So, now I had to figure out the joinery on the end skirts to the front skirt. I am not proficient on dovetailing (and I was freaked out about the possibility of ruining the skirts), so I just planned on joining them with a tongue and groove. But first, I needed to think about the vises. I had a twin screw Veritas for the end, and a Lee Valley single screw for the face. I simply followed the instructions to the tee & drilled all of the necessary holes for the front vise.

I flipped the top over and installed the vise carriage per the instructions. I had to put a spacer under the carriage to achieve the depth I wanted. Worked out great.

Time for the end vise. I’ll spare you the details, as the subject of installing this twin screw vise have been covered a million times here. However, I will confirm the importance of following the instructions to the tee. Read them carefully, pay attention, and don’t get ahead of yourself.

I routed the back of the end skirt to accept the vise nuts, and routed a channel in the bottom of the benchtop, which I (for some reason) assumed I would need to make the screws clear the bottom of the benchtop. I was wrong, but it was too late.
Drilled the holes for the screws, the barrel bolts, and the guide pins. All in all, it went well.

Regarding attaching the end skirts to the top. The Veritas twin screw came with 4 barrel bolts. I decided to use two on each end skirt. I drilled the holes right through the “tongue” that mated with the slots in the skirts. I drilled the holes in the skirts on the drill press first, set them temporarily on the benchtop, and drilled the holes through the tongue, into the top & hoped everything was square. Now, how to drill the hole in the bottom of the bench for the barrel nut & have it land in the right spot. Per the instructions that came with the Twin Screw, I build a little jig. Worked VERY well.

Tested the fit of the face vise – worked perfectly first time (beginner’s luck)

Played around (a lot) with the twin screws and got ready to glue the skirts to the top…

Next time – gluing the skirts & fine tuning the vises. Thanks for looking….

I did a dry assembly & everything worked great.

It was a little tricky to do by myself, but I got it together without too much trouble.

Although a couple of videos I watched had suggested gluing up the base in stages, I decided to just go for it. I have some Titebond extended open time glue which gave me a little more time. Some coaxing with a mallet, squaring up with the clamps & it was done. It was a complicated glue-up (for me), so I dry assembled it a couple of times, and had clamps & wedges in place before I put a drop of glue on it.

Close-up of wedges:

I let it dry for a couple of days & went after the through tenons to get them cleaned up.

Please do not look too closely at the joints between the top member & the leg…..I still need to work on getting shoulder cuts perfect. But, I was pretty happy with the fit of the wedged through tenons after it was all said & done.

Time to sand it up (a LOT of sanding). After sanding the whole thing, I put 5 coats of wiping varnish (1/3 each BLO, Spar Varnish, and Mineral Spirits), and 2 coats of Armor Seal. It was the first time I used General Finishes Armor Seal, and I really like it. Easy to wipe on, and ended up with a nice smooth finish. Very happy with it.

It turned out flat, square, and unbelievably stout. This thing is a tank – very heavy. I had my benchtop temporarily on a flimsy rolling cart thing that I built years ago, and now it is temporarily on my trestle base. I am now very anxious to get the top done. Time to figure out what to use for the skirts & vise jaws. They need to be 1 1/2” thick, at least, and 6” wide, at least. Back to the pile of Black Walnut & to the store for another gallon of glue! Thanks for looking & I hope to have more soon.

The material is 3/4” thick, and I did not want to use 3 pieces of the walnut to achieve my desired thickness. Why? Well because I thought it was a waste of good wood to bury it in the middle of a lamination, and it would have been too thick. I didn’t mind a thicker stretcher, but 2 1/4” would have been too much. So, I resawed some 5/4 Lenga & ran it through the planer to get a piece about 1/2” thick. I sandwiched the lenga between 2 pieces of walnut & like what I ended up with. By the way, I used my (unfinished) benchtop as a flat surface to glue up the stretchers – worked great.

I glued up 4 stretchers this way & spent a lot of time cleaning up the glue lines & squaring them up. Oh, and these stretchers are HEAVY.

