats about all for now. I’d love to hear your comments, questions and critiques!
See ya next time!!

Well I will continue at any rate, as I’m sure somebody who cares will run across this someday. ;)

I decided after dry fitting the legs into their mortises to continue working on the underside while the top was upside down. This bench will have a sliding deadman for additional work support along the front length of the bench. This is a feature that I knew I wanted in my bench as soon as I saw one and figured out what it was for. So I decided to route the groove in the underside of the top that will house the deadman. I set it back from the front edge 3/4” and made it a hair over 3/4” wide. It extends from inside of leg to inside of leg.

On the bottom side, the deadman will slide along a convex shaped track. It’s actually bevelled at 45* on each side. Chris Schwartz recommends this method in his book because a groove would just collect dust and shavings and make it difficult to slide the deadman. I used a large piece of birch to make this lower front stretcher, with the integrated slide. It’s fairly hefty to match the bench and have good support. It will be mortised into each leg.

With those two things done, I decided to next move on to the large sliding dovetails on the ends of the top. The left side of the bench will be just a decorative endcap, and the right side will also be the rear jaw of the twin screw vise. This would be my first attempt ever at a sliding dovetail!

To make this dovetail, I considered several modus operendi. But ultimately settled on buying the largest dovetail bit I could find, and tackling it with the router. I stood the bench top up on end, supporting it against my table saw and clamping it to the fence which I positioned right at the end and locked in place. It wasn’t going anywhere. I clamped one of the Fir timbers that I had squared up to the opposite edge from the one I’d be working on, for extra support. Then, it was just a simple matter of taking light passes to hog away the material. As a quick tip, I actually started on my exit side of the cut, essentially doing a climb cut for the first 2 inches or so. Then I started from the proper end and routed the width of the top. This way, I avoided any tearout coming out of the cut. Did I mention that I’ve never done a sliding dovetail before??

I was very happy with how smooth the cut was!

Here is the newly made ends for the bench top. It took about 2 hours to route all four cuts.

The next step, which I tackled today, was to make the matching caps for the ends. I started with lumber slightly over size and the used the dado blade on the table saw to hog out the bulk of the material. I then went to the router table and used the same router bit to route the mating part of the large sliding dovetail. Keep in mind, this is the first time I’ve EVER done a sliding dovetail!!

Alright, so far so good! I get what I think will be a nice fit, according to careful measurements with my digital calipers. I rub some paste wax on the length of the wood that will be mated. but not before drilling some holes to pin the dowels through. I extend the holes (3/4” long hole for a 3/8” dowel) to allow for movement. This of course is a crutial step!

And in case the fit is still a bit on the tight side, I have a coercion tool , courtesy of Garant. :)

Well the fit was tight, and I did have to coerce the end cap into place…. hammer hammer hammer… DOH!!!

Ummm… ya. Did I mention that this was my VERY FIRST atempt at a sliding dovetail??

Well I happen to have an extra piece of walnut the right size. So I redo the end cap. This time I made the end 3” or so fit tight, and routed the middle section out a bit wider. This way I figured that it would slide on easier but still look tight at the ends. It worked much better on my second attempt, and here is what I ended up with. keep in mind it still has to be planed flush with the top. But I’m pretty happy with it!!

Well that where I’m leaving off. I’d like to hear some feedback from anyone looking at or following my blog as to how you think it’s going, comments, critiques, questions, heck I’ll even take verbal barrages of hatred and blasphemy if it means a comment or two… hahaha!!

Thanks for looking!

I last left with a freshly glued up top, and a question on what timbers to use for the legs. Well I decided to use the four maple beams I had for the legs. Even though two of them contain the pith, and some rather large cracks, I would rather have that then 3 different types of wood that looked only slightly better, so maple it is.

After the top was glued up, I trimmed the ends off to make them flat, square and even. I marked carefully to ensure I cut in the same spot from the top and the bottom. A misalignment here would mean doing it over again and loosing length to my benchtop. I set up a straightedge and used my circular saw for this task, taking several passes from each side to reach the desired depth.

Here is what it looks like after cutting all the way through. Some burning and some unevenness, but nothing I can’t live with.

I used my skew angle block plane to clean up the ends. Planing the end grain of maple and walnut is a task and a half. I made sure that the ends remained square to the top as well.

