First I thought the problem was that the new chop was bigger and heavier. I thought the chop was riding on the garters or on the inside of the holes in the chop. I thought I needed something smoother for the screws to ride on. I recently came across a blog by Jameel Abraham. He’s a luthier and has made the most beautiful Roubo-style workbench. He used some Ultra High Molecular Weight (UHMW) Polyethyene on his vise, to make it operate smoother. If you haven’t seen his blog, you should check it out.

I ordered up a couple pieces of UHMW material, from McMaster-Carr. I order “sleeves” to go into the holes I had already bored through the chop. I was lucky, they had the exact size I needed.

After inserting the sleeves into the holes, I gave it try. Wow, it never felt so smooth! Although, by using the sleeves I eliminated any play the screws had through the chop. So I lost the ability to skew or rack the vise if I wanted. I really didn’t care too much about that, because it moved so smoothly now. Although, my excitement was short lived.

I pulled the chop off one last time and attached the garters. After reinstalling the chop, it was back to it’s old self again! I scratched my head, the only thing I did was add the garters. Off came the chop again! The garters had plenty of room, and weren’t catching on anything. Back on went the chop and sure enough, it was catching and binding still. So I thought the garters must be pinching the screws somehow. I loosened the screws on the garters and ta-da, smooth operating vise again! My conclusion: I recessed the garters into the chop. I think the recess I cut with my power router isn’t flat. I tell you, you can’t trust power tools! I ran out of time on Sunday to fix the problem. I plan to use my Veritas Router Plane to clean up the bottom of the recess the next time I’m in the shop. I think I could also remove the UHMW sleeves if I wanted to, but it moves so smoothly with them. I think I will leave them in for now. I also plan to dress up the garters, but that can wait a little while.

Here are some final pictures of the bench. I also added a shelf between the stretchers. It doesn’t have a finish on it yet, so it kind of stands out right now. Now I’m off to a new project!

I used a regular hole saw on my drill press to cut the holes. It was slow going through the hard oak, but I made it through.

Next I wanted to dress up and round over the ends of the chop. I layout a small reveal and a round over on the front edges.

To cut the shoulder of the reveal, I used my table saw set to about 1/8” deep.

To cut the round over, I used my band saw. It worked pretty well.

With one of my new Gramercy rasps and some sandpaper, the round over cleaned up really nice. The Gramercy rasps work really well, they cut fast and clean. My previous experience with rasps had been with old or cheap brands. They produced surfaces that were rough and had a lot of tearing. It was a pleasure working these rasps and seeing how a rasp should work.

I also wanted to dress up, what I have been calling the washers.

I used a similar layout as I did with the chop, but I used a two shoulders. I used the table saw and band saw to rough these out too. They were also cleaned up with a rasp and sandpaper.

The nuts were then attached to backs of the washers. Then attached to the bench.

I did end up using through bolts on the nuts and washers. They are definitely more stable with this set up.

When the screws pass through the nuts, they are about 1” from bottom surface of the bench top. The screws do need some kind of support. You can simply put a flat shim between the bench top and the screws. I decided to add a small grove to my shims. To do this I took a board and cut a bunch of partial circles with a hole saw that matched the diameter of my screws.

Then I cut them into pieces and glued them together to make a piece about 12” long.

After the glue set up, I cut the shims down to size.

I thought the shims should have some kind of lubricant on them. I melted some paraffin wax and brushed it on the shims, to act as my lubricant.

Here’s how they look after they were installed

On a suggestion from Dorje, I decided to recess the garters for the screws. I just cut a template in a scrap piece of MDF. I then ran my router inside the template, with collar attached to it. I used a 3/8” spiral cut bit, that had a flat bottom on it. It produced a nice clean recess.

After that I was pretty much done.

I have just a little bit of tweaking I have to do. The screws aren’t quite as smooth as I’d like them to be. The mockup operated a little smoother. I just need to tweak the alignment just a little. I was also a little tighter when I set up this final version of the vise. The chop can’t be racked as much the mockup did. I don’t see this as an issue, I really don’t have a need for that feature. If I ever feel I need that option, I can take the chop off and open up the holes a little bit.