Now to the tenons. I cut the shoulders on the table saw with my sled & cut the waste away with my bandsaw.

The tenons were fairly rough & I did not do a good job getting the shoulders perfect – which was a disappointment, but I was committed. I decided that it would be easier to round off the corners of the tenons than to square up the through mortises, so I grabbed file & rasp and went at it. After the 7th tenon, I finally got the hang of it, but it took a long time.

Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the stretchers after I cut slots for the wedges. I cut those on the bandsaw. Also, rather than purpleheart wedges, I went with Walnut & am glad I did. I built a jig & cut the wedges on the bandsaw (tried on the tablesaw first, for some reason – and that was a learning experience – fortunately with no injuries or major mis-haps, just a reminder how much safer & easier the bandsaw is for dealing with small pieces!) I whittled the wedges down to the perfect width by clamping a hand plane upside down & carefully running the wedges across the blade – shaving off a little at a time until they were the perfect width.

Stretchers built, tenons cut, wedges prepared – no excuse to wait for glue-up! Oh wait, since the width of my trestle base is about a foot wider than the plan (plan = 50 1/2”, my base = 62 1/2”) , I need clamps much longer than I have…..hmmmm….

After all of the foot mortises were done, I went to the bandsaw & cut the thumbnail profile on the feet.

The top members required through mortises, which I did in the same manner as the feet – only all the way through the top member. These will be wedged tenons, the bottom tenons will be draw-bored with dowels, per the plans. The legs also required a through mortis (1” x 3 1/4”). Here are all my mortises done:

I used the table saw and band saw to cut the tenons on the legs (another first for me), and painstakingly fit them with chisels, rasp & files. I do not have a shoulder plane, unfortunately. Then back to the bandsaw to cut spaces for the wedges.

I watched a few videos online on the subject of draw-boring & was able to pull it off fairly well.

A couple of dry-assemblies, fine tuning the tenons & I was ready for glue-up. The draw-boring, by the way, was a lot of fun to do. My wedges turned out a little sloppy, but got better as I progressed. The top members are obviously going to be covered up by the bench top, so I wasn’t too concerned about how they looked – as long as they did what they were meant to.

Side note: I do not have a wood mallet, or dead blow hammer of any kind, so I put a rubber crutch foot on the flat side of my ball-peen hammer & it worked pretty well! You can see it in the picture.

I used purple heart for the wedges (because that is what I had), and although the wedged tenons look a little funky, they sure worked well & the trestle leg assemblies are rock solid!

Now…..what to do about the stretchers? The plans call for stretchers that are 1 3/4” thick x 4” wide x 50 5/8” long. I don’t have anything in my wood pile that is even close to that, so will have to go back to the laminating table! Stay tuned & thanks for checking out my project. Feedback is always welcome….

2 trestle feet & 2 tresle top members plus 4 trestle legs.

I haven’t figured out what to do with the stretchers yet, but am considering a different colored hardwood (Mahogany / walnut?)

So, although the progress is slow, I am having fun learning about laminating, milling to size, etc. I just ordered the 2 vises from Lee Valley. Although I was originally going to put a single screw face vise on both the face & end, my brother convinced me that I would regret not investing in the Veritas Twin Screw for the end vise. So, I have a single screw lee valley face vise, and the twin screw end vise coming soon.

On an entirely seperate note, check this out – a gift from my brother-in-law:

Yes, that is one big chunk of beeswax.

Stand by for more updates soon. Thanks for checking in.

The wood – I acquired a bunch of rough lenga (a hardwood from Chile that resembles Cherry) that is a hair over 1/2” thick. It came from some 6/4 material that was re-sawn down to 4/4. I ended up with the “2/4”. Problem was, it immediately started cupping and bowing all over the place. Hung out in my garage for a couple years & didn’t get any better…

I started by ripping all of the pieces down to 3 1/2” wide. It was not straight-line-ripped, so I built a table saw sled/jig to rip one edge straight. Most of the lumber was a little over 8’ long. At the end of the day, I ended up with about 70 pieces 8’ long. I ran all of it through my Dewalt portable planer & most cleaned up at 3/8” thick. This whole process cleaned up most of the cupping problems I had, but every piece was still bowed.

