Next I went work on the leg vise. I forgot to take a picture of what I started with but you’ll get to see the offcut in a minute. Here I am using a taper jig to make a cut on the table saw. I took the offcut from here and glued them onto the top so that I would have more width at the top of the vise jaws.

Then I cut a mortise in the bottom of the jaws for the parrallel guide that I had previously made.

Here’s what it took to get this job done. This is my first hand chopped mortise with these chisels and I was very pleased with how easy they made the task.

I wanted to glue and pin this is place and my daughter loved making the dowels for it, or more accurately banging a piece of wood through the dowel plate was a blast for her.

A little trimming of the pins and I think this might be ready.

Yep, it’s ready.

Here’s the offcut of the 6’ ash log that I started with standing next to the leg vise. I scrub planed it, then used a #5 to flaten one side, then ran it throught he planer. I am going to use the offcut to make my sliding deadman. This is from a tree my Dad cut down for me and we’ve air dried for 2 years. The original plan was to use it to make a shaving horse but I ended up deciding that this would be more useful for the type of work I do.

A couple of comments about the leg vise. If I was doing it all over, I’d have the bottom of the vise be a full inch above the floor. It tends to get hung up on my mat but I’ll change that situation soon to correct this problem. I also went with a tight fit of the screw in the jaw face thinking that this would provide more support and be better. I had to go back and rasp out the hole some because the screw was too hard to turn. I thought it would work its way looser and be ok, but I couldn’t wait for that and just opened it up a smidge. I made three handles from some ash scrap from the same tree the jaws came from…and am still not happy with any of them. So I put one of them on and decided that I’ll rive a piece of oak from a windsor chair making log that I’m going to buy in a few months. Just a planned improvement and a minor thing to do later.

I bought a piece if leather to line the leg vise with and decided on contact cement and the best way to attach the leather. Here we are ready to put them together. You can see some holes the bugs ate into the log, it’s a workbench is my attitude. I want to use it to make high quality pieces, not make a muesum quality workbench. All of the bench below the top is from free wood my Dad gave me…too bad he didn’t have some hard maple I could have used for the top, huh?

No better way to clamp the leather in place then to use the vise itself. I think this picture also shows the struggle I’m having closing the screw, hence loosening the hole some was required.

I had 2 “made in tiawan” hodfasts that really didn’t hold anything very fast. I looked on the internet, what an amazing thing, and found a blacksmith about a hour away from me. He had some old reference books from the blacksmith end of things and agreed to make 4 holdfasts for me. Here I am glueing leather pads onto them.

Here’s the four holdfasts lined up. Let me tell you, he did a great job. One wack and these babies hold! I used them to hold something I was crosscutting, the wood didn’t move. It was like a light bulb went on above my head…”So this is how this is supposed to work!”

I think that’s it for now. This is almost done. My to-do list only includes making the sliding deadman and its guide, adding cleats and a shelf on the strechers, and maybe adding a planning stop. That will be the next and final blog before this becomes a completed project.

I carefully took the oak down to 5/16” thick since that was the size of holes I chose to drill to hold this all together.

At first, I made the pegs square and cut them to length. Then I wised up and realized that if I carefully split that baby, I could save myself some effort and get 2 sets of pegs from one piece of oak, duh!

Working on the short strechers first, I glued the tenon (Notice the artistic camera angle my daughter came up with).

A little glue into the mortise, and I slid this one into place.

Then all I needed to do was pound the peg home. The ones on the short strechers went together great.

A quick trim with the saw,

and then a carving gouge.

I had this one done in no time at all.

The long strechers required moving the assembly process to the floor. Here I am slipping the strecher into place, of course both strechers had to be done at the same time.

They fit good and I was ready to move on.

The top end of the long mortises needs glue and then I put the other short strecher assembly on top.

Then I turned this thing onto its side to drive the pegs in.

Notice the amazing camera work as my assistant captures the exact moment the hammer hits the pegs. I did have to sort through a few shots but she got the exact one we were after without slowing me down.

I continued with the trimming as before.

I did have a peg break on these long strechers but it was not noticable in the finished look. I guesss some of the integrity is comprimised but I don’t see how it will affect the final function of the bench since I did glue the joint and one peg is going to hold that joint together.

