This is what I’ve settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it’s a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I’m no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I’ve got two options. Option A is for blades that don’t have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I’ve been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.

I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I’ve found it’s important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don’t start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don’t fully renew the edge without it so you won’t end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I’ve done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won’t cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the “micro bevel” on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone – I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it’s working well.

Yeah, that’s a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn’t a strop sufficient? I’ve heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I’m being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I’m just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I’ve come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I’m done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.

I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it’s not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it’s not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.

Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee’s book on sharpening.

6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that’s the little I know about sharpening. It’s subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes”
I’m thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I’m going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it’s so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I’m going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I’m undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It’s also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT – $65
• 1k/6k Waterston – $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound – $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you’re at about $125. But you don’t have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I’m a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven’t board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I’m open to suggestions. The one thing I’ve learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you’ve got it figured out, so I’m open to anyone’s input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio

I got the finish applied, added leather to the vices, and put a hand wheel on the wagon vise.

After testing out the finish on scraps I decided to go with 1-1-1 (MS, Poly, BLO) on most of the bench. I sanded it into the top with 220 grit sandpaper to fill the pores some.

Just one coat on the bench.

I found 3-2-1 to be a little slicker and a little lighter in color so I used that on the walnut leg vise chop only. I put two coats on the leg vise just because I felt it needed it to look good. Slickness isn’t an issue here.

I didn’t find glossiness to be an issue using this clear poly, especially since the finish was sanded into the top.

I’ll spare you pictures of the wipe on wipe off routine and just show you many pictures of the seexy new bench!

Here you can see the quarter sawn rays of the red oak.

The QSWO stretchers also have a lot of nice rays showing!

The #4 placed on the bench to give you an idea of scale.

I’m really happy with how the vise chop came out.

The grain is centered on the board and kind of flows around the screw hub.

The kids have been having fun playing on the bench which is why they are in many of the pictures. I clamp a board in the wagon vise and they use it as a track for the “trains” (planes) to ride on. I retracted the blades of course. This is a dream come true for me because they have never wanted to hang out in the shop with me before. Now they ask me every day if we can go play in the garage!

Oh, and I actually Shellacked the Jatoba deadman and vice garter. I heard that oil finishes can sometimes darken oily woods so I went with just a light seal coat of shellac and wax.

Double stick tape was used to add leather to the vise faces.
i

I’m undecided about whether this was a good call. It certainly holds the leather securely but it seems like it might be a little gummy and allows the work piece to wiggle a little bit when clamped. This is not really an issue with the leg vise but it is an issue when clamping a board vertically for sawing in the wagon vise. But then again that may be due to me using the pretty thick leather (~1/8”). I’ll try it for a while and see how it goes. I can always pull it off and use contact cement or just use thinner sued leather.

Finally, I’m very excited about the hand wheel PurpLev hooked me up with. You got to love the generosity shown by so many Lumberjocks on this site. Thanks again PurpLev! He even turned me a nice mahogany handle for it!

Besides looking cool I really think it was needed. I’ve found that there are some situations where the T handle sticks out in front of the bench and hits your leg when you are planing. Also there is a lot of moving in and out on a wagon vise (more so than on a leg vise) so the small hand wheel is faster to spin in and out. The hand wheel works great and provides plenty enough clamping leverage accept one part of the wagon travel that is a little tight. I’ll need to work out those kinks.

I’ll work on doing a video so you guys can see how everything works.

Also, I’m thinking of putting a wheel on the leg vise that will ride on the floor to make the movement in and out a little smoother. Not absolutely necessary but I think it would be a nice touch. Thanks to Boatman Jim for hooking me up with some plastic wheels that are going to work perfectly for this.

Thanks for following along on this long journey folks. I really appreciate everyone’s encouragement and support along the way. It’s been challenging, fun, and very educational.

Look for my bench in the future in action shots as I put it to work!

In conclusion I’d like to share an excerpt of a poem from my LJ Buddy Andy (aka Brit). Clearly a man that was brought up on Shakespeare. LOL.

“I’m sendin’ this out to my homeboy Mauricio,
He ain’t no rapper, but his bench is bellissimo!
This ain’t no fiction, it’s built with conviction,
Them splayed legs help the coefficient of friction.”…

It’s about an hour long and is free online. Enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/pharaoh-chariot.html

So the idea is, flatten the top, glue and bolt on the tool tray, then plane to tray to be coplanar with the top.

First I chamfer the dog holes, I do this again after flattening. I figure I want to avoid spelching when planning the top by chamfering them beforehand. I’m not ashamed to say I used a routah (Norm accent)

Patched a couple of holes from when this top was a table.

Flatten the top with winding sticks, Stanley’s #5, #5 1/2, and #7

Next to glue up the tool tray. I dry fit it and then knocked off one end at a time, applied glue and knocked it back on. I used liquid hide glue (Old Brown) for the extra open time. I’m not sure if I needed it but it is comforting to not be in such a hurry.

Here is some creative clamping. I don’t have pipe clamps long enough so I used two cabinet clamps bridged in the middle by an F clamp.

