I gave the finished base three coats of finish. The first was equal parts turpentine, BLO, & spar urethane. The next two were just BLO & spar urethane 50:50. All were applied with a rag & then rubbed dry like all finishes of this type. This gave me a good seal for the wood, and gloss wasn’t really a consideration. Yes, I know lots of folk will go for a proper finish, but I’ve already dinged the base a few times just moving it around. It IS a workbench, after all.

We then inverted the base onto the upturned top & checked for any gaps between the top of the legs and the top. There was only one, & I applied a shim to it rather than sand the other five down. I also plan to shim the gap in the foot mentioned in the previous installment.

Once this was done, I drilled the top of each leg to accept a 3/4” oak dowel to a depth of 2”. The dowels were then cut to extend 1” above the top of the leg. These locations were then transferred to the underside of the bench top, which was drilled with 1” holes. This gap was to allow for wood movement, but (hopefully) no play in the top.

Finally, we cleared everything away, set the base in position, and added the top. As hoped, the top slid easily into place on the dowels, but had absolutely no lateral movement once in place. This will make it easy to disassemble the top from the base if I ever need to move the bench. The end product is below:

The 38” total height ended up being perfect. I’ve gotten used to working on “standard height” structures for so long that it felt strange at first. However, I quickly realized that it would save a lot of strain on my back. I highly recommend customizing your bench & counter heights whenever possible if you’re taller or shorter than average.

The 30”w x19”h x23”d spaces between the legs are just begging for a pair of storage cabinets, so I guess that’ll be the next phase of construction. It’ll have to wait awhile, however, while I work out the details of drawer layout & design. Till then, it’s time to clean up the shop.

The last post left me sharpening my chisel and getting ready to square up the 28 mortises. This was indeed as difficult as I feared. It’s not that squaring a mortise is that hard, but there were so many of them. This was the time to remember the old adage that a mountain is climbed one step at a time. Each mortise was just one mortise, and that’s how I approached the problem. The problem with SYP is that, while it’s a soft wood, it isn’t that easy to work with hand tools. Fine paring with a chisel is difficult because the end-grain wants to compress and tear out, and side-grain wants to split off in strips. I simply took light cuts and sharp tools, and eventually was through.

The next step was to cut all the tenons. I mentioned previously that I had cut the short cheeks earlier to use this length to lay out the mortises. I now cut the face cheeks to rough size using the router table and my Incra miter gauge. I left each one a little thick and finished the job with the shoulder plane. This is where it turned out to be money truly well spent. The tenons were quickly trimmed down to size, with only a couple of boo-boos on the shoulders. Practice makes perfect, and each one was better and faster than the one before. Since this was a long process, I re-checked the fit during dry-assembly and re-trimmed the tenons if necessary. It’s amazing how much dimensions on a joint will change in our Mississippi climate over a few days! Several indeed needed a bit more trimming.

Once the tenons were fitted and I was satisfied with the dry-assembly, it was time for the pegs. I used 3/8” oak dowels and holes set back 1/2” from the face of the mortise, and offset the hole in the tenon 3/32” toward the shoulder. I took advantage of the thickness of my stock to drill the holes almost all the way through for maximum strength. A sanded taper on the end of each had me ready to go:

The first step was to assemble the three leg frame units. This went fairly quickly, since only four joints were involved. One of the completed ends is shown below:

One of the beauties of the pegged mortise-and-tenon is that no clamping is required. I had made a drawboring pin based on Christopher Schwartz’s recommendations, but found it unnecessary. A little glue and a few taps with a hammer locked the joint together permanently. All that remained was to trim off the slightly protruding peg:

The astute observer will notice the gap in one shoulder of the leg. This was one of my first shoulders to cut, and I got a little carried away. I thought about shortening the other three shoulders to match, but was afraid I would throw the whole assembly out of kilter, so I left it alone. I had a good match on the other three shoulders, and the gap was purely cosmetic.

A word of advice on measuring your pegs: Always cut them a little longer than the measurement you get when you fit the dowel through the hole. The taper sanded on the end will allow the peg to sit a little deeper in holes bored with a drill bit, due to the pilot point being deeper than the shoulder of the joint. Of course, you could just make the taper first and THEN measure (didn’t think of that until now—hrmph!).

