I’d like to share some of the challenged I faced and how I overcame them.

Challenge One: The top

All the oak I was given came rough sawn in seven to eight foot lengths any where from 9 to 14 inches wide. I started by ripping the pieces into 3” wide sections on the table saw with a thin kerf ripping blade. I thought I would gain some cutting speed with the thin kerf blade but when one of those boards started twisting and binding in the cut I think the thinner blade deflected more. It is a bit hard to whip up a riving knife for a blade that thin, so I ended up needing to put in an occasional wedge on the outfeed side of the cut (with the saw stopped of course.) I am not sure how safe that was but it worked. Ideally a Band Saw should have been used to do this.

Another challenge was face and edge jointing about a dozen 7ft+ boards on a 6” jointer. I thank God for the wisdom to have changed the knives before I started this project. You get to know your jointer very well after the 4th or 5th board. I think I have mastered that machine now. Milling the boards and ripping them to final width was pretty strait forward. Here is where a thin kerf blade was handy and I managed to get boards finished to 2-3/4.

Next I glued up the top in three sections using cauls, clamps, wax paper, gorilla urethane glue, and lots of prayer. I originally planned on pinning everything together with dowels and had enough clamps to glue up all three sections simultaneously. I changed my game plan only because I could not find the 3/8 bushing for my Stanley doweling jig. I think this worked in my favor but rather than getting all my glue ups done in an hour it took me about six. I did this glue up using the flat cast iron top of my table saw to keep things aligned.

I then ran all my bench top sections through the planer and came to a final width of 2-5/8. Then came the glue up of glue ups. Maneuvering the three large sections together dry fitting all the clamps and cauls. Taking the set up down, adding glue… Then… one of my harbor freight bar clamps had a catastrophic failure when gluing together the sections. I nearly panicked… But I remembered dad’s old pipe clamps behind the furnace and ran across the basement to get them.

When the clamps where off there was only one slight mismatch of about 1/32 over the whole top. Not perfect but nothing a hand plane and sanding could not fix.

Trimming the top to final lenth was a challenge that was easily overcome. I sawed through the top as far as I could with a circular saw, then finished the cut with a handsaw. I then clamped on a strait edge and used a router to cut as much off smooth as I could. Flipped the top and used a large flush trim bit to clean the rest.

Challenge Two: The Legs

No photos here but I will say cutting dadoes in PSL is like shooting hundreds of toothpicks at yourself. I switched over to wearing a face shield very fast. The LVL on the other hand was great to work with. Just like using heavy duty plywood. As a matter of fact I made myself some winding sticks from left over LVL.

Challenge Three: Leg Vise

Remember “If it does not fit get a bigger hammer” only works if you don’t break the piece you are fitting. In my case the mortise for the parallel guide had a slight taper to it. I did not dry fit the parallel guide more than a half inch deep… Add hide glue… panic and grab a hammer… Safe to say I broke the piece off and went over to find another piece of stock to make it from. In the end the wedged tenon is so tight I didn’t even use any hide glue.

Challenge Four: Moving

After painting and reassembly PLEASE warn the friend helping you turn the bench over that it is VERY heavy… The first time I flipped it my brother helped and he was the guy moving the top around with me. He was not at home when finished the back side of the top and put the legs back on so I called the friend who gave me the wood. He did not have a good grip and we dropped the bench. No one was injured but it has its first ding of honor in the corner of the end cap.

So here it is. The finished bench!

I milled some PSL 4 square and laminated two pieces together to make legs that are 4-7/8 X 3. I am not going to cut them to final length until I know for sure the final thickness of the top but they should end up around 34-1/2 inches. I did mill up the pieces for the short stretchers out of LVL. First experience with it and it milled up just fine no issues. I followed the advice my friend who gave me the lumber had; and that was to take a cut deep enough to cut through the glue on the face. I also cut a small piece of birch for the parallel guide of the leg vise.

Now bellow are some photos of the the milled and cut pieces and the wonderful pile of wood that will be the rest of the bench.

Dave M

Take care all Dave M

My first stop was my local Sears as it is only 7 minutes from my house. They had the Footprint brand model but all the boxes looked like they had fallen from the truck, and to be honest I thought (wrongly so) that the fit and finish could have been better. The sears craftsman model looked OK in it’s blow molded box but I did not like the fact it was “Assembled in Mexico with foreign components.” but the 19.95 price tag not bad.

I go out of my way to buy American first, Canadian second, European third so I went to the local woodcraft store to see what they had. They had the very nice Lie-Nielson but the over hundred dollar price tag was a bit much for a block plane (I am my father’s son) the Stanley Sweet Heart series of planes had two nice block planes, but alas still a lot of money for a block plane.

