Roubo #1: Wherein our protagonist drinks the crazy juice, and decides to use 4/4 lumber.

So brief background is that about a 18 months ago, I bought a load of lumber off ebay. While there, I ended up also buying 350 BF of flatsawn white ash for $100. I figured, even if it ends up being ‘test’ pieces and shop projects, it would still be worth it. Fast forward to recently, and I’ve been planning to build a new bench, and I’ve pretty much decided on a Roubo.

I picked up the lovely Benchcrafted tail/wagon vise, a german bench screw, and some holdfasts.

My local attempts to find SYP failed miserably. Then I considered 8/4 ash. Both places I went to had suboptimal supplies, and by my calculations, I’d end up wasting something like 70% of the raw board footage, and at ~$3.00/bf, thats a lot of change.

Then I considered the 4/4 stock that I had. It was cut pretty generously…. A couple of beers later, it seemed like a real genius idea.

Aside from picking through some of the ash for the weird grain patterns, and saving for later..

I did manage to grab the stock closest to 5” and get it cut to a workable size, jointed and planed.

I’ve got all my leg stock cut and glued up, and it only took me 5 layers to get a hair shy of 5” square legs. They’re about 33” long, to leave some extra room for trimming later.

I think this is doable.

Lets see if I can survive the top though!