The protruding end of the dowel was cut with a flush-cut saw, and then trimmed flush with the shoulder plane. I realize most would use a low-angle block plane for this, but I only have a Stanley contractor’s-grade block plane with the non-adjustable mouth, so the shoulder plane was the better option.

Once all three frames were completed, all that remained was to join them together with the stretchers. As I was sanding them down, I realized that I would sand off all my marks that identified their location. Fortunately I remembered in time, and made new marks on the ends of the tenons to keep me from putting tenon A in mortise B by mistake.

The only real trick in this step was moving quickly. I had to do four stretchers at one time, so I had to apply glue to eight mortises and eight tenons, fit the rails into the first frame, get the second frame in place and seated properly (not so easy – once I had to resort to a three-pound sledge), and get the pegs hammered in before the glue set. Whew! When I added the second set of stretchers and the third frame, the project was on the floor and I was hammering down from over my head to “convince” the last frame to take its place in the scheme of things. At least no clamps were needed! The next morning (today), I trimmed all of the pegs flush and set the nearly completed base up for a look:

A close look will reveal a small gap under the front foot on the right. The floor is level, and the gap doesn’t change when I move things around, so I obviously messed up somewhere. Since the other five are perfectly level, I must have had some play in the joint somewhere and didn’t catch it during dry-up. I think I’ll simply shim it or tack a thin spacer underneath it rather than reduce the other feet to match.

All that remains now is final sanding, applying a topcoat, and fitting it to the bench top. Obviously my son will have to get out there and help me move things from this point on!

I was having problems with drilling the mortises in my workbench legs. The legs were long and heavy and my drill press table is small. This was made worse by the fact that most of the mortises were located near the ends of the legs. This made holding the legs steady on the table difficult. I could clamp them in place, of course, but I needed to be able to slide them back and forth as I made the mortises. Help from the family was erratic at best, and I was stuck for a ready solution.

As I said, I was sitting at work calculating a dose when, out of the blue, the following design hit me:

A simple solution. Three 2×4 sections finish-nailed together in the shape of an “F”, and attached to a sawhorse with clamps. The extended horizontal piece allowed me to extend the support over the bench that the drill press rests on. Height and level were adjusted by loosening the clamps slightly and tapping with a mallet, and the leg had plenty of support while allowing for easy movement back and forth. This made even the middle legs easy to handle:

I realize that there are far better and more permanent solutions, but this simple arrangement got me over the hump of the moment. And, when I was through, the pieces would be recycled into cross-braces for the loft joists.

The point of this discourse on a crude project is that problems don’t necessarily have to be solved by a trip to the box store or an online order. Sometimes, a little scrap wood and imagination are all that’s necessary. Oh yes, it helps to keep a few 2×4’s handy!

All 26 mortises have now been drilled. The next step will be to square up the ends of the holes. I know some swear by rounding the tenons, but this way works better for me with a fixed tenon:

I guess I better sharpen my chisel and get busy.

I can hear the timber framers howling with laughter and shouting,”Duhhh!!!!”

Well, it’s new to me.

A case in point is the tenons joining the legs to the feet (see the plan in Episode 6). The center leg elements are composed of three 2×4’s glued together with a final dimension of 4 1/8” x 3 1/4”. This width will allow a 2” tenon to be inserted from either side, but caused tenon-cutting problems.

My usual practice is to cut my tenons on the router table (no tablesaw, don’t forget), but the sheer size and mass of these pieces made this impossible. So, I went back to the old way—more or less.

I decided to cut the tenon shoulders by hand, and then cut the cheeks on the bandsaw (hence “more or less”). I had seen Norm do this once or twice, and decided to give it a try. After all: If I messed up, all I had to do was go back to the lumber yard for more wood, skip-plane it, cut to rough length, glue it up, plane it down to matching dimensions, and continue as if nothing had happened. So, what the heck?

I just got a new dozuki, which is a great saw for precision joinery. The only problem I have with them is that it can be difficult to start a long cut in soft wood. So, I hit on the following solution.