The last steps for the bench will be, one last light surfacing of the top. Drill a couple holes in the top and maybe the legs, for my holdfasts. Then apply a light finish on the bench. All the exciting stuff is done now ☺.

I based mine on one Keith Rust did for Fine Woodworking “Flatten Boards without a Jointer”. This article is available at finewoodworking.com, but it is only available if you have a subscription. For those of you that have back issues it was in #175.

I plan to make a couple different sizes of planer sleds, this first one will be a “smaller” sled. It’s about 12” wide and about 48” long. It is more than long enough for this project.

I picked up some ½” birch plywood and some 1-by poplar for the sled. You will also need a bungee card and some kind on non-skid material.

First step was to cut the top and bottom to size and to rough out the 1-by stock.

I then laid out where the 1-by ribs would go, on the inside of the bottom face. I came in about 1” on the sides and about 2” from the ends. I cut the ribs to size, but before attaching the ribs I sanded the top and bottom edges. I thought it would be easier to do this before it was assembled.

The mock-up vise I built a while ago really helped. It was able to hold the boards while I sanded them. I can see how this vise is going be very versatile when it is finished.

The next step was to assemble the sled. I glued and screwed the ribs to the bottom.

Then glued and screwed the top to the base.

I made sure the screw heads were countersunk, so that they would not scratch the bed of the planer or be in the way on the top.

The next step was to work on the ribs and wedges that will be adjustable on the top of the sled. In Keith’s article he made his wedges at 15 degrees, and that seemed to work for me. I chose to do most of my cuts on my band saw. I find myself using my band saw more and more lately. I find it safer for many rip cuts, over my table saw. I used the band saw to cut the wedge needed for the jig used to cut the slots in the ribs. These slots were cut on the table saw. The band saw was also used to cut the wedges that slide into the ribs. The band saw whipped these out quickly and safely.

I’m not sure why but I didn’t take any pictures of the little jig I made, for cutting the slots in the ribs. Keith shows his jig in the article.

Once the ribs and wedges were cut I needed to cut the wedges to size.

You can see I cut the wedges oversized. If I left them this big the board would never sit flat.

I simply laid a ruler across the rib and marked where it intersected the wedge. I cut it a little smaller, so that it would be lower than the rib.

I then applied my non-skid material (self-adhesive non-skid stair tread covering) to the tops of the ribs and the bottoms of the wedges.

The bungee cord rides in grove cut into the tops of ribs and is attached with dowels at each end of the sled.

In Keith’s article he used screws to secure the wedges after adjusting. You have to find the right size hole for this work well with your fingers. I played around with it for a while and half of mine worked well and half needed some help. I think I will look for something else that might work a little better.

This assembly only took a few hours, now it was time for a test run.

I placed the board on the sled, and looked at the ribs to see which ones were not touching the board. There were a few places where I had to push the wedges in to support the board.

Not sure if you can it in this picture, but the rib needed to be lifted up a little.

After a few passes through the planer, I had my first face flat. Keith mentions in his article/video that things can settle and move after the first couple of passes through the planer. Mine did move some and I had to adjust the wedges a couple of times. Over all it worked really well. I was a little concerned about the possibility of the board moving when going through the planer, but it stayed in place without any problems.

Now I can flatten some pretty wide boards, even though I only have a 6” jointer. I’ll build some bigger sleds as the need arises, but this size should work well for most of my projects.

I saturate both sides of the blade with Simple Green and let set for about 15 minutes. I then use an old toothbrush to scrub the residue off. I also use a glove, because the teeth are sharp and we want to work safe. Sometime for the tough stuff I use a Scotch Brite pad to scrub a little harder. For the most part it comes clean with the toothbrush. I didn’t show it but I had planned to use some OptiCut-XL on the blade after cleaning it. I’m going to send this blade out to be sharpened, so I didn’t treat the blade this time.

Here are some before pictures.

After a little scrubbing the blade is good as new.

As part of the cleaning I noticed I had lost a tooth along the way. I have a second blade, so I’ll be sending this one out to be sharpened and have the tooth repaired.