I have the immense good fortune to have a friend who owns a custom millwork & woodworking shop who offered the use of his clamps (and his help) to glue this thing up. So, after about 4 ‘after work’ sessions over the last couple weeks, I had a really messy looking, 3 1/4” thick, 94” long, 25” wide beast.

One more after work session, and the use of a monster wide belt sander, and the thing was flattened & cleaned up on both sides. It was awesome to watch. The sander has a cutter-head (similar to a planer head) ahead of the sanding belt. We took off about 1/8” with the cutter head & sanded it smooth on one side in about 30 seconds.


Flipped it, took 2 lighter passes on, and it is beautiful!

Two cuts on a massive sliding table saw with about a 14” blade, and the ends were clean & square. (sorry, no pictures of that one…) Did I mention that I have immense good fortune to have a ‘friend’ in the millwork business??

Final dimensions: A hair over 3” thick. exactly 25” wide, 90” long.

So, brought it home & it is in the middle of the shop awaiting a trestle base. I am planning on building a version of a bench from Schleining’s workbench book. I think there was a FWW article on it somewhere – called “The Essential Workbench” or something like that. 5” apron (wood to be determined), trestle base, face & end vice.

I suspect the rest of the project will take much longer, because it will all happen in my garage. However, doing the top this way kind of felt like cheating….but I don’t regret it!!

This time, I will document the process. I will need some advice on attaching the top to the base, wood movement & joinery issues (especially with regards to attaching the apron to the slab). I’ll go to the forum with questions as I move along this process. Thanks for looking & feedback is always appreciated – I am still a noob.

By the way, there are only 3 legs on this thing. Another genius move on my first attempt – why keep the angles simple? No, I had to make it hard on myself.

The triangular part is made of 3/4” thick material, 3 smaller triangles glued together to make a larger triangle. It’s about 19” on each side, I think. Again, I don’t have any pics of the thing in progress, as I started this blog “mid stream”. Here’s the triangle top:

And a little closer shot:

The plan called for using splines to hold the pieces together, but I used biscuits. It was my first time using a biscuit jointer, and it was very cool. However, if you saw the bottom of this piece, you would notice the fit is not perfect. I checked my table saw blade (after gluing this up), and found it was not exactly 90 degrees to the table. Rookie move – I know better. Maybe next time I’ll check the blade BEFORE cutting…. In any event, I think it turned out fine where it counts – on the top.

The drop leaves were also a trial for me. Also 3/4 material. 10 1/2” radius, but only about 5” wide at the peak of the raduis. I ended up using the band saw to freehand the radius, and a flush bit on the router to clean it up. Here is one of them:

And here is where I am now with the top:

And a closer shot:

Having a little trouble getting the pictures right, but I’ll get it figured out. So that’s where I am at the moment. Again, any feedback will be very much appreciated. Thanks Lumberjocks!

Wood: I work in the lumber business (mostly high end softwoods but a few hardwoods), and had the opportunity to grab something called Lenga. It is very loosely referred to as “Chilean Cherry”. The FWW article used quarter sawn oak, I think. But, for this first try I decided to use wood at hand & something I could afford. I bought enough for several tables.

Timetable: Was going to give one as a gift for Christmas ‘08. Didn’t happen.

Where I am now: I cut the “blanks” for the legs out of some 8/4 stock. I wish I would have started this blog long ago, but didn’t, so here’s my progress on the legs so far:

The legs were a challenge. I probably should not have chosen a diamond shaped object as my first attempt at mortising, but what the heck. I did the mortises on my drill press with a mortising attachment. The article advised making a jig (sort of) for this purpose, which I did. The mortises are sloppy, but I’m hoping to be able to work with each tennon & salvage a decent fit.

I also have a start on the top, so that will be my next blog entry. This is my first attempt at:
1- Blogging
2- Intermediate Woodworking
3- Posting pictures on Photobucket
So, if you have any feedback on any of this, please fire away. Thanks Lumberjocks!