I took a piece of scrap stock with a 90 degree face and clamped it across the line for the tenon shoulder, leaving just a smidgen (is that more or less than a hair?) of space to plane down later:

This gave me a good bearing surface to start my shoulder cut without having my blade wander around and make a mess:

I keep the guide block in place as I cut until the spine of the dozuki reaches it. At this point you’ve got plenty of kerf to guide you onwards and the block can be removed.

f you’re not familiar with the dozuki, it’s important to keep the cutting edge level. The wedge-shaped blade and FAST cutting action make it easy to overshoot your depth on the back side of the cut, so practice this technique on scrap wood first. Oh yes, and keep pressure on the saw to a minimum. These saws do their best with a light touch, and pressing down doesn’t make them cut better – it just breaks saw teeth. Watch the edge, ignore the spine of the blade, and sneak up on your depth:

The completed cut shows why I love the dozuki – a thin kerf and precise cuts with minimal effort:

Next stop, the bandsaw. The width of this stock makes it perfect for bandsawing the tenon cheeks. In the previous picture you can see my tenon layout lines. I use the bandsaw to cut a little outside the lines (yes, more than a smidgen – the bandsaw cuts much faster):

The reason for cutting the shoulders first becomes apparent. When the cheek cut is completed, the waste simply falls off and makes an excellent “stop cutting” indicator. I suppose you COULD cut the shoulders this way as well, but I think the handsawn method gives more control. Many will suggest cutting the cheeks by hand as well, and I may give that a shot on the narrower pieces later. In any event, we’re left with a tenon that’s ready for a little final fitting with the shoulder plane:

One down, 27 to go!

Except for final honing, mine was really ready to go right out of the box. The sole was flat, the sides were square, and they even lap the back of the blade! I chose the O1 blade instead of the A2 since I use oilstones to sharpen and didn’t want to work myself to death. I DO have to sharpen more often, but that’s no big deal with this plane—more on that in a minute.

It’s a strange looking contraption compared to a Preston-style like the Lie-Nielson or Clifton, but there’s method in their madness. The boxy blade lever nestles right into your palm in the perfect position, and my middle finger drops automatically into the round hole when holding the plane vertically for cheek cuts:

By the way, be sure to remove your finger from the hole when making shoulder cuts with the hand-side up, or you’ll get a nasty pinch when your digit collides with the cheek!

The front knob can be repositioned into a threaded hole on either side of the body, where it projects at an angle. This has its uses, but I found repositioning to be more trouble than it was worth when switching back and forth between cheek and shoulder. Besides, the front of the plane is easy to hold as is when laying on its side. The rear knob pivots from side to side, and is locked in place by screwing it down. This feature really shows Veritas’ quality machining. When the knob is loosened, it doesn’t flop. Instead, some sort of internal friction bushing partially resists the motion, giving repositioning a solid “wiping” feel. My favorite way to use this is to not tighten the knob down completely, but leave a little play. This way, the knob can “self-adjust” slightly as my hand position changes during use.

The plane weighs almost four pounds, but I prefer the mass of a heavier plane. To me, this improves authority with end-grain cuts, and reduces effort on cross-grain. The 1 1/4” wide cutter is almost a match for most low-angle block planes. The iron is bedded at 15 degrees which, with the 25 degree blade bevel, gives an effective cutting angle of 40 degrees. The mouth adjustment consists of an adjustment screw and a separate locking screw. This allows the nose to be removed and replaced without losing the mouth setting, giving you a quick chisel plane option if needed.

The depth adjustment mechanism is smooth, but with some backlash. Veritas points out in their well-written manual that you should take up the slack after blade retraction by making you final turn forward (just like almost every other metal plane). They also give you a neat tip for fine depth adjustment: Changing tension on the cap lever will cause a minor deflection of the plane body, giving you a small degree depth adjustment. This is particularly handy when you run into those minor variations in the wood, or want to lighten up for one last pass—a slight tweak of the locking knob generally does the trick.

These are all neat features, but I saved the best for last. The real deal-cincher for me was the set screws on either side of the body. These can be seen in the first picture above on either side of the finger hole. The screws allow you to accurately set the position of the blade relative to the side of the plane. It took a bit of fiddling to get this right, as the rear screw will change the angle of the blade, knocking it out of square with the body. The two must be adjusted in concert to correctly set the angle and reveal of the blade. Once you’ve got it right, the two screws on the other side are brought into contact and then backed off just a hair (“Yoost a har,” as an old Swedish carpenter I knew used to say). This allows enough slack for depth adjustment, but maintains blade alignment.