I picked up a standard 2×10 “construction” grade stud at my local Lowe’s and started to lay things out. It was good I decided to mock this up, because there were a few things I needed to change. First, you can’t it in the picture but where I placed the holes for the screws, in the chop, are too close to the bottom. When I put the garters on, the garters were right on the bottom edge. I’d like to see a little relief on the bottom, maybe about a ¼”.

Here is a close-up the garter installed around the screw.

The next change will be how I attach what I’m calling the washers. These are the blocks that are attached to bench and the nuts are attached to the back of them.

When Christopher Schwarz attached his blocks to his bench he used through bolts, through the top of his bench. I thought I would try lag bolts up through bottom. I thought I could hide the bolts and not see them from the top. I made sure the lag bolts didn’t go all the way to surface. I wanted to leave some room for future surfacing. I think I went in over a 1.5”, but that wasn’t far enough. After attaching the vise, I played around with it. You can apply so much pressure with these screws, with very little effort, you can pull those nuts right off of the bench! So, I think I’m going to change to bolts, and also dowel the “washers” into the side of the leg to give it even more support.

If you saw Christopher Schwarz design, you might have noticed that he didn’t extend his washers/nuts all of the way to the leg. I thought it might be a good idea to do this. It should give more support to piece that is clamped into the vise. It also allows me to dowel them into the leg, for even more support.

Because the mockup took most of the weekend, I didn’t get very far on the final install. I was able to get the chop glued up and the washers milled up. I had some Oak leftover from another project, so I used that for the chop. I had some Maple leftover that I used for the washers. The next couple of weekends will be busy with family stuff and my own birthday ☺. So, it might be a few weeks before you see the final installation.

The over length is about 25”. The threaded area is 2.25” in diameter. The head or cap is 3.25” in diameter and there are about 3 threads per inch. The head of the screw is made from Ash and the rest of the pieces are Maple.

The handles feel and looked really nice. They are bout 14” long and about 1” in diameter.

I gave the nuts a spin on the screws and they spun freely with enough play to account for any wood movement. I put both nuts on one of the screws and screwed them together. They tightened up really snug to each other and they weren’t going anywhere.

The nuts are about 8” x 4” x 2”.

Finally the screws came with a couple garters that are used to “attach” the screws to the face/chop.

Mike Siemsen over at Green Lake Clock Company was a pleasure to do business with. It did take a while to get the screws but these aren’t your standard items you can buy off the shelf. Mike stayed in constant contact with me during this process. Mike told me he made up some extra sets while he made mine, so the wait shouldn’t be as long if you plan to buy a set these screws. You can find Mike’s contact information over at greenlakeclock.com.

If everything goes well, look for a post early next week on the installation of the face vise.

Well I finally got about to making something. I think it’s a little different than what MyronW talked about but still made out of pipe fittings you can get at any hardware store.

I used black ABS instead of PVC, but I don’t think it really matters. I was just able to find the parts I wanted in ABS. I used 2” parts for this project, but you could use any size that meets your needs.

I bought: a 2” plug, 2” cleanout adapter and a 2” cap.

For the oil applicator I used several layers of an old sheet and packed it with some pieces of sponge.

I used some of the leftover sponge pieces to fill in the bottom of the applicator.

After I got everything packed in, I made sure that the surface of the applicator was proud of the surface of the ABS fitting. I then gave it a good soak with Camellia Oil.

I then gave it a test drive on a new Shoulder Plane I just purchased. It worked really well. The whole applicator is small and easy to hold. I thought the big square “nut” on the plug was going get in the way, but really hasn’t. Now I have nice oil applicator that will always be on or near my bench.

I had these 2 threaded star knobs leftover from another project and they looked like they would work well.

I gave some thought to where I wanted the knobs to be positioned. To give me a little more support while planing, I positioned the right knob (near the front of the bench) so that I would plane up against it. For me that was about 6” in from the front of the bench. I also took into account the radius of the knob. I put them about 1/8” below the surface of the bench. For now that will work, but I didn’t take into account that I will have to flatten the top a few times over it’s life. I think I may have to move knobs down at some point.

I used some threaded inserts in the end of the bench for the knobs.

I then sized the board I was going to as the stop and laid out the slots the threaded knobs would travel in.