Also the DT on the left side was very sloppy so it need some extra clamping to close it all up. Since I’m clamping on a slight angle I used some non-slip drawer liner to keep the clamps from slipping.

Oh and the draw bore pin came in handy for lining up the holes so I could get the bolts in.

Pretty gappy on this side.

The other side (the first one cut) was much better. You would think it would be the other way around. This one took a lot of paring to get it to fit so I got more aggressive on the second one trying to get it to fit right off the saw but that didnt work out.

This is the good side. Only one little plug.

So after the glue was dry, I flushed up the end grain with the Krenov smoother and the #4.

Sawed out the gap to make the patches straight and make the lines more uniform.

Inserted some patches. LOL!

Here is the after pic.

You got to love that about woodworking. Almost any error can be fixed.

Next I put my straight edge across the bench and marked of where I needed to knock down the tool tray to make it coplanar.

#5 & #7 for this job.

So after easing some edges and bolting the wagon vise back on. I also flushed up the wagon block with the top.

THE BENCH IS DONE. That is except for the oil varnish mix. I’m waiting for it to get a little warmer before I do that to make sure it cures right. Won’t be long I’m sure. I also will be applying leather to the vises.

So here it is folks, pretty much ready for action. I also just picked up some Veritas brass dogs.

I may do a video showing how the screw parallel guide works, I’ve never done a video so I’m not sure.

I’m stoked but can’t wait to put on the finish and get the final blog done.

Looking forward to put this thing to work.

Thank you guys for watching and for all your encouragement and advise along the way.

It’s been great sharing the journey with you guys.

Cheers!

Mauricio

I decided to go with drawbored Mortise and Tenons with no glue. The splayed legs on this bench make it incredibly stable as is so it’s not necessary at all. I also won’t have to worry about glue not curing well in the cold weather. The idea of not watching the clock during glue up is pretty nice to, especially on an assembly his size.

The hole stress free thing is true in theory any way.

This assembly was pretty damn stressful since it was my first time drawboring anything. You’ll see the issues as we go through the pictures.

I think you are all aware of my venture into making drawbore pins.

So now that those are done I needed to smooth all surfaces and edges.

Then drill out the holes in the mortises.

Transfer the holes to the tenons with a little offset. This was one of the nerve wracking parts because I was really unsure of how much offset to use in oak. I ended up using around 3/32 or so I guess. Once I got a sense for it I just went by eye.

When I tested the fit on my fist couple (with only 1/16” offset) there was almost no offset and it wasn’t pulling the joint tight.

So I used a tip I saw on a Peter Follansbee blog. I glued dowels back into the hole then predrilled them with more offset.

Pretty easy and I only had to do that on 3 of the holes.

I had to adjust the fit on one or two shoulders that weren’t closing up tight on the outside face. The drawbore pin helps for checking these fits.

The #92 was the tool of choice for cleaning up the shoulders.

Next I cut some oak pegs.

Then whittled a point on the end of each.

So without further ado lets start driving some pegs. I’m almost shat myself on this part because I didn’t know what to expect. I just stopped thinking about and started pounding them in.

I was afraid my offset might be too much. Maybe the pegs wouldn’t go in? Maybe they would break off in the middle of pounding them in? I didn’t know.

I did read one tip about rubbing wax on the pegs to ease their navigation through the hole, so that’s what I did.

And I’m glad I did. Here goes the first one!

Went in perfectly!

I went through all the joints for the stretchers first. Besides some stray hammer blows (I’ll have to steam the dents out) everything went swimmingly.

But of course nothing ever goes perfectly right?. Here is my first and only FAIL.

Kind of looks like a surprised face ;-0
The peg broke off before I could drive the last inch in. So it did get all the way through the tenon and about 1/2” into the back wall of the mortise before it broke

Also, I guess this is the best place for this kind of failure because it will be covered up by leather for the vise chop.

So here is the assembled core of the bench. Or the wet dog as Roy Underhill called it.

It’s amazing how the pegs hold everything together. Its Rock Friggin’ Solid. Just an incredible bit of ancient technology. There is no give in the joints at all. I’m pretty excited!

Next up:
Flatten the top again
Chamfer dog holes
Glue and bolt on the tool tray (that will be tricky)
Final small details (removing dents and such)
Apply finish

So I’m almost done!

Comments and questions are always welcome.

Thanks for the watching and for all the encouragement!

Mauricio

I had a bunch of rough sawn Red Oak that was perfect to use up on the shelf. I’m done making furniture out of Red Oak so I really wanted to burn through it all with this bench build.

So I got a nice workout two days ago with the wooden Fore, Scrub, and Stanley #5.

I got these boards flat enough on one side to run through the thickness planer. But before that I scrubbed the other side to remove the dirty exterior to save the planet knives from the wear.

A couple of the boards were kind of narrow so I edge jointed them two at a time while they were still in their rough state. I put a slight hollow in them which made for a nice spring joint.