Yes, I know you can align any plane, but how many keep alignment when you take the blade out? With this one, you can remove the blade, sharpen, and drop it back into place while keeping that perfect setup you had to start with. I can’t count the number of times in the past where I kept on planing with a dulling blade rather than lose my settings. As for durability of the O1 blade, I trimmed all 56 of the short tenon cheeks for my workbench base without needing to sharpen. I then popped the blade out, touched up the micro-bevel, and was ready to go on the side cheeks with exactly the same set-up. Sweet!

All in all, I’ve been very pleased with this plane. In fact, if I ever decide I need a smaller one, I’ll definitely buy its little brother, the medium shoulder plane. Veritas is really on to something with these tools.

After gluing the pieces together to make the rough leg components, I squared up the surfaces with a hand plane, and then sent everything back through the thickness planer to insure uniform thickness. Then, it was time to cut everything to final length. I hate this part—it’s one of my favorite ways to mess up.

While the legs were a-gluing, I skip-planed the stock for the rails and stretchers. Since no glue-up was necessary here, I was mainly concerned with uniform thickness to make tenoning easier. I was now able to determine their final length since the leg thickness was now a known quantity, and cut accordingly (adding 2” on each end for the tenon!—anybody here ever forget that?).

As you can see, I went ahead and cut the short cheeks of my tenons. This will allow me to accurately mark to cut the length of the individual mortises. Of course, I’ll have to keep all the pieces organized from this point on.

Cleaning up the tenon cheeks gave me a chance to try out my new shoulder plane. Since I use the router table for my tenons, this was a necessary step made MUCH easier by Veritas’ ductile iron wonder tool. How I got by without one up till now is a mystery to me. I’ll be making a separate blog post to properly sing my praises of that little gem.

Now comes the hard part—28 mortise-and-tenon joints.

Guess I’d better get busy.

Back at the shop, I skip-planed the 2×4’s down to get a smooth gluing surface, and cut the pieces for the feet and legs to rough length:

You’ll notice that one of the foot groups and two of the leg groups consist of three boards instead of two. These will comprise the center group, and are wider to accommodate 2” mortises from the left and right. Judging by some of the end grain, I need to re-arrange the combinations somewhat. Next I’ll glue the individual pieces up, using biscuits for alignment. Due to my limited number of clamps, this will probably take a over a week (one set per night). Of course, this slow pace allows me to get in enough honey-do’s to keep my brownie points at an acceptable level. This will be followed by clean-up and squaring of all the pieces.

More as this progresses.

As requested, here is my basic plan for the workbench base. This was my first (semi) successful drawing with Google SketchUp, so please pardon the crudeness. I plan on starting on this phase in the next week or two (after payday).

The wood will be southern yellow pine dimension lumber. With the exception of the 2x6 lower stretchers, the rest will be 2x4's. The upper stretchers will be single thickness, the outside legs and feet will be glue-lams of 2 studs, and the center legs and foot will be three studs thick. The reason for the additional thickness in the center is to allow for deeper mortises for the opposing tenons. The front-to-back stretchers are offset for the same reason.

The reason for using feet instead of straight legs is to alleviate the need for front-to-back stretchers at the bottom. This lets me place my 2x6's lower, giving more room for the later addition of tool storage cabinets between the legs. It's not shown in the drawing, but each foot will have a slight relief cutaway in the center, leaving a pad at each end to help compensate for any unevenness in the floor or later warpage.

All joints will be 1" thick pegged mortise-and-tenon, with as much length and width as possible. The upper stretchers will be low enough to clear the hardware for the front vise, but still give as much cabinet space as possible. The top will have 1" holes that fit over 3/4" pegs in the top of each leg. This should keep the top in place and still allow for wood movement during climactic changes.

Overall height, including the benchtop, will be 38" (hey, I'm 6'4").

I'm wondering if I should raise the 2x6 stretchers up some for more racking resistance, or if they'll be fine where they are. I want room for cabinets, but not at the expense of strength. The present distance between upper and lower stretchers is now 22".