I used the drill press to rough out the slots and cleaned them up with a chisel and file. You can just see the holdfasts I used while chiseling out the waste in the slots. I have to say they worked great. I purchase them from Tools For Woodworking/Gramercy. The pair of them were only $30. After I have had a chance to work with them a little more, I’ll post a review. First impressions they are well worth the little amount of money they cost.

After cleaning up the slots it was just a matter of attaching the stop.

The stop can be move anywhere from flush to about 1” above the bench top. Here are a couple pictures of some thin and think stock up against the stop.

I have planed up against the stop and it’s pretty solid. It was very easy to add this planing stop to the bench and it should be a very useful feature.

This next weekend I should have a whole weekend to spend in the shop. I have the tracking number for the large wooden screws and they should be delivered tomorrow ☺. So this coming weekend will be spent adding the large face vise, and if there is time put a finish on the bench.

Next I wanted to see if there was any wind in the top. To check this I used some winding sticks. The winding sticks I have are for much smaller scale projects, so I had to come up with something else. I had seen Christopher Schwarz use some aluminum brackets on one of his DVDs. I pick up a couple straight pieces at Lowe’s and gave it a try. They worked pretty well. I put some blue painters tape one of them, to have some contrast. Here are a couple of pictures where I’m trying to show the wind in the top.

This first picture is looking over the front winding stick to see the back winding stick.

This next picture is moving my line of sight lower until the back winding stick starts to get blocked by the front one.

You can see there is a slight wind in the top. The left rear side is a little higher than the right side. I will take this into account when I’m flattening the top. I did this procedure a couple of times at different points on the top. In my case it was pretty flat, except for the far end of the bench. I’m not sure I can explain in words how to deal with wind. Both Rob Cosman and Christopher Schwarz show strategies for dealing with wind in their DVDs. I’ll see if I can find out which DVDs this was on and post that later.

I then drew pencil lines all over the top to give me a reference as I was flattening. I made a few passes with my #7 at a diagonal across the top. You can see where the high and low spots are, from where the pencil lines have been removed.

It took quite a few passes to get top close to flat. You will see paraffin wax next to my plane. Paraffin is your friend when you have this much planing to do. It really does help.

After I got it to where I thought I was getting close to flat, I wanted to see if I still had wind or had induced more wind into the stop. I got the winding sticks out and checked it again.

I was pretty close, the left side needed just a little more work.

The initial flattening made quite a pile of shavings ☺. I was sweating pretty good by the time I was done.

Planing across the grain leaves a pretty rough surface, so when I was happy with the flatness, I was ready to plane with the grain. Before starting I gave the plane iron a fresh sharpening. I then drew pencil lines on the top again.

You can’t see the lines very well, but they are there. I then planed with the grain and overlapped my passes. It top 4 or 5 passes to clean everything up.

Here is an example of a full-width full-length shaving I was getting on the last couple of passes.

It was pretty cool to see those shavings come out of the plane! I still had some minor tearout after I was done. I don’t have a Smoothing plane yet, so I just hit it with some 220 sandpaper. Overall it came out really nice.

I then moved the bench back into place. I’m working in a garage, so my floor is sloped. I had to find a way to shim the bench and still keep it stable. I choose to use large cedar shakes as my shims.

There is about a ¾” difference over the length of the bench.

Once I got the bench level with the shims. I marked them and pulled them out one leg at a time. I applied a small amount of glue on the shims to try to keep them in place. Not so much glue that I can’t knock them off if I ever need to.

I only have a few things left to do, before it’s finished. Next I think I will add a full-width planing stop on the left end of the bench. I need to attach the twin-screw face vise. I should have my large wooden screws this next week. Then the finial task is to apply a finish. Next weekend will be another short weekend in the shop so I will probably work on the planing stop.

I’m using a standard veneer press screw for the Wagon Vise, nothing special and it’s cheap. The first step was to bore a hole for the thread bracket, that the screw runs through. I have to tell you boring through end-grain is a bit of a pain. I should have bored the hole using my drill press, before I glued the piece in place. Next time I’ll know better. I ended up using a cordless drill and a 1.25” Forstner bit. It took a little time but I finally made it through, with no real tear-out.

