1. I added a large box of sand to the design of the base (see post #1 about this).
   
2. I added a fourth layer (this time of 1 1/2 inch thick SYP (southern yellow pine) to the lamination. (see picture below).
   
   
   
   
   So I added the SYP & cut the tops to length using a guide & my circular saw, then added the end pieces of trim. Cutting these to length was one of the most nerve-wracking parts of this whole process, because the top was about 4 inches in thickness, and I had no way to cut a clean line through that much wood. So I came up with a method of using a guide and paying VERY CAREFUL attention to the fence and my circular saw cutting edge (less for safety sake—though important—and more for not screwing up the length). This worked – but only because I test-cut a couple times beyond the final edge to figure out the process.
   The end pieces of trim were cut slightly longer than final length, also the cut made with the circular saw needed a little work, so I finessed the final fit and length using chisels & a handplane, then attached the trim piece. When attaching the end trim pieces, I found that I didn’t have a clamp that could work in this situation, so I drilled six holes (three on a side) and used screws and glue to attach the pieces. The screws acted as clamps, and I removed them after the glue set, then filled in the holes with complementary wood dowels. Here is a picture of the final result:
   
   
   
   Next I:
   
• built my face vise (this allowed me to begin holding workpieces for the more complex tail vise construction).
• drilled dog holes
• built the tail vise (OMG, this would deserve its own blog post, and I didn’t take enough pictures to do it justice.) then
• attached the bench top
  
  The face vise chop is a lamination of two pieces of 4/4 quartersawn red oak obtained from Woodcraft.
  
  
  
  
  The dog holes were drilled with a hand drill and a jig that I made to keep the holes spaced correctly and to keep the holes straight. The jig was a piece of 2×4 with a fence glued to one edge, so that I could abut the jig to the bench and clamp it to the benchtop. Two holes, each 4 inches apart (how far I wanted my dog holes) were drilled through the jig. To use the jig you find the spot you want your first hole, clamp it in, drill two holes (one for each hole in the jig), then move the jig 4 inches, reference one hole in the jig off the most distal dog hole in the bench, clamp & drill, move & repeat all the way down the bench.
  
  
  
  The tail vise was tricky to install, but is my favorite of the two vises – now that it is installed. SUPER useful. (However, if I wanted an easier build, I would try a different style of tail vise, like one of the “drop in” styles). I got mine for 40 bucks, (on clearance at woodcraft) and it is German made, so I couldn’t pass that up; also, I like the traditional look of the old school tail vises. The short version of how I did the tail vise is by lots of careful planning of each step & face-face laminations of 4/4 red oak. Lots of finessing of fit by chisel & planes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here I am about to make the wooden cover to hide the top of the vise:
  
  
  To attach the benchtops I needed to
  # cut dadoes in the tops of the base to accommodate the rails/runners that would hold the shelf in the middle, and allow for tool trays later on.
  # affix the runners to the benchtops
  # bolt the tops to the base somehow
  The dadoes I located by placing my tops on the bench, aligning them perfectly & checking for squareness/flushness, then marking the locations on the feet tops with a knife. After I cut the dadoes (handsaw and chisel), I laid the rails in the dadoes, put glue on one edge & moved the tops back into place & clamped carefully.
  
  
  
  After the glue dried I had tops that pretty much didn’t want to budge with front to back motion, but were removable. To stop lateral motion and vertical motion, I cut some blocks, screwed them with enormous screws & glue into the top of the feet, just under the table top, and then put one screw upward into the benchtop from below.
  Now 90% done, I moved the bench into place, & made four cork feet to place under each of the four corners of the bench, (which eliminated rocking movement) and slid the sandbox into the base & covered the sandbox with the shiplapped shelves discussed in the last post. Everything received a coat of BLO except the jaws of the vises. I left these untreated because I plan to line the jaws with leather.

The lumber for the base was 2×4 material from home depot. In my area this is usually some variant of pine or aspen.
I chose the flattest, best boards I could. I also flattened them some with my hand plane before laminating them face to face to create thicker boards.


A lot of the joinery, however, needed to be cut separately—prior to laminating the pieces. Here is an example of a finished mortise pair ready to receive the legs with their tenons.
Notice the unsightly butt-crack caused by joining the faces of two 2×4 boards together. This had to be fixed later with a simple inlay technique.




Each half of the mortise was cut on a separate 2×4 using my table saw & the two halves were later married. First I defined each edge of the mortise, then nibbled away the middle area.





After that, I cleaned up the bottom of the mortise with a chisel. This half-mortise is now ready to be married to its mirror image.




Here I am cutting a tenon by hand. Like the mortise, these were done by cutting a half tenon on each 2×4, then marrying mirrored pairs together as a lamination to make a complete piece.








To join the two leg arrays together to form the base, I needed some stretchers. For these I decided to use 2×4 lumber without laminating them into larger pieces. I didn’t feel like chopping mortises in the legs the hard way, so I went with a large dovetail arrangement, then added pins as a decorative and structural (I hope) element.


Here is the end result.




You can also see in the above picture how I handled the butt-crack problem mentioned earlier. I discovered that the 1/4 inch diameter red oak dowels at my home store matched a little round router bit that I had, and so cleaned out the butt crack with the router, then dropped in the dowels. After the glue dried I planed the dowel to the surface of the leg. Instead of butt-crack I had a decorative inlay that matched the detail wood used elsewhere on the bench.

Here is how I finished the joinery:



I used a template made out of hardboard, and then a pattern router bit to form each tail. A chisel cleaned up the corners and eased the fit. The same template, carefully laid upon the leg faces was used to lay out the socket (integral pins, perhaps?). I cleaned out the socket by defining the edges with a handsaw, nibbling away the middle with a tablesaw, and then cleaning up with a chisel. It went by pretty quickly.










In the end, the bench wasn’t quite as heavy as I wanted, so I built a box sized to straddle the two sled feet across the length of the bench, and then filled the box with sand. It added another 70 pounds to the bench.










Thank you for reading! I hope that this information will be either entertaining or helpful to you. Even better, I hope that someone gets inspired to bite the bullet and try building a bench. You don’t need thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Most entry level woodworkers have the tools I used for this bench. This bench isn’t the best bench in the world, but it looks pretty good, is stable, & holds my work pretty well so far, so I am pleased.
The bench has some flaws. Notably, I will build my next bench with legs flush to the face. Also, I will use heavier wood. Even southern yellow pine, which is cheap where I live, is much heavier than the white pine I made the base out of. So far the bench has been super stable, but I do worry if the white pine is strong enough to make it through years of use. We’ll see, I guess.

Sometime later this weekend a second post will follow, showing the steps I went through to make the benchtop.