So I was hooked, I hit ebay I found a Stanley no. 5 and no. 7 for $35 and $30 respectively. Both needed some love and both had broken rear totes. The no. 7 has some grinder marks along on side(hence the price) but I bought them to be users. I used the toilet bowl cleaner and wire brush method for cleaning them up. Both were repainted. The handles that were on them were certainly usable but they made me a little sad. I picked up some maple and a little bit of mahogany, sandwiched them together and this is what I ended up with.

I think they turned out pretty well. The blades still need a little work. I don’t know what it is about fixing up old tools that I love. I hate rusty things.

The wagon vise rides in to 3/4 inch dadoes that I put in before glueing up the top. Oak runners are screwed to the sides of the chop. I used a jorgensen 12” veneer press screw that cost $20. With a little wax on the runners, it slides like..something very slippery. The caps I put on the end are placed over 3/4 by 1” tounge and groove. They were then lag bolted into the bench ends. I used 3/8 inch bolts. Even though I predrilled, during the process of removing the wagon vise endcap for tuning, I sheared off one of the bolts. This was removing the bolt! The bolt had been waxed, cheap metal I don’t know. Needless to say the rest of the bolt is in there forever.

This was pre bolt-snap. This chop was a little short so I made one a little longer and then used the 5 to smooth it to the top.

Then it was time to drill some round dog holes with a spade bit which were then chamfered with a router bit. I made a vise handle using 7/8 oak dowel and the ends of the handle with 1-1/8 poplar dowel in which I used a 7/8 forstner bit for the mating hole.

The bottom shelf is a section of my old benchtop and the case came from under the old bench as well.

I still need to make a sliding deadman, but that’s a fairly simple job. The dado for it was already routed on the underside of the benchtop.

Thanks for looking. There are a lot of imperfections but I’m rpoud of it.

Here’s the prerequisite shaving shot.

Wifey has to use the computer back in a few.!

By the way this project is mostly done and I’m writing this after the fact. I feel a little guilt for never really posting anything.

I used biscuits and a lot of glue and glued the top up in three sections on the bartop in the basement.

The sections which weigh a good 90 lbs each were then fed through the planer again. The final thickness is a hair under three inches. The final width for the top is 33 inches.

Out of the warm basement and into my 15 degree detatched garage again. The SYP was also glued up and milled down to 5×5 for the legs and 2 1/2×5 for the stretchers and rails. I borrowed my dads Delta mortiser and between that and the freud box joint blades on my tablesaw I ended up with 2”and x 3” and 1 1/2” x 3” mortise and tenons on the legs and stretchers. The rails were glued and the stretchers will secured to the legs using rocklers heavy duty cross bolts. I like the ones from veritas and woodpeckers but with rockler you get 8 for $30 vs. 4 for $30 ( I have a friend who will be building bench in the future). I will need to take this bench down at some point in the next 10 yrs.

Here is the base along with the leg vise I laminated together. The vise screw came from grandpa’s shop via a few of my uncles. I fabricated the rollers for the roller guide from some $2 HF polyurethane casters that i drilled the rivet out of and placed into oak brackets. Shamelessly stolen from benchrafted photos.

Here is the base flipped upside down do that I could mark the mortises in the benchtop to receive the base. The mortises were marked, roughed out with a forstner bit, cleaned up with a straight bit in the router and then chiseled square.

I also used 3 – 1/2 threaded rods in conjunction with dry fit biscuits to connect the three benchtop sections in case I need to take apart the 150 – 175 lb top.

Though I built a workbech when we first bought our house four years ago (24 hr. workbench), lem with woodI have never been totally satisfied with it. It has served me well but I have serious workbench envy. I’m a hobbyist and make/fix things around the house out of neccesity. More on some of those things later.

My biggest problem (besides patience) when it comes to woodworking is affording the wood. Living in Chicago I don’t have easy access to affordable hardwoods. For big projects I drive 1-1/2 hours to a harwood supplier in Wisconsin because the prices are that much cheaper. Skulking around craiglist (material section) I found a gus selling hardwood 4×4 dunnage in 4 ft lengths. For $2 a board (not board foot) I figured I would check it out. I bought $40 worth of boards and after cutting the grey off of the ends (they had been outside for a while) If found that I had half red oak and half poplar?

Because of the bowing in some of the boards I decided to use a quickly built router planer jig to surface two sides of each board before running them through a thickness planer. Wood wedges hold the wood tight to the jig fence to square up 2 sides.

For the lehs and stretchers I’m just planning to use laminated SYP which I shelled out another $34 at the big box.