This was my first time trying this technique. It worked great! The joints were so good that all I needed was one clamp in the center. I also used a couple of spring clamps on the ends to help with alignment.

After all the boards were flattened and run through the planner I jointed one edge with the #7 and made the other edge parrallel on the Table Saw. Now for some fun with the old Stanley #45!

But before that I removed the the machine marks with the #4

I wanted to do a beaded shiplap on the boards, because The Schwarz did it :-), but also because it made sense to allow for expansion and contraction while adding a little style. I also like the fact that the bead does have a practical purpose. It rounds over the edge which makes it stronger, otherwise the edge would eventually chip and you would see it any way. So instead of hiding it, accentuate it and add a decorative detail.

I tested it out first on some scrap. This is my first time trying out the #45. It worked fine, it took some fettling to get the depth of cut just right. But the results were satisfactory.

Now for the real thing. I don’t have the wagon vise installed yet and the dogs are not quite close enough to the edge but that didn’t stop me at all. There are so many ways to secure work on this bench!

I ran all the beads on one edge of each board.

Then cut rabbets with two cuts on the TS for the other edge. Funny how you tend to forget to use your brain when you run boards through machines. At least I do. You can see in this pic that I ran the wrong face along the fence on many of these boards which undercut the bead a little too much. Oh well, hope they hold up!

This morning I cut, aligned, and screwed on the cleats for the shelf. No pics of this boring process. The only tricky part was putting a 15 degree angle on the back cleats. I just laid it out and planed them down to the line with my #5. It was a very quick process.

Then I shot the front edge of each board with the new #62, still with the factory edge on it. I haven’t stopped to sharpen yet but it still slices end grain like a champ. Then on the back end of the board I cut a 15 degree angle so it would match the back stretcher and legs. Sorry no pics of this.

And the result!!!??? Drum roll please!!!........

Voila!

From the back:

I really like how it came out. I’m glad I didn’t skimp on this part of the bench or procrastinate and leave it for later. I really think it completes the bench.

I had planned on putting the shelf at the bottom of the stretcher the way Roy Underhill and Schwarz did. But I don’t plan on putting a lid on it to make it a tool chest. At this point I just want an open shelf. And if I ever do decide to put a low cabinet down there then the shelf is already good to go flush with the top of the stretchers

So the bench is practically done.
Next I will take it apart, smooth all surfaces
Tweak a few minor details
Then I will drill for the drawbore pegs
I want to make a drawbore pin, I know I don’t really need it, but I just want to. And I already bought all the parts for it.
Flatten the top again
Apply the Oil/Varnish blend
Glue on leather pads on both vises.

Martin Luther King day on Monday which means no work, so hopefully I get some more shop time in this weekend.

Thanks it for now folks, thanks for watching!

Mauricio

I need to finish up this leg vise, then the lower shelf and I’ll be ready for final assembly.

A while back BrandonW gave me a Jatoba board. Its the same stuff I’m using on my deadman. Its beautiful dense wood and I’ve been milking every last scrap of it. I used the below scrap as my garter even though it is the checked end of the board. I ended up having to use a lot of superglue in the cracks to hold it together. But I think it’s going to be worth it. It really looks nice.

Here is the final result after laying out and cutting it to shape.

This wood is a lot redder than it appears in the pics. I’ll be sure to take some better pics for the final reveal.

Then I needed a handle for the vise. I had a piece of hickory firewood that worked perfectly for this. I am introducing yet another wood species here but I think it blends well with the oak.

I tried to match the style of my lee valley screw handle that I will be using for the wagon vise. Close enough…

Next, I needed a nut for the screw I’m using as my parallel guide. I made the nut 1.5” thick so that it would engage at least 3 threads on the screw. This is one of the disadvantages to the screw I’m using (2tpi). The nut on the Shaker bench in Scott Landis’ book is only 3/4” but its on a screw that is smaller with a higher TPI. Also a nut that is 3/4” does not affect the vise closing down to zero. Mine does.

Here is my solution to overcoming part of that problem. You’ll notice that the picture above has a lot of guide lines for the bevel cuts I decided to make.

I pulled out my home made tenon jig which is just an LVL block with a cleat screwed to it, works great:

And cut some bevels on it.

The advantage to this is that it keeps my threads intact while thinning the outside. This allows the leg vise to wrack a little more without the nut getting so much in the way.

You’ll see in a minute that the vise still does not close up all the way but I can very effectively clamp a 1/4 board (more like 3/16”) without it budging.

Here is a pic with a 1/4” piece of plywood clamped in the vise with the leather I’m planning on using. The leather is about an 1/8” thick so that helps. I can move the bench before the piece will move. So I’m thinking I will leave the vise as is even though it doesn’t close up all the way. It bugs me a little but I can live with it.

Oops, that pic is a little out of order and gives away part of the ending. Oh well… :-)

The other option was to cut a recess in the vise chop to make room for the nut but I think I will hold off on that.

Now to shape the chop. I had planned to make it similar to the Shaker vise chop but I decided to keep it as beefy as possible. The walnut was so beautiful that I wanted to keep as much of it as I could. So I decided to just do a round over at the top and leave the rest along.