Next I had to deal with screwing into end-grain. Generally screws don’t hold very well in end-grain and I wasn’t planning to put an end-cap on the bench. Dorje gave me a good suggestion. Drill a hole through the top and insert a dowel. The threads of the screws will bight into the long-grain of the dowel better than the end-grain of the wood.

I gave it a shot and it worked pretty well. Although it felt like the screws would eventually pull out, even with the dowels. If it wasn’t for the pressure the vise was going to put on the screws, I think this technique would have worked really well. I ended up putting a long bolt through the end and attaching a nut. This worked really well. Then I had another idea. I could have flipped the bracket around and put it on the inside of the wagon opening. That way when I put pressure on the vise it would push the bracket into the wood. Oh well, I can do that if this set up ever gives me any problems.

Next I installed the wagon and flipped the top over. The wagon was little thicker than the top, so I had to mark what needed to be removed.

I took an old plane blade and laid it flat on the bench and scribed around the wagon. I then used a scrub plane to remove the bulk of the wood and finished up with my #5.5. It only took a few minutes to this with hand planes.

The next step was cut a ¾” x ¾” rabbet on the underside of the wagon opening.

I used my router and fence to do this. Sorry for the blurry picture. I only took one picture and it turned out blurry. You might notice a little wave in the rabbet on the right side. I didn’t have the fence tight against the edge and it pulled away, before I realized. Good thing it is on the underside of the bench, where no one will see it. These rabbets will hold a couple of pieces of aluminum track that will hold the wagon and keep it from sagging.

Here are the aluminum pieces. They are 1.25” x 1/8” and about 10.5” long.

I drilled a few holes and counter sunk them, so the heads of the screws will be flush.

I then marked where the aluminum tracks will intersect the wagon. I then ripped a couple of groves with my table saw. The width of my saw blade was just the right size. It gave just enough room for the aluminum tracks, so that it wouldn’t too snug.

Here’s how the tracks fit into the wagon.

By using the rabbets and the aluminum tracks, I can remove the wagon and replace it if it ever gets damaged.

Here’s the wagon vise installed. It moves really smoothly, I couldn’t be happier with how it came out. The aluminum tracks give the wagon a lot support. I thought I was going to have to use wax or something to get it to move smoothly, but it’s fine as it.

I clamped up a board to see how it was going to work.

With very little clamping pressure, the board is held snugly in place. I’m using 2 Veritas Bench Dogs in my bench. I think I’m going to like these bench dogs.

I’m really happy with how the Wagon Vise turned out. I think I made the right choice. It might a couple move weeks before I have a chance to do more work on the bench. I think in one more weekend I could have it finished. I need to install the large face vise and flatten the top, then put a finish on it. Ok, maybe two weekend ☺.

My circular saw couldn’t cut all the way through with one pass. I had to flip the top over and do a second cut. I’ve always had problems getting the two cuts to line up perfectly, but this time I got it dead on. I must be getting better at this.

I didn’t have my base fully assemble yet, because I was trying to keep small and storable until the top was done. With draw bores, it was a quick process to add the large stretches to complete the base. The other nice thing about draw bores, you don’t have to wait for any glue to dry. Once the dowel pins are in, it’s ready to go.
I flipped the base up onto the top and marked the locations of the mortises. No Picture of that.
Once I had the mortises laid out I set up my router with a ¾” spiral cut bit and a fence.

You will see I used a couple clamps as stops, for the router. It took multiple passes to get to full depth, but it went pretty fast.

I then reset the fence and made a second pass to complete the mortise.

Then it was pretty quick work to finish the mortise with a chisel.

After finishing all the mortises it was time to test fit base. I thought I would have a push and pound the base around to get it to fit in all 4 of the mortise, but the base slipped right in. No tweaking needed!

I will use dowels and draw bores to attach the base and top. I would have finished that step today but I didn’t have the dowels ready. Next weekend I hope to have the time to attach the top and base. I think I should also have time to install the wagon vise and make the parts I’ll need for the face vise.
I’m so looking forward to having the bench done, so that I can start some of the other projects that have been waiting for the bench to be finished.

