Sliding Deadman for Workbench

I created the sliding deadman for my workbench over the holidays. It is made out of the same slab of quilted maple that I made the leg vice from. They seem to match up pretty well.

Since my hand crank post drill is not up and running yet, I borrowed time on my brother’s drill press to make the holes. I then used a tenon saw to cut the shoulder on the top tenon and then got gutsy and used a 10 point crosscut handsaw to cut the cheek. It worked great!

I cut most of the waist out of the curves with a bow saw and then used a flat bottom spokeshave to finish it up. The spokeshave does a great job and making a fair curve. The bottom V groove was the most challenging. I cut three relief cuts with the crosscut saw and then took out most of the waste with the bow saw. I then used a large should plane to freehand the 45 degree angle that needed to mate up with the bench. Once that was done, I used a router plane to cut the center groove a bit deeper since I wanted the deadman to slide on the 45 degree faces and not the tiny top surface on the stretcher of the bench.

I’m happy with the way it turned out. This was my third official woodworking project. Check out my profile if you would like to see pictures of the whole shop. I just posted the pictures. Thanks for looking.