I did the layout with a French curve and a white wax pencil. I tried a couple of variations but finally went with the outside line for a more robust round over.

Sawed out most of the waste.

Gave the new #62 a spin. I’m still getting used to this tool so I’ll reserve judgment. I just didn’t feel comfortable maneuvering it during this application.

The #4 worked out better. I just felt right.

This is what it looks like with Mineral Spirits on it! I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.

And here is the finished product.

This is an older picture but you can see that the capacity is pretty nice!

14.5”!

So the leg vise is pretty much done. I have some UHMW tape I want to put in the hole of the parallel guide to make it run smoother and keep it from getting bumped around so much it passes through the leg.

The clamping power of this vise is amazing. I put Christef’s Mallet in the vise with the leather and I’m not exaggerating when I say I can move the entire bench by moving the handle and the mallet doesn’t budge at all!

You’ll see in the next blog I am using the leg vise a lot for edge jointing shelf boards.

Thanks for following along!

Mauricio

It’s hard to believe I started cutting up the parts for my top in January. It’s taken me almost a year. However there were some detours taken along with way on other project. I’m in the home stretch now!

I needed a hub for the screw. One of the luxuries of making your own screws is that you can make the hub out of any wood you want. I went with some QSWO I had left from my stretchers. I think it makes a softer contrast than maple against the walnut chop I’ll be using.

I’m pretty proud of the gain match on the glue up. It looks almost like one piece of wood.
I went with a subtle concave along the length and sanded it up to 400 grit.

Drilled a hole in the hub, turned the screw to fit, and glued it in. I use axle keys as set up block a lot, you can get them cheap at Ace hardware.
These are 3/8”, I used them to make sure I kept my garter groove at the right width.

I like how it came out.

My walnut vise chop netted out to 1.75” thick after surfacing both faces. I thought that looked thin so…

Resawed about another 1” off the rest of the board to laminate on to the board in the previous pic.

Glued that up.

Now we have the aesthetical beefiness! Or ”gravity” if you prefer ScottyB. ;-p

Then after some cleanup we have this. I also trimmed the board to have the grain pattern of the wood centered. I drilled the hole for the screw in a knot so hopefully it will look like the grain flows around the hub

Then drilled a hole for the screw, inserted the screw and screwed it into the leg, marked out the location for the lower screw, then drilled that hole.

And when we put both together?! Voila!

A functioning leg vise! I’m stoked!

How does it hold you might ask? Like a Boss!

I will be gluing on some leather, for now I tested it with non-slip drawer liner. Here I’m testing out clampling a 3/4” board with a 1.5” “nut” in the parallel guide. I’m still working out the details of that part.

However with very little cranking the hold is amazingly strong. I can jump on this board and it doesn’t budge!

Next up: Shaping the chop, Jatoba garter (thanks again BrandonW), and the nut for the parallel guide.

Thanks for watching and sharing in the joy folks!

Merry Christmas,

Mauricio

New method picked up on this blog.

Pretty self-explanatory. This method has much less room for error than my previous method.

Basically, a lead “screw” I laid out and cut by hand attached to my blank via a coupler I made. I made it octagonal so it looks like a nut. The lead screw uses the same “false nut” the tap uses to advance the whole thing at the proper rate.

Some pics:
The “machine”:

The coupler:

Where the action happens:

So what’s the verdict? These are the best results so far. Quite acceptable. I mangled my first blank but I made some adjustments cutting the second screw and it went a lot better. On one part of the second screw I cut it incrementally and I think that helped a lot. The ability to do so is one of the strengths of this jig.

RESULTS:
Here is the good side of the screw:

And the rougher sides:

Not horrible, I don’t think. I can file and sand a lot of that out.

And here is the bottom line…. does it fit the leg I tapped?
hallelujah!

I’ll run a couple more screws before moving on but I think I have what I need to make my vise.
I’ll make some more adjustments to see if I can’t eliminate more of the chatter I’m getting.

Another great thing about this jig is I made it to fit the dowels I order online. All I have to do is drop a blank in and start cranking. After that I need to make and attach a hub that I’ll turn.

Thanks for watching and for your support!

Mauricio

Made a new jig

After one test screw, I successfuly made one that had reasonable little chipping, I was happy with it.

I actually cut the hub off a reject screw and reused it on this one.

Tapped the leg

Tried the screw, but it binds up after a little bit.
I kept tapping the threads deeper and deeper hoping it would fit but it wasn’t the diameter of the hole, it was the thread pitch, and since the leg is pretty thick there are a lot of teeth that engage the nut so it has to be right on. I have no idea why this is happening… The same tap was used for the guide threads in the screw making jig, it should be exactly the same, but its not….

Ironically one of the first practice screws I made with my first jig fit perfectly. I’d use it except I would need a 3” thick chop and it would only have a 4.5” clamping capacity.

Here are all of my attempts laid out in chronological order. The closest ones are the oldest.

Like I said, the first ones I made fit so I still have hope and one more screw blank!