Here are the last couple of sections that will go through the planer. There are two large sections and 1 last board I needed to add to make it a full 24” wide.

I’ve never sent something this wide through my planer before. I found out you need to take an even lighter pass for something this wide. Nothing bad happened but the planer did bog down a little, on my first pass.

Here’s the top sitting in the clamps. I’ll leave it there overnight.

I think I could have used a couple more clamps, for this glue up. With something this wide, I think you need the clamps a little closer together. I think I was able to pull things together, so I think it will be ok.

I think I’m really in the homestretch now. Tomorrow I think I will square up the ends and maybe get the base put together. If I don’t get the top attach this weekend, it will get attached next weekend.

I’m still waiting on the ones I’ve ordered and will post pictures when they show up.

Here is the first glue-up. It’s the front of the bench with the dog holes. I also got 2 other sections glued up.

You might be asking what that whole is at the top. That’s where I will be putting the Wagon for the Wagon Vise. I’ll be gluing the top in sections. This will allow me to get good clamping pressure on the laminated sections. I’m keeping the first glue-up under 6”, so that I can run it over my jointer to flatten the glue-up. I’ll then glue-up 2 sections which will be under 12”. This will allow me to run it through my planer, one last time.

I won’t have a lot of time over the next couple of weekends to work on the bench, but I hope I can at least get the last couple of sections glued up. After that, I should be heading down the home stretch.

I’ve been busy these last several weekends and haven’t had much time to work on the bench. This last weekend Dorje came by to help out. My plan was to start the glue-up of the top. After milling up the lumber and trying to cut around the knots, I wasn’t happy with how many knots were still showing through the top. I should have spent more time picking through the lumber the first time, lesson learned. At least the lumber is pretty cheap. It can be hard to find relatively clear lumber, when you are picking through 16’ boards, and trying to use construction grade lumber. It might have been easier if the lumber hard 8’ boards, but I guess there isn’t much call for 2×12x8’s. I just had them cut them to a manageable size. So Dorje and I went back and spent a little more time picking through the lumber and I think we found some good boards. I’m starting the milling process today. I’ll know how well we did by the end of the day.

We also spent time, last weekend, making the dowels for the mortise and tenons in the base. I didn’t take any pictures of this process, but if you look at my blog on the sharpening bench you will see how that was done. We made the dowels out of oak, which I had read was a wood use for draw boring. It has a straight grain, and can flex as it goes through the offset holes I used. We only had time to put one of the end assemblies together, before we were done for the day. So far it’s coming together pretty good.

We chamfered the edges to soften them and to keep them from splintering. We did this on the router table with a chamfer bit. I don’t have any dust collection set up for the router yet, but Dorje functioned as my dust collection buy holding the shopvac hose, and collected the dust. It was so effective, I really need to get that hooked up soon.

Here are some close-ups of the mortise and tenons with the dowels installed. I used draw bores on these joints to pull them together and to strengthen them. This is the second time I’ve used this technique and I just love it. I offset the holes on the tenons 3/32” towards the shoulder. I think I could have gone a full 1/8”, with the size of the mortise and tenons and the dowel, but 3/32” worked great. The dowels are 3/8” in diameter and about 2 ¾” long.

You can see how tight the pins pulled the joint together.

These joints are rock solid and are never going to move or come apart.

Over the long weekend my wife and I were doing some painting in our house. Monday afternoon we were working in the front hallway, and I heard a truck pull up in front of house. I said to her, did you hear a UPS truck pull up to the house? She said no. I said I’m sure I hear a UPS truck pull up. I said I haven’t ordered anything lately, did you? She said no. I said, oh wow it could be my plane coming back home. A few seconds later the doorbell rang. Sure enough there was a long box just the size of a #7 hand plane. I came back in the house with a big smile on my face. She said, you heard the UPS truck pull up, do you salivate whenever you hear a UPS truck? I have to admit I stop and listen whenever I hear the UPS truck, to see if it’s stopping at the house :). I haven’t started to drool yet, but that may happen someday.

Even though it still hurts to look at the pictures, I will post the pictures anyway. Here are the before pictures. The pictures don’t really show it, but the scratches were pretty deep. They left marks on the wood, even after I cleaned up the nicked blade.