Any thoughts, questions, or suggestions will be greatly appreciated

Planes Don’t Like Knots!

This whitewood was quite knotty, and with the first pass over one the plane stopped as dead as if it had hit a brick wall.

Hmm…

It was time to fall back to plan B, which involved the use of my cabinet scraper. Many of you will wonder why I didn’t go with my belt sander, and it would have certainly been faster. However, this speed can be counterproductive, causing overshoots and possibly taking more time in the long run. I felt that the cabinet scraper would give me more control in getting the surface level. Mine is a Veritas model that is basically an upgrade of the Stanley #80. The extra $15-20 buys you a sole that is 1 inch longer, and handles that are placed lower and farther forward. The net result is a more stable unit that is easier to control and less prone to dig-ins—spend it.

The cabinet scraper is not the ideal tool for softwood, and doesn’t provide the smooth surface that it would yield on hardwood. However, it handled the knots well, and leveled the high spots more quickly than I thought. It was during this process that I added a third middle sawhorse to support the top, turned at right angles to the two at the end. Aggressive scraping tended to make the sawhorses tip with the force. The third at right angles under the center calmed this effect and kept my new benchtop from winding up on the floor.

Once I was satisfied with the flatness of the surface, I drilled the dog holes. I had previously drilled matching holes in the vise blocks using the drill press and finishing up with a brace and auger when the drill press could go no deeper. Obviously the benchtop wouldn’t fit on the drill press, so I switched to a 3-flute Irwin auger driven by my 5-amp Skil corded drill. I just didn’t think my cordless would have the torque for this job. After my drill guide broke (cheap imported plastic!), I just eyeballed the angle, hit the trigger, and held on for the ride! Lemme tell you – those power augers go through softwood faster than you can imagine if you haven’t used one. Yes, there was some splintering on the back, but so?

Now it was time for the debated belt sander. I started with 50 grit and gently finished leveling the whole surface, then 80 grit, and finally 120. I then switched to my palm sander and worked through 100 and 150. It was a lot of tedious work, but I think the results below were worth it:

All that was left was a few coats of Watco, and the benchtop was in business!

This brings me up to the present. The base is next, and posts will be coming slower now that I'm in realtime. I'm finalizing the design, and should have something posted for comments or suggestions in a day or two.

I added a slight complication on my front vise. As you know, my benchtop is whitewood, and rather soft for a clamping surface. I really wanted a maple-to-maple face for better wear. Since the jaw block extends below the bottom edge of the bench I also liked the idea of extending this face downwards to give a larger clamping area. This was the purpose of the 4/4 stock I purchased in the last installment (in case you were wondering).

My description of this may be (probably is) unclear, so below is a photo of the final product showing the added maple face:

The problem was that I didn't want the maple to sit proud to the edge of the bench. I reasoned that this would cause problems when clamping long boards for edge work. This required recessing the maple face to sit flush with the edge of the bench. I finally decided on my router for the job.

After setting the top on edge, I clamped a pair of 30" 2x4's flush with either side for a bearing surface, and then a stop block to limit the travel to 18" (the length of the insert). Why specifically 30" studs? So they could later be sawhorse legs--waste not, want not.
I then took my router with a 1/2" straight bit and its router table insert still attached, and made a series of shallow passes. The result after the first pass is shown below:

I kept this up, taking 1/4" per pass till close, and then slowly sneaking up on the required depth. A final ultra-light pass cleaned things up, and the results are below:

It was then just a matter of taking the facepiece (with appropriate holes drilled), and gluing and screwing it into the recess:

Yes, I know I didn't plug the screw holes, but my back hurt.

You may be wondering why I only mentioned the front vise and not the end vise. The biggest reason is that I didn't want to repeat this operation six feet in the air balanced on a ladder. Aside from my phobia about controlling a 20,000 rpm router while trying to keep my footing, there are practical excuses. The end vise will primarily provide clamping force for the bench dogs, and occasionally used to hold small pieces. Also, the end-grain will be much more resistant to wear than the face-grain. I guess time will tell whether I made the right decision or not.

With the vises mounted, it was time to work on the surface.

More on that next time.