I hope to have good news for you soon.

Thanks for watching and thanks for your support.

Mauricio

Mostly pictures though. Questions and Comments are welcome!

THE WELL BACK:
Trying to “Steam Bend” the tool well back straight. Notice the dowle I used to get the clamp as far out of the way as possible.

Hit it with the heat gun

Got it straight enough to joint one side and run through the planner without losing too much thickness

This process did work ok, unfortunately I didn’t measure the before and after for a fair comparison.

Flattened one side of the well back with the scrub, #5, and #7 before running the other side through the planner

WELL JOINERY
Grooving the end caps. I’ve got a #45 on the way for future grooves. For now I got creative with the bench and hold fasts. I love me some holdfasts! So versatile.

I tried making a shallow rebate on the back on the Tails to make a tighter joint with the tails. The 78 wasn’t the best tool for the job. as you can see the fence extends beyond the sole of the plane and is not held firmly letting it pivot despite the set screw. The knicker chewed up my base line. Oh well. We’ll have to make a dust riser for that corner to hide the mistake.

I tried using the 71 to true things up, it helped some but its going to be kind of ugly. I’m not too worried, after doing a few dovetails you’ll realize there are lots of tricks for hiding your mistakes.

Next I cut the tails. I’m using the bench already for everything! I love it.

Tails Cut

This is my first time using the “Chop and Chip” method of waste clean out.

Worked out pretty well!

Transferring the tails to the pin board was very challenging because the pin board is 6’ long. I had to lay both pieces on their side which made alignment and marking tough. No pic of that.

!WARNING: HAIRY LEGS IN CROCS TO FOLLOW!

Cutting the pins on he saw bench

Lots of test fitting and testing to get them to fit.

This is the good side, the other side is looser and sloppier and will need some patching.

THE WELL BOTTOM:
Smoothing the poplar board for my well bottom

Jointing an edge, the holdfasts and deadman already coming in quite handy

Rebating the bottom of the well bottom

The 78 was set for a thick cut for speed and the 92 came in for fine tuning.

I dont have a pic but I use axle keys I get cheap from ACE hardware to gauge the thickness of the tongue left from the rebate.

I fit the board in the well. Cut out recesses to fit around the legs. I’ll be hiding the fit with some quarter round molding later.

And here is where we leave off.
A #7 lays in there nicely and clear the top.

It almost clears the top sitting upright but not quite.

Another angle of the well

That’s it for now folks. Next I tackle the Wooden Screw (again) and the leg vise.

Thanks for watching!

Mauricio

Here is my most recent progress. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

I previously milled the grove on the underside of the bench.

I cut a rabet 3/4” in from the front and glued on a 3/4” tenon.

This was cut by hand. First had to perfect the fit.

Laid out the design with a wax pencil.

Bandsawed the curve then cleaned up with a spokeshave.

After drilling the holes and cleaned the Jatoba with Acetone and glued on the tenon and bottom piece with TBIII

To keep the tenon as long as possible and still be able to slip it into the groove I came with this idea, chamfering the back corner of the tenon. It works pretty well.

I cut one side of the V on the table saw but because the block on this end is not the same thickness as the other, the deadman wont sit flat to cut both sides so I cut the other side with a hand saw.

Then cleaned up the cut with my #92, it works well but it is a knuckle buster, I cut myself about 3 times on this step. Not on the plane of course but on the sharp edges of the work piece.

For the rail I used my #5 and #7 to joint one face and edge of a board and then ripped it off on the table saw.

And here is how it looks with the bottom rail temporarily in place.

I cut the rail to make a little door for removing the deadman. Screwed them down.

Left a neat little gap at the top. Just trial and error, no logic on how much room I left.

And here is where we leave off.

Thanks again to BrandonW for giving me the Jatoba. I’ve put it to good use.

As always thanks for watching!

Mauricio

Laid out and drilled my row of dog holes 3” apart. Sorry, galoot index is Zero on this one.

I used a ¾” spade bit to make the wholes. Let me just say that I think spade bits are underrated. If you don’t need to make a flat bottom hole or drill overlapping holes I like them better than Forstner bits. The spade bit leaves a pretty clean entry whole and cut pretty fast with a lot less effort IMHO.

Drilled out for the second end Cap.

And here is where I’m at to date.

Some thoughts on the wagon vise. The vise clamps very strong, my only concern is that it does cause the wood to bow up off of the bench top which is not good for planning. Maybe I haven’t figured out how to use it correctly or maybe my wooden dogs don’t have the proper angle cut into their face. I’ll have to experiment with the dogs to see how I can make the board bow downwards keeping it flat on the bench.

I welcome any advice on that.

I plan on getting a pair of pair the Veritas brass bench dogs. We’ll see if that helps at all.