Here’s how the plane came back, you can’t even tell there were scratches. They did a fantastic job. There was even a hand written note from the guy that did the work. He said he also made sure the sides were still square after grinding the scratches out.

The lesson to learn from this. Don’t store your wood on the floor and always exam your lumber before working it with any tools.

I had time to clean out the mortises in two of legs and fit one of the small stretches into the mortises.

So far the fit is working out pretty well. I still have a little more tweaking to do on some of the shoulders, but over all not too bad.

Today, I cut all of the legs and stretchers to size and cut the tenons on the legs and stretchers.

The Legs

The stretchers

I also had time to start to hog out the mortises. The first step was to mark out the mortises. I just used a combination square and the stretchers themselves to layout the mortises. The stretchers need to be flush with the outside of each leg. This is one of the features of the bench. The legs and stretchers can be used as clamping surfaces.

I also took a close look at each of the legs, and found the faces I wanted to see. There are some small knots on the legs, so I faced them to the inside or back.

Next I used a router and a ¾” spiral cut bit, to hog out the mortise.

This is one big bit! It cuts really nice, but you do need to take a few passes to get to its full depth. The bit isn’t long enough to go to the full depth of the mortise. I plan to use my drill press and a forstner bit to take it to full depth. The router gives me very straight walls on the mortises. I thought my chisel would fallow these walls much better than if I had just used the drill press alone.

Here’s the first cut from the router. It will take a couple of passes to hog out the entire mortise.

I also plan to use this router bit to cut my bench dog holes. I saw a nice demonstration over at www.popularwoodworking.com, on cutting bench dog holes with your router. Look in the Gallery for the video.

I had to call it a day. I will try and finish of the mortises tomorrow.

The big benefit of Douglas Fir was the price, but it is also one of it’s flaws. I did some digging through the lumber pile, but I still have to deal with some knots. I’m hoping I can bury most of them inside the top and legs. I may have to deal some knots on the top (hopefully small ones), but we will have to wait and see. I might also pick up a couple more boards, if I have some big knots to deal with. If they become a problem, I don’t have too much invested in the top.

One of the other benefits I listed, was that it is a stable wood. I think that showed itself when I was ripping the boards down. The top is going to be about 6 feet long. I was expecting to deal with the board pinching during the ripping cut. To my surprise the cut stayed straight and true. I have never seen that when ripping a board that long before. The kerf always seems to close up on me.

I didn’t take pictures of all of the lumber. Below is a sampling of some of the lumber for the stretchers. The smaller pieces were easy to find knot free sections.

This weekend I plan to laminated up the legs and stretchers and start on the base. I’ve rough cut the the pieces for the top, and I’m going to let them dry a little longer in my shop.

After Christmas I bought a new Lie Nielsen #7, with money I got from my family and some of mine. It came in last week and this weekend I used it for the first time. I got the blade all tuned up and took a few passes on a test board and centered the blade. Then started to true up some boards, I had just milled for my new workbench. After a little while I started to see plane tracks and thought it was odd, because I was taking full width shavings. I took a few more passes, and I was still seeing plane tracks. I turned the plane over and my jaw almost hit the floor. There two nasty scratches on the sole of my new plane! Words came out of my mouth that I can’t use here. I looked at the board and went thought the shaving looking for what I had hit. I found nothing! I didn’t feel anything when using the plane. I couldn’t figure it out, but after a little while I think I know what happened. I was running a lot of boards thought my thickness planer. Usually I put the boards on my bench, but this time I had too many. Guess were they ended up, on the floor of my garage. I think there was some grit or something on the floor and it got on the board. You know what happened next.

Now for the happy part of the story. I sent an email to Lie Nielsen, asking if they could resurface the sole of my plane. I expected to get a response back that said sure, and by the way send us lots of money. They said they would try and make it good as new, and they would do it for free! You have to love a company like that. When I get the plane back I’ll post some before and after pictures. I’d post the before pictures now, but the hurt is still too fresh to share right now.

I hope I never do something this stupid and potentially expensive again. If they hadn’t already, Lie Nielsen has a devoted customer now.