Roubo #15: Hey, want to see a BENCH?

After much effort, and many tantalizaing blog posts, I finally got the bench assembled. I laid out the base, levelled it off (very little shimming was needed, just one leg about 1/32), and moved the top over to it from its temporary home on top of my cabinet saw.

I put in the drawbore pins, unglued, to make it easier to move it out of my crazy basement in the future. Then, I hauled out all of the supporting accessories, and went to work on the finishing.

I fit the leg vise, made the sliding deadman, and fine tuned everything.

Yours truly, posing with a NEARLY completed project. I still need to finish the other end cap, finish up the sliding deadman, and finish out the holdfast holes (you can see them pre-bored out to 3/8s, I’m going to plunge them out with a router bit and a jig to ensure I get them perfectly perpendicular to the top.

I also started out on the rails that will support the bottom shelf under the bench. I intend to store all my planes and saws down there. The goal is to have all of my hand tools and hand tool accessories/jigs within a few footsteps of my workbench.

I had some indirect light in these photos, so they ended up overexposed. I’ll fiddle with the lighting and get some better pictures in the future.

I also have some high res photos on my website, (including a couple that I didn’t bother posting) if anybody mid-build is interested.