With that task done it was on to planing the top completely flat and even. Doing the sections with the planer before glue up certainly made things easier, butthere were still a few high spots to plane down and make everything nice and even. I used my newly aquired Stanley SW #7c jointer plane for this task.

As you can see I am planing at a skew across the grain. This minimizes tearout on the changing grain direction of the maple and leaves a smoother finish.

That was a ton of work! But a nice result, some final smoothing once the top is assembled to the base and it will be ready for a finish. I decided to see how much this top weighed. I brought the bathroom scale down to the shop and then muscled the top onto it…

139 lbs!

The next task was to cut the legs to final length, and then cut the integrated tennons into the tops of them. I cut them completely on the table saw, first making the cross cuts with the panel sled. I have yet to make myslef a proper crosscut sled, so this is what I use for now.

I then used the tennoning jig to cut the cheeks.

You can see in that second pic that the width of the leg is more than the capacity of the built in clamp on the tennoning jig, so I had to clamp it seperatly. Worked like a charm though and with a quick touch up with a shoulder plane I had very nice square tennons.

Well every good tennon deserves a nice mortise, so on to that task.
I marked out their locations carefully. I had to be extra careful to decide which leg went in which position, mark it, and then measure the tennon size. Why you ask? Well because each leg and each tennon is a slightly different size. I decided instead of making the legs all the same size, which would have amounted to the dimensions of the smallest timber, to leave them all as big as possible after cleaning up all faces. The largest leg then got positioned front left, where the leg vise will be. So accordingly, the mortises were all slightly different in sizes and marking them out was a careful task. Once marked, I used a forstner bit and a square piece of plywood (usually used for carcass glue ups) to make my mortise holes.

Once roughed out with the mortise bit and drill, I cleaned them up with chisel and mallet. Those are my lovely Ashley Isles chisels that my wife bought me for Christmas a few years back, and the mallet is one of two I made a while ago as well (see my projects page), my father has the other. And yes, I do beat on those chisels. The bubinga handles can take it.

With all four mortises and tennons done, it was time to test fit the legs in place. They all fit perfectly!!
Well, perfect enough for me anyway.

I have more done already… but thats enough for one blog post. More to come soon…. Stay tuned!!

After one face and one edge is treated, it’s on to the planer where the other face is treated. Then, off to the table saw where the other edge is cut parallel to the first, and to the desired thickness, in this case, just a hair over 3” (3.10” to be exact). The boards are then ready for glue up.

Because the top is so wide, I decided to glue it up in three more manageable sections first. Each section consists of 5 boards and is approximately 9” wide. At 6’ long, 9” wide and 3” thick, these sections would be hefty by themselves, but still manageable to run thru the planer to clean up the faces again. I used the granite top of my table saw as a flat point of reference for the sections. I used a length of MDF to ensure a long enough surface, and covered that with plastic to prevent glue squeeze out from getting everywhere.

Once I had all three sections glued up, I used the 5 1/4 jack plane to knock off the glue chunks and high spots, to ensure a nice flate side to be down on the planer table.

I again made good use of the roller stands to make sure these heavy pieces were properly supported while running through the planer.

Once the three sections were all planed to the exact same thickness (2.89” was what I ended up with) with perfectly flat face on both sides, it was time to join them together. This glue up was even more important to get even, as misaligning them even slightly would mean a lot of hand planing.

I used some maple boards on top of my saw horses to give a flater surface to work on. Even the table saw wasn’t wide enough for this task. The ends were simple enough to align as I clamp them, so I decided on just a single caul in the middle to ensure the sections were alligned. I like to use duct tape on the cauls, to prevent gluing them to the surface. Glue won’t stick to the duct tape very well, so they are very easy to remove.

The final width of the top is 26 5/8”. A bit shy of my goal to keep it between 27 and 28”, but still a pretty wide top for a bench.

Well thats about it for now… next time I start to hand plane the top with the #7 jointer plane, to get it perfectly flat and ready for use. In the mean time, I want to have you guys help me answer a question.

In choosing the material I have at hand for the legs (see previous blog entries) I am considering using the white oak for the front two legs (only have two of them) and maple for the other two. I could go with all maple legs, but two of the beams have the pith included and some pretty serious cracks in them. I think they are stable now, but don’t really want to use those for the legs at all. My only other option is to use fir for all four legs, as I have enough of that, But I was kinda thinking I would stick with hard woods for the heft and stability. But another thing to consider is that material will be clamped against the front left leg with the leg vise, so maybe a softer wood is a better choice there?
So, which woods would you use for the legs, of my options? And is using a softer wood for the clamping surfaces a good idea? If thats the case, should I use fir for the end vise faces as well?