It looks like I’m close to done but the to-do list is still pretty long:
Mill well back
Dovetail well back
Make and fit well board
Angle on rail for deadman
Make deadman
Attach shelf ledgers? Or just screw on?
Mill shelf boards.
Blacken bolts?
Chop hole for planning stop?
Make wooden screw and tap leg
Make vise chop

Weigh parts (just curious about total weight)
Make draw bore pin (just because I want one)
Drill for drawbore
Chamfer All Edges
Smooth all surface
Assemble Base

Final Prep for finish
Finish
Glue leather pads on, leg vise, wagon vise, holdfasts

-Thats all for now folks. Thanks for watching,

Mauricio

Ok, the next step is the make a wagon vise out of this screw I got from Lee Valley.

Thanks to PurpLev for the inspiration on his blog:
http://lumberjocks.com/PurpLev/blog/17919

First I jointed one side of the boards for the end caps then ran it through the thickens planner, etc…

Next since the wood in the wagon vise recess had warped since being cut I had to trim some wood off using my #78, #92, and a chisel.

I even used the front bullnose portion of the 78.

It didnt work so well because the grain was running the wrong direction so ultimately it was mostly done by chisel.

Next to lay the nut into the Wagon Block:

I hacked at this all kinds of different ways. The forstner bit on the drill press was having a lot of trouble with this.

It was a pain, I think next time I’ll try the router bit in the drill press trick, just seems scary.

Now to crosscut the ends:

The left side was tricky because the legs were in the way of me clamping down my circular saw guide. So I used my holdfast (a lot of holdfast action in these pics) and a little makeshift extension for the F clamp.

The saw didnt cut through all the way so I cleaned up the rest with chisel and block plane:

Next I needed to patch this little chamfer from when this wood was part of a table:

Turned out ok, I nearly matched the grain perfectly:

Rout the ends of the bench to take the spline that will mate with the end caps.

Check out my new router set up! Again the holdfast work great, so versatile.

I like how the joint is subtly highlighted here.

Now what you’ve all been waiting for, the WAGON VISE!

Dog hole in the wagon block.

Counter bore then drill for the bolt. I dont have a pic of the holes drilled in the underside, that was kind of a pain because i had to square one side of the hole to mate
with the washer.

This little hard maple piece holds the screw level.

EDIT
Here is a shot of the entire assembly from below. My hardware store didnt have stainless steel barrel nuts so I had to go with a whole I squared up on one side to receive a washer and nut. Its a pain to get the washer and nut on the bolt in this little 3/4” hole.

And Voila! We have a wagon vise. I dont have the row of dog holes yet but so far it seems to work great.

It also works great for working the end of a board. Holds rock solid.

A nice 8” of clamping capacity!

Benchcrafted eat your heart out. LOL, just kidding, its not nearly as nice but it works pretty damn good at a fraction of the cost.

Anyway, thats what I have for now, I’ve got you guys all caught up. Sorry for the hasty post if I misspelled anything or was unclear in any way. I’m open to question or comments.

Thanks for watching, it wouldnt be nearly as fun without people to share it with.

Mauricio

I’m made a lot more progress since my last post so I will break it up into a couple of posts.

These are pretty straight forward, I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Deadman: BrandonW gave me this piece of Jatoba when we first met, Thanks again Brandon! I decided to use it for my deadman. Here I’m using the Paul Sellers trick for a makeshift end vise, it works ok but I cant wait to have a wagon vise.

Very dense wood but it planes pretty nicely.

Here is the design I think I’m going with. I’m going to finish it after assembly, just wanted to pane it down to see what kind of dimensions I’m working with before routing the groove in the bench top.

I went with a 1” deep groove, 3/4” wide. I think I’m going to have the V” slider/rail either stop 6” short of the left leg for deadman removal or maybe a short rail piece I can screw in place and remove whenever I want to remove the deadman. I’m still working out the details in my head.
Here I’m using my makeshift wooden block router edge guide, I have since purchased a Bosch edge guide which is a nice upgrade.

Next, I cut the legs to length. I was pretty nervous about this, since the back legs are splayed, I couldnt simple cut them to equal lengths. So what I did was shim the legs to have the front legs plum and the top level. And scribe a line from the floor with dividers. This was tricky because the garage floor is not level. So Once I took the bench apart I just went with the longest distance on each leg, A also erred on the side of making the front legs equal length, same on the back legs. Fortunately it worked out, after cutting them the bench was nice and level and the front legs plum.

The height worked out perfectly and there is now wobble at all in the base. I also love the height. I ended up at around 33.5”. I literally could not get more height out the legs because of the back leg splay, it causes you to lose a lot of height. I’m 6’2” so it made me nervous to have it so low. But this is the height of Schwarz’ bench and he is 2” taller than me which was reassuring.

The height works and is nice for planning, It really lets you get your weight over the plane, you just lean on it and it goes!

Next for the Holdfast holes: I love these things! I’ve been using them a lot already, you’ll see in future pictures how I’ve used them for making other bench components.

Then to drill out are the holes for the wooden screws for the vise and parallel guide. The front legs were pretty straight forward, 1.5” for the screw (threads to be tapped later) and 2 1/8” for the parallel guide. It was slow going on my cheap little drill press, these are big holes.