After the base was assembled, one daughter helped lift it onto the bench top while the other daughter took the photos. Who got the better end of that deal? When is their brother getting home from college?

I checked the fit of the legs into the bench top.

One leg needs its tenon trimmed.

I hate to admit it, but this is because I have a strecher joint that did not close all the way. I have concluded that I had a bit of racking and that the base in not dead square. Unfortunately its too late. These timbers are massive. The base wieghs 110 lbs. It’s tough to move and test fit. It’s a learning process. Those are my excuses but I am sure I could come up with more if I have to.

Here’s the base waiting to flipped into place now that I have the shop cleaned, a little. If you click on the picture and go to photo bucket, you can see its predicessor siting off to the right in the full photo. The plan is to place the base, slid the top onto the old bench, lift and flip the top, place the top on the base,

Amazing, it actually work as planned! Here it is in place.

All I need to do is peg the top to the bottom, no glue in case I ever want/need to move the bench. If that happens, I’ll drill the pegs out and have my son and and his strongest friend lift it off and put it where it needs to be. I did use my drawbore tool on the pegs but it didn’t help. I still had several pegs break. Either I had the pegs a bit too thick or I offset the holes in the tenons too much. Either way, I can’t lift the top off the base at any leg and they all went in far enough that all you see is a square peg.

Next up, I sweat my a** off again as I work on flatenning the top. This side needs to be dead flat and smooth. Plus it matters so no more mistakes, right?

I wanted to get my strecher length right on, so I took my measurement right off the legs.

I layed out my tenon shoulders and got out my tenon saw to cut them.

Sorry I got all interested in fitting all those tenons and didn’t get any pictures of the process. I did get some shop help though and I put my daughter to work champferring the bottoms of the legs. The theory is that there won’t be any chips on one side of the legs when you move it. I had to see how much this thing is going to weigh so I brought the bathroom scale down and weighed the parts. The base is 110 lbs. and the top is too heavy to fit on the scale at this point. I don’t think it’ll move but had the helper use a chisel

and then a plane to put a 45 degree edge on the bottom of the legs.

Next up was to rout the groove for the deadman in the underside of the bench. I made several passes.

Gradully lowering the bit until I had a 3/4” wide groove that’s 1 1/8” deep. I think that will be fine for the deadman to fit into securely.

When I was done, I squared up the corners. I thought about leaving them alone, but I like square corners.

I figured since the base wasn’t assembled yet, I should put the flange for the leg vise on now while it could lay flat, saving me from crawling under the bench to install it later.

Now it’s time to drill some holes. I plan on pegging/drawboring this all together so layed out my locations and drilled my holes with a backer board to prevent blow out on the inside of my mortises. The small square in my hand is helping me drill straight in the vertical axis, I can see the bit fine to keep the horizontal axis square.

Then I finished the holes on the other side of the mortise.

Then I slipped the tenon piece, in the picture it’s the leg, into place and marked the hole center with the tip of the bit.

Next is to slightly offset the tenon hole TOWARDS the shoulder (I was worried that I ‘d go the wrong way so I kept yelling this to myself, thankfully no problems).

Just drill a straight hole and I’ve got it licked.

You know the saying about round holes and square pegs, and I’ve driven square pegs into round holes before (FYI the square edges just cut the surface and you end up with a square looking peg) but I wanted to give the pegs a little help.

Well that’s alot of work for me to get done. Cutting and fitting 8 tenons and getting all the little things ready so I can assemble the base. I think this bench is about to make a whole lot of progress. I have it in my head that I should be able to use it in two weeks. We’ll see if that’s true.

I glued them up and dressed them up until they came in at a finished dimension of 3 5/8” by 4 5/8”. They are beefy but I want this to be a sturdy bench that’s not going to move and has enough size for whatever project I want to tackle. The top is 23 5/8” wide and looks to finsh up about 9’ 2” long. I settled on 1 1/2” by 3” tenon size and layed them out.

Then I made a simple jig that I could clamp to the bench and rout the tenons. I must confess that I did want to chop these out by hand, but after I had chopped one tenon to a depth of 1/4”, I wised up and went to the router.

It took a few passes and the bit a little bit of flare on it that caused some burning on the last pass, but I got to the 2” depth I wanted. Next I cleaned up the corners with my chisels and here is a finished mortise.

You know what needs done now, make the tenon. I chose to cut them by hand.