Thanks for looking, commenting, and answering my questions!

Well tonight I managed a wee bit of shop time. Between my 4 hours of sleep last night, being up at 4:15 am, and dealing with a two year old and a four year old that don’t play nearly as nice together as maple and walnut do, it wasn’t much shop time. But it was enough to take all the rough lumber for the top and cut it to just over 3” widths. The boards were all over 6” in width to start. And while I can run boards wider than 6” on my 6” General jointer, it takes a lot of extra work and jigs to set up. So I figured I’d rip all the boards to just over 3” wide first, then they are much easier to handle on the jointer to get the nice square faces and edges I need.

So how does one tackle this task? Well, normally I do most of my ripping on the table saw. But with rough boards that haven’t been dressed at all, this is a dangerous task. You run the risk of binding the blade, burning the wood, and the possibility of kickback, even with a riving knife in place. No, this task is much better suited to the bandsaw. I installed a 5/8” wide carbide tipped band, and set up a couple of support stands to help me with the long boards. Then, it was a simple matter of setting the bandsaw fence about 3 1/4” from the blade, and start ripping. With the bandsaw, and only 5/8” of blade in contact with the wood at any time, it matters far less that the boards may not have a flat face or edge to reference off the table or fence. As long as it’s not too twisted and warped, you’ll be just fine.

This will now allow me to run the boards over the jointer, and then through the planer, to get my nice flat surfaces ready for glue up. I’m not there yet though. For now, I just wanted to orient the boards how they will be glued up, to get a feel for the look of the top. Let me know what you think! The walnut boards will be where the dog holes lie. keep in mind, these boards have not been dressed at all yet! I just used two clamps to pull the ends together to take out some of the gaps for the sake of a picture.

The nominal width of the top right now is just over 29”. That’s a very wide top! But remember these boards need to be flattened still. I’m hoping to end up with a top that is between 27” and 28” wide when I’m done.

Thanks again for looking, and please take the time to comment! I really appreciate lots of input! Thanks guys and gals… until next time…

Ah the pith. That very core of the tree, that for some reason, is remarkably unstable in use as lumber. The inclusion of the pith in some of the beams I have obtained all but ruins an otherwise solid thick chunk of wood. It really pithes me off.

All kidding aside. I can probably still make some good use out of these beams, even the ones with the pith in them, with some thought into my cuts.

I was contacted last week by an old woodworking acquaintance, Maxwell. He told me he saw my blog and he had some more beams for me that I might be able to use for my bench. I went and saw him and had a great visit. We chatted for about an hour about life, tools and wood. A great conversation by my measure. And then he gave me the wood, for free! Can’t beat a visit like that. Thanks again Max! I really appreciate it.

So here is what I got from him:

5 Fir beams

4 hardwood beams

I started by cutting off an end slice of each beam, to see what kind of wood I was working with. I was quite surprised at the width of the growth rings on the fir!

The hardwood beams turned out to be two maple, a birch, and the last one (first one in the pic) is either oak or ash, I’m not 100% sure.

Before I mill lumber, especially rough old beams like this, I am careful to go aver them with a metal detector.

Fortunately in all this wood, I only found one nail. There were some rusted remnants of washers in some of the larger holes you see, but those were either cut off completely, or are deep enough that they won’t cause a problem with initial jointing.

One of the longer maple beams was so badly twisted, that it wasn’t even worth running over the jointer. It’s such a badly warped beam because it is the pith of the tree. I guess it’s pretty common to include the pith in rough grade beams like this, but it won’t be included in my bench. So here is what I have after running one face and one edge over the jointer.

So that, plus the beams I showed in my last blog entry, will most likely all be used in some form or the other on this bench. I will be using hardwood for the legs for sure, most likely the oak, and maybe one or two of the maple. I’m gonna pick the best ones for the legs. The rest will likely be cut up for stretchers and other parts of this bench.

For the top, I bought some 10’ maple boards, in 8/4 by 6.5” plus widths. They cost me $3.85/bft. That’s not a bad price around here. The walnut boards you see here I had bought off a guy some time ago. I got those, and a bunch of other maple, oak, and pine, for $200. At the time I figured it to be about $1000 worth of lumber I got. Anyway, the walnut will also be use in the bench top.

