Surprisingly, it only took a few minutes to cross-cut the board. Sawing from underneath was a little awkward, but it was fun considering that I don’t have to do it for a living. My setup was a little jury-rigged, but it worked okay.

In the photo, one end of the board has already been cut off (it’s next to the Coke can, under the books), and if you look closely at the far end you can see the bark on one of the edges.

From this maple board, I cut three large boards and later ripped two of them to obtain pieces 6.5” and 2.25” wide. The largest (and uncut) board will be used for the leg vise on my Roubo bench, one of the the narrow pieces will be used for a planing stop on the bench, and the remaining boards will be used for a Moxon vise for dovetailing.

The boards are 1.25”x5”x36” inches and there are four boards per leg. The finished legs will be approximately 5”x5” and will be cut to length after the bench top is finished.

I used Titebond glue and a hodgepodge of clamps. I started by gluing and clamping the two middle boards for 4 hours (recommended for southern yellow pine; I also wiped down the gluing surfaces with acetone before gluing to remove some of the resin). After the middle two boards were glued, I clamped all four boards together but only used glue on one side board. The ends of the side boards were offset by 2”, which will form a tenon on the completed leg. After 4 more hours in the clamps, I glued the remaining side board in place, being careful to line up the ends of the side boards. This method took longer than gluing all four boards together at one time, but it was easier to align the two side boards with each other. Working on two legs at a time, I finished the glue-up over a weekend.

Here’s a picture of one of the legs as I’m flattening and squaring the edges. My plan is to work on two adjacent sides and them take the legs to my buddy’s cabinet shop and run them through his thickness sander to make sure all sides are square and the legs are the same size. Once the workbench top is finished, I’ll cut the legs to final length.

Yes, my workspace is a mess.

I’m following Chris Schwarz’s descriptions and plans in Handbook Essentials. I purchased the lumber (the equivalent of fourteen 8-ft Southern yellow pine 2×12s) by ones and twos over the winter, whenever I could find good quality boards that were dry, relatively flat, and nearly knot free. The boards have been stickered in my garage for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

I’ve cut the pieces for the legs and stretchers (slightly oversize), and am fortunate to have the help of a friend who works at a cabinet shop to thickness the boards for me in his company’s thickness sander (since I don’t own a power-jointer or -planer, his help is a godsend.) We’ve thicknessed the boards for the legs (16 pieces in all, plus 2 spares) down to about 1-3/8”, and in a couple weeks we’ll sand them down to the required 1-1/4” so I can begin gluing them together. We’ll also start to thickness-sand the pieces for the stretchers at that time. The eight 2×12s I’ve designated for the top are still uncut, but I intend to rip them down the middle soon to give me the sixteen boards I’ll need.

Here’s the lumber; not very impressive, except that I can already see, in my mind’s eye, the pieces coming together to form a bench that will be ideal for use with hand tools:

The jig uses 2×4s for the sides and 3/4-inch plywood for the base. The jig should be sized so that your largest hand plane fits between the 2×4s with a clearance of about 1/4 or 1/2 inch. One of the end pieces could be made adjustable so that the it can be moved closer to the other end piece for use with shorter hand planes. .

The benefit of this jig is that it is simple to build, and it reduces the amount of rust-removal solution that is required to restore your hand plane. I haven’t built it yet, but I thought I’d post the idea in case anyone wants to use it themselves or suggest improvements.