They didn’t take long before the legs looked like this.

Here is a test fit, we’re getting close on this one.

My oldest daughter wanted to give me some help so I put her to work undercutting the shoulders. She likes using the chisels and carving.

After all of that, here’s a leg fitted into its mortise.

Once that leg was in place, I had to get three more to fit into their mortises. Here’s the proud lumberjock with his legs in place.

My helper wanted to keep working, so we decided to make the parallel guide that will fit onto the bottom of the leg vise. This is simple piece of wood with equally spaced holes so first I layed them out.

Then I had them drilled while I took a break, had a soda…

A little dressing up for looks, cut a slot in the leg and here is the result of our efforts.

Next up is to mortise and tenon the strechers in place. Thanks for checking out my progress. I’d be interested to hear if this is too many pictures.

Next I used my #5 jack plane with a blade that has a bit if crown on it to get things flat. As I worked, I checked my progress across each side and for wind and marked the areas that still needed work with a lumber crayon Here’s the tool and its results.

As I got near the end of the sweat that this job requires, I checked for wind. The poster board on the other end makes it easier to see all of the winding sticks. I’m real pleased with the results but don’t know if this photo really lets you see all three spots in the proper focus. You’ll have to trust me that they are dead on flat across the three of them.

DONE! Here’s picture of the finished underside if the bench. What a relief that’s done but the bad news … I’ll have to the entire thing again when I flip it over. Fortunately, that is going to be after the base is built and the top and base are joined together.

I am happy with it. By the way, I can count. I just decided before gluing the last few boards together that board 10 wasn’t as pretty as board 8 and they got switched.

Next up, milling the pieces for the base and laying out the mortises.

My work includes windsor chairmaking so I wanted a Record style vise placed in the end vise postion. I have used this style vise in this location at Mike Dunbar’s school and really liked them. I do a lot of hand planing so I wanted a heavy top that won’t move. I went with hard maple, thinking that maybe if I dropped the bucks now I’d be satisfied and never build another bench (definitly no need for a new top though). A problem with my current bench is that the legs are too close together, especially on the short side, so heavy planing makes it unstable. I haven’t been able to redo the base because when I glued up the current bench, I got lazy and left some of the boards thicker preventing widening the base since its held together with short strechers at the top. Plus I figured if I was going to tear apart and redo the current base, I might as well expand the top too. I also do some handcut dovetail work and felt that a leg vise would work great for dovetailing. If I want to add a twin screw vise later for this work, I plan on putting it on the opposite side of the leg vise, maybe in the middle of the bench or towards the end vise.

My biggest excuse, no scratch that… My biggest need for a new bench is that I committed to making a pencil post bed for my son. Those posts are 7’ long and my current bench is only 6’ long. I felt I might have difficulty working around this issue.

I bought some 10’ long, 12/4 hard maple and some 10’ long 8/4 hard maple for the top. The idea of hand planing all of those flat for glue up didn’t appeal to me, so I found a local cabinet shop that used their surface sander to joint and square up three sides for me. Well worth the $100. Here the boards are coming home.

I did a bit of touch up jointing with a hand plane before proceeding. With one of my able shop assistants, I started the glue up, putting just a few boards together at time and then continually adding to them until there were all glued up.

Here we are about mid-way thru the process.

Eventually we got them all glued up.

Next up, I flatten what will be the underside of the top when the bench is finished.

I cut those shim strips on the table saw with a zero clearance insert from cut offs from the sides. It was still a little thick so I sanded it a bit and then used a chisel to break off short shim stock. Then I slide a small piece with a bit of glue on it into the side of the kerf. Filling the kerf is a two step process so I was only trying to get the side of the dovetails to look good.

Next I trimmed those shims flush with a block plane and chisel. Now I’m ready to fill the top of the kerf. I carefully measure how wide the shim needs to be, trim one corner so it can sit properly in the kerf, a little glue and slip it into place. Just finger pressure is all it needs. After the glue dried, I trimmed these by placing a chisel blade down low and breaking off the shim so there was only a little bit that needs to be trimmed with the plane.

A little planing and sanding and this baby is about done. Here’s a quick wipe down with mineral spirits to check it out before putting some Danish oil and wipe-on poly on. Jersey will be eating dinner out of here in couple of days.