And here it all is together!

I also have plenty of other wood on hand on my lumber rack. Some of it will also be used for parts on this bench. For example the 7.5” wide 8/4 oak board seen here may be used (in part) for the leg vise chop and/or sliding deadman. Essentially, I will decide what lumber to use for what parts, as I build them. The goal will be to use up as much of what I already have on hand first, before having to buy more. But, in some instances, I already know I will have to buy a few more boards, like some more 8/4 walnut for the twin screw end vise parts.

Well that’s about all I’ve got for you for now, thanks for looking and following along with me. And I apologize for the delays between blogs. Work and family life still take precedence, but I promise, this thing will progress!

Oh, and one more thing… in case your wondering what the heck this thing is going to look like: here is my fancy high tech, highly detailed plans and drawings for this bench. This is ALL I’ll be working off of. Hopefully my work bench isn’t as lop-sided as my drawing is!! Hahaha!!

I didn’t know when I bought these what kind of wood they were, but I did know that by the weight and heft of them, they were hardwood. Once I cut the rough ends off, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the beams is red oak, and the other is hard maple.

Here’s what they looked like before and after jointing.

As you can see, these things are pretty rough, even when cleaned up. They have checks, splits and cracks in them. They have nail holes, but fortunately no nails. I was careful to take my metal detector over them before doing anything to them.
They are roughly 5 1/2” x 3 1/2” at this stage. I think if I get rid of most of the checking, I can save 5” x 3” legs. That may be ok, but here is what I’m considering. Laminating 1/4” walnut on all four sides of each leg. This will make it look MUCH nicer IMO, and give me some thickness back. But I haven’t decided for sure on this yet and would love to hear your thoughts on this…

Ryan

Unfortunately, I don;t have a fancy google sketchup picture to show you of what I want my bench to look like. I don’t even have a hand drawn sketch of all my final ideas. Just some really rough sketches of a design that I have since changed. No, most of this project is in my head. But don’t worry, I know how to access it any time I want, which lately has been often. And thats why it is finally time to get started on this thing.

I will show you a ton of pictures, of that I promise. But for now, if you’ll bear with me, I’m gonna go off the top of my head to describe to you some of the features my bench will have. As this blog progresses, I will discuss in more detail why i chose some of the features I did.

Size:
This bench is truely going to be built to suit me, and I honestly believe in doing it this way because using these dimensions just works. The bench will be as long as I am tall, 6’0 (minus a hair). This also happens to be a persons reach from fingertip to finger tip with arms straight out. The bench will be as wide as my arm is long, 28” from armpit to fingertip with my arm straight out. Why build a bench that I can’t reach across? And this bench will be as high as my table saw…. for no other reason than thats the height that I’ve found to be very comfortable to work at for pretty much everything over the past few years. Thats 35”, and if I go off the body measurements, thats as long as my… oh nevermind. :D

Materials:
I decided some time ago that I’m going to make this bench look as nice as I can, for as reasonable a cost as I can. I want solid hardwoods, and I want some nice contrasting woods. I decided on maple and walnut, mostly. I say mostly because while I bought the maple exclusively for this bench top, I also have some other woods that I’ve gathered over the last few years that I told my wife would be used on the work bench. So I kinda have to use them, but thats ok, cause some of it is nice. Oak will definitely be present, but not in the top. The top will be just maple and walnut, 3” thick.

Design and holdfasts:

I won’t get too much into all the design elements yet, but for a rough idea, picture a French Roubo style bench, with the leg vise, and then add a Veritas Twin Screw Vise to the right side instead of a tail vise. Picture two rows of dog holes in the top, a sliding deadman on the front, and a bank of drawers underneath. On the back side, there will be space to hang my clamps, a place to hang a few hand saws on one side, and a few other storage considerations for bench accessories such as dogs and hold downs. The drawers on the right will house my commonly used bench tools: chisels (3 sets), hand planes, marking and measuring tools, ect. The drawers on the left will be much bigger and deeper, and will be a place to store smaller clamps, small exotic wood offcuts, and maybe some other goodies.

Well, thats all I’m gonna give ya in my first (ever!) blog entry. Stay tuned for my next one, in which I’ll show you the beat up old barn beams that I’m gonna use for legs on this beast. Thanks for looking, and please let me know what you think and as always, feel free to ask me questions!

Ryan