But probably the hairiest part is the angled whole I need for clearance in the back leg. I marked off the location on both sides of the leg so I could meet in the middle as close as possible.

The two holes met in the middle, off by only about 1/8” which was easily chiseled smooth with a gouge and rasp.

This picture shows how the screw will pass through the back leg.

So here is where we leave off:

Actually that pic doesnt have the holdfast holes in the top but you get the idea.

I’ve finished my end caps and wagon vise. I’ll post that blog when I get more time.

Thanks for watching and thanks for your support!

Mauricio

I’m long overdue for an update so there are a lot of pictures. I’ve made quite a bit of progress but the ending is not so happy I’m afraid, after reassembling the parts last night I discovered an error I will have to fix. The great thing about woodworking is that almost anything is fixable, it’s just frustrating. You’ll see what I mean at the end.

As usual, I’ll let the pictures do most of the explaining:

Cut the shoulders on the angled tenons. (Baby Monitor in the background, another good reason to use hand tools as much as possible) ;-)

This time I decided I needed to move things along a little faster so I used the band saw instead of my hand saws.

There was some discussion about the strength of angled tenons, you can see in the pic that almost all of the grain runs the full length of the tenon.

With the band saw, what you save in sawing time you give back in tune up afterwards. But, it did give me a chance to play with my new #92.

So here are all my leg tenons together.

Now to rout the mortises. On this bench I’ve done pretty much every possible way to cut a mortise. For these I nailed down a template and used that to guide my router. I left some extra wood to pair by hand later for a tight fit. This can be pretty tedious. On the stretcher tenons I got wise and set the router to give me a good fit right from the start with little pairing needed.

So here is the bench taking shape.

Then to joint one face of the short stretchers. I tried the Paul Sellers vise in the clamp trick, It worked great but I can’t wait to have a wagon vise. To make faster progress I just took any twist out of one face with the jack plane, once it didn’t rock anymore I ran them through the power planer.

Cut the tenons on the band saw, these came out pretty nice. Since these stretchers were short and manageable I cut the shoulders on my table saw. All the other shoulders are sawn by hand.

I then clamp the stretcher in position and mark out the angle for the angled shoulder.

I came up with this contraption to use the cut off from the stretcher double stick taped to the stretcher to hold the piece at the proper angle to cut the tenons. The whole thing rides on a piece of plywood.

This didn’t go well, for some reason I got a lot of drift on the bottom of the cut. You can see how there is a lot of wood left outside the line, On the other side of the tenon too much was taken off, about the same amount of error on both sides.

But it gave me a chance to try out my new #71! I love this tool. I haven’t even sharpened it, too impatient, but for working across the grain it worked fine. Luckily I always leave a lot of extra length when I rough cut my pieces so I had a nice cut off to use to hold up the other side of the router plane.

Here are the cleaned up tenons, I did cut off the ends so that I had a 1/2” shoulder all around but I don’t have a pic of that.

For the angled mortises I drill out the ends of the mortise with brace and bit, then use a forstner bit on the drill press to take out the rest.

And here is the first stretcher in place.

Now with both short stretchers

Here is my stock for the long stretchers with some Mineral Spirits on them, I scored some cheap QTWO for these.

The cool thing is that I’m already getting to use my bench to work on the stretchers.

Here I position the stretcher to mark out the location of the mortise.

I made a makeshift edge guide to rout out all the mortises for the stretchers. It worked just fine.

And here is the reassembled bench but there is a problem…..

Tragically there is a gap on each of the shoulders.

It took me a while to figure out what the problem was. The legs were perfectly square to the top, and I knew for sure that the shoulders on the stretcher were perfectly square. Turns out that the mortises on the right leg are a full 1 inch higher than the left leg!!! :-( How did I mess that up? I don’t know, but the worst part is that all 4 mortises on that right side of the bench are also off.

On the long stretchers all I have to do is cut the mortise 1” longer but then it will stick out above the stretcher so I will have to glue in a filler piece. But what about the short stretcher? If I slide that one down then the angel changes in relation to the back leg and the stretcher will be too short…

So I’m planning on fixing the mortises on the long stretchers and leaving the short stretcher as is. when I get around to putting in a shelf that stretcher will be an inch proud of the shelf. This doesn’t bother me too much, also if I put in a cabinet that won’t be noticeable at all.

So that’s the plan going forward. Let me know if you guys have any better ideas.

Thanks for watching,

Mauricio

Flattened the top. This is the first real workout for the #7! Worked great.

Square edges, stool as board jack. First real workout for the #5 to. I love it, it really gets the work done fast!

I decided a 2.5” top looked to skinny in proportion to my legs, so I beefed up the front edge.
This is how it should look when done.

So I glued on some more wood to beefed up the front 3.5” of the front. The finished thickness is about 3.5”. The legs will mortise directly into this thicker part so its more than just an apron.

I cut my tenons by hand, I seem to remember that this workbench was my excuse for buying the Veritas carcass saws so I had to use them. This part of the build was actually a lot of fun.
Laid out the tenons on the legs

The notch trick to guide the saw

And ripped the tenons

Chisel out the line for the shoulder, and the notch on the corner again.