Not inside the locked cabinet were the Gröz planes. Despite their German name are made in India and the quality looked about the same as the footprint or sears plane. It was priced around $30. Next to it though was a Stanley 60-1/2 in it’s blow molded plastic box for $45. Unlike the footprint or Gröz plane I could not open up the package and look at it closely but i figured it was a Stanley and since it cost $15-$25 more it must be better….

I was wrong… I somehow assumed it was American made. I mean it is an American company. But when opening the box I noticed it had the same “Assembled in Mexico with foreign components” label the Sears plane did… Actually now that I think about it the packages looked an awful lot alike. I should have returned it right there, but I wanted to tune it up. I still hoped for a redeeming moment.

The grinding job on the sole of the plane was miserable. I am a tool and die maker by trade so I can speak with some knowledge here. I still thought it would be flattish. I put some emery paper down on an old surface plate I use for sharpening and started lapping the sole. And lapping the sole…. And 45 minutes later… Still working on a low spot… OK I gave up… It was flat enough. If i ever want it perfect I’ll just bring it to my friend’s shop and trade some beers for 20 minutes alone with his surface grinder. I could get a hell of a better finish on it also.

So what’s my point here? Well I have a few. First, they really don’t make them like they used to. All my other planes (aside from a Record rabbit plane) are prewar and the fit and finish on them are hundreds of times better. Secondly never assume where something is made. Third and my main point is this: You get what you pay for to a point. A Lie-Nielson or Stanley Sweetheart would have been a much better plane on the high end, but a Groz or Sears plane would have been just as good as my new Stanley, and I am reasonably sure that sears plane is a Stanley.

I think I’ll be willing to jump into the Lie-Nelson price range in the future as I know most hand tools it will outlast me… Though maybe I’ll start saving for that really nice Veritas Block Plane i saw in a magazine…

Take care every one and happy sawdust making.

Well where do I start? I am coming back to woodworking as a serious hobby after a short hiatus. I had a “Man Vs. Saw” experience a few years ago. I did keep all my fingers but was injured enough to have some nerve damage. As a result enjoying work with a table saw was a bit hard to do. I kept doing home projects but I was more of a DYI’er than a woodworker for those years. Then a sad experience brought me back to woodworking.

My father was my first “shop teacher” he was the son of Polish immigrants and had me very late in life (He was 60 when i was born… Yes 60.) He was trained as a cabinet maker but when World War Two broke out it interrupted that career and when he returned from the army he ended up a gunsmith at one of New England’s many fine firearm manufacturers. But woodworking became his thing to do on a evening or weekend.

My much older brother had no real interest in anything mechanical so to his delight his very young son became his shop buddy. He taught me how to use a smoothing plane, brace and bit, use a hand saw, and even joint a board by hand. From a very early age allowing me to use all his hand tools under his supervision, and even at 8 or 9 years old i’d sneak into his workshop and work on some of my own projects.

When his health started to fail in my late teens. I took over run of the shop, and began working alone bought some tools of my own, updated the antique of a table saw to a more modern one. Then one night, when I knew I was too tired to be working, I nearly cut my thumb off on it. Luckily I went straight into it, rather than across it. A trip to the ER, seeing a hand surgeon, a few months of healing, and I was fine physically. Every time I turned that saw on, after that night, I was gripped with a fear. Not the respect for the tool fear that one needs, but an irrational one that if anything made it unsafe to use. As a result it was probably only turned on 5 or 6 times in 2 years and very little real woodworking got done.

Sadly my father became very ill, at 89 his time was running out. My mother and I, along with some wonderful hospice nurses, took it upon ourselves to keep him at home and not put him in a nursing home. I started spending a lot of time in that old little used workshop. Then one night started sharpening all his chisels, then planes, then ruined a saw or two trying to sharpen it. When he entered his last weeks I stumbled upon a used 6inch jointer and 14inch bandsaw and crammed it down there. I rushed up to tell my father about the finds and he was thrilled, those where the 2 machines he always talked about getting. We talked shop for over an hour before he fell asleep. I did not know it at the time but it would be our last conversation. He suffered another stroke the next day and only lived another week.

Since his passing I have become a woodworker again. I am working on projects, trying to relearn the skills I have forgotten, as well as learn new ones; such as hand cutting dovetails. My fear of the table saw has turned into a very healthy respect and I want to build that jointer’s workbench my father and I talked about building many years ago.