Tenons ready to go right of the saw. Almost no shoulder plane work needed to fit into the mortise later! Very gratifying to accomplish this with hand saws.

The first mortise I tried to do galoot style with brace and bit but that was hard work in oak.

I tried a corded drill with forstner bit but that didnt work well and burned the wood.

I continued for a while with the brace and chisel but it was taking way too long. I had to figure out a way to use the drill press. Let me just say, I am ill equipped for work on this scale.

I had an idea but the hole time I’m thinking, “this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea” but I had to give it a try.

I sat my drill press on my flimsy HF workmate and held up the ends on my cheap HF roller stands. It held but barley.

I almost dropped my drill press and bench top when pulling the top off the press but luckily I was able to catch both and avert catastrophe.

So here is where I left off last night (finished at like 1:30am) I’m hurting today.

Next will be the angled tenons for the splayed back legs.

Thanks for watching.

As you know last time I tried to carve my screw by hand, it worked but was slow going. So I built the router jig but have been having trouble dialing it in perfectly.

Here is the router jig I made. As you can see its a loose fit which is why I got a lot of chipping in the tips of the thread, I was cutting to deep.

This is what happened when I fed my hand carved screw in. Sadly it was ruined….

Better results when I started from scratch but still not acceptable. The screw works but it’s not pretty.

So I ruined the dowels I had purchased so instead of buying more I bought an old lathe and learned how to turn a little. Here is some practice on some fire wood.

The first go through the router got jammed, not deep enough:

So I cut that little piece off, tweaked the router and tried again. With success!!!
Still a little chipping thought but not bad.

Except for one hiccup. Doh!!!


The hub hit the router base.

I have been working more on this little piece of my workbench odyssey. I’ve rebuilt the router jig with a little more attention to detail, bought some hard maple, and just cut out my blanks and glued on extra wood for the hubs last night. Once I turn them I’ll be ready to make another go at the threads with the new router jig. Hopefully with no chipping. I’ll update you guys on that for the next blog. Hopefully with great success.

I need to get this done and finish building my bench!!!

I’ve been enthralled with the idea of making my own screws for a long time now and very excited to be seeing a lot of light at the end of the tunnel!!

Thanks for watching and thanks for your support!

Mauricio

Here is a quick review from previous blogs of how I got to this point:

The raw materials:
Started with a green table I got for free from a cabinet shop. Very cupped due to the piths in the slabs.

Cut out the piths.

I ended up with the good parts which were all quarter sawn, about 2.5” Red Oak. The knots will be hidden on the bottom of the bench top.

Now the Plan:
Top

Wagon Vise plan:

I squared up 3 sides of each of the pieces by hand with my #6 and wooden Jointer.

Then I had to cut out the recess for the Wagon Vise
This involved cuts on two of the top pieces before I glued them together. The first was a simple stopped cut on the Band Saw.

Followed by a cross cut by hand

The next piece I had to cut out a recess (stopped rabbet?) which all had to be cut out by hand.
It was tricky since I had only squared 3 side to keep as much thickness as possible so I couldn’t reference off of the bottom of the piece which would have been the most logical. So I used my router table and cut out a groove as high as the bit would go and finished off the rest by hand. By sawing, drilling, and chopping. That was not a pretty process so there are not any pictures of that.

Andy here is how the recess ended up.

Once that was done I drilled holes for dowels to keep the pieces aligned for glue up.

This really helped out tremendously when doing the glue up. This dowel trick together with perfectly hand planed joints, I felt like I could have glued this top together with one clamp. But human nature tells us to use almost every clamp we own just to be on the safe side. I used plenty of glue as you can see, no starved joints here.

So now I have a bench top with a spot for a wagon vise! It netted out to 14” wide.

It’s all downhill from here. Stay tuned for the rest of the build and thanks for watching!

Mauricio

I finally got some time to work more on my wooden screw. So here is what I’ve done.

First the layout, same pitch as the tap, I also lay out the groove for the external garter. Then saw to the line. I also used a set of dividers to score a center line between the kerfs.

Next I use a pencil and my fingers as a fence and mark out a quarter inch chamfer around the tip.

I sit on my freshly finished saw bench and use my “Leg Vise” to hold the screw while I rough out the chamfer.

I then smooth out the bevels with sand paper.

Then I started chopping out the threads with chisel and mallet.

After roughing it out I go over it whith a square file and then 80 grit sandpaper glued to a square piece of wood.

I did get it to work, and I almost made it through the nut last night…

It takes a lot of trial and error, putting the screw in, taking it out, knocking down the high burnished surfaces. It kind of sucks, I think will leave this method to Hero and Archimedes. I’m buying a router bit to finish this thing off. The good thing about having done it by hand is that I now have set up “block” for perfectly positioning the router bit. See Carters blog with a detailed video of that jig. http://lumberjocks.com/CartersWhittling/blog/29104

So I will be ordering the bit, I may carve it a little more in the meantime.

Thanks for reading!

Mauricio