# Super Glide Recycled Roubo Workbench



## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

*Prepping the lumber*

Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.

A little explanation of my title: I call it a "Super Glide" because I am using drawer glides for both the wagon vise and the parallel guide of the leg vise. I am not exactly a purist when it comes to woodworking and the Roubo design won't suffer from a little modern help. More on that later.

The "Recycled" bit is due to the fact that I am cheap! I would have loved to build my bench out of maple but I don't want to afford it. Since I am from the Northwest I thought I would try Douglas Fir. My first thought was to get lumber from a box store but then I had a better idea…I would find some recycled timbers. I found a source at the St Vincent De Paul thrift store in Dayton, OH…where I now live. They had stacks of very dry, very old Doug Fir and Pine rough sawn 4×6s from homes in the are that are being demolished.

I brought it home, dusted it off and started looking for metal! I bought a small metal detector that worked very well…it was the Little Wizard by Lumber Wizard. Some of the nails were modern but many were square so these timbers are indeed very old. I have access to the wood shop at Wright Patterson AF Base but since these timbers are recycled they didn't want me to use their bladed tools…for good reason. So, my only recourse was to build that really cool jig of Nick Offerman's featured in Fine Woodworking.

Here is my stack of recycled lumber:










Here is the jig:










After a several hours of being stooped over moving the router back and forth, back and forth I decided an extension handle might help so I screwed one to my router base plate with piano hinge in between…much better! It would have been much more comfortable if I had a bench to raise the jig up on…kind of a chicken/egg issue.










And, after many hours of routing, here are my dressed timbers. The large pine timbers on the left were a 5×7 beam that I will use to make the legs.










Stay tuned for the next installment when I will mill the timbers for the 4 inch thick top!


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## IndianJoe (Mar 29, 2012)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


I need to make a jig like that I got some big 3'' thick slobs I need to work with and I have been using a plan and it is a lot of work . 
vary nice wood will be looking for work


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## affyx (Jan 1, 2008)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


looking forward to following the build! do u have a sketch of how the "glide" assembly will work?


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## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


The hinging push stick is a brilliant addition to the router sled.


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


JC

I have already built the glide assembly for the wagon vise and am in the process of doing the same for the parallel guide. I don't have any sketches but I will post pics of both in the near future.

Brian,

Thanks for the complement. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. I frankly was too tired of leaning over all the time and I had lots of routing left to do. I have found that in most cases it is worth stopping work to build a jig or make an improvement (though it seems annoying at the time).

Mark


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


Brian…should have been compliment…in case the spelling police are monitoring


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


Rescuing timbers for a bench. Everything's right in the World


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


Al,

Thanks…I like to think every little bit helps. In any case, it is hard to get your hands on really old-growth timber in any other way. And this wood was VERY cheap…I paid less than $125 for the whole lot including the huge 5×7 beam!


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## NateMeadows (May 11, 2012)

WheelsAF said:


> *Prepping the lumber*
> 
> Like many weekend woodworkers I made due for years with half-baked workbenches. A few years back I saw the Roubo design and knew I would build it one day. That day has come. I am a retired AF officer (well…retired from the AF not from working ) who has decided to get serious about my hobby. The furniture we have been dragging around the country and world could really use replacing. So I need a serious bench to help.
> 
> ...


Now that is a sweet jig!

I totally respect and admire you using recycled timber to!

I am looking forward to your future posts.

Thank you very much for your service!


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

*Prepping the bench top timbers*

After all of that routing (having not been able to use a jointer or planer) I did get to use a huge power sander to remove all the tool marks and achieve a great surface for glueing. Because of the way the router jig works, I was able to shim and level the timbers before flattening each of the faces. This means I ended up with pretty square stock.

I decided to make my bench top removable since we are likely going to be moving around for my work. So, my original thought was to use mortise and tenon joints. I considered stopped joints but decided I liked the look of through joints. With that choice made, I considered what shape the tenons should be. I was afraid that if they were simple, straight tenons it would be hard to disassemble. So I decided to make two faces straight and two beveled. I made sure the straight sides were to the left and back…this was to ensure the bench wouldn't rack when I put pressure from front-to-back or from right-to-left; the most common stresses I put on a bench.

I ripped one of my 4×3.5 timbers in half for the front and back edges. This would allow me to put the wagon vise closer to the front of the bench; but not too close, I was careful to leave room for the dado on the underside of the front edge that would accept the runner for my sliding deadman.

Since the timbers were not yet glued up I took advantage and milled the mortises and some slots for chisels/saws along the back edge. Here are the front and back half-timbers all marked up for milling.










You can see that I got creative in cutting the angled edge of the mortise.


















I got even more creative when it came time to make this cut…not the preferred method, but expedient.










Here is one ready to be cleaned up.










For the larger part of the mortises I used a Japanese pull saw and chisel/block plane.










The two back pieces ready to be glued up.










And here they are clamped together to show the leg mortises and tool holders.










The front two are about the same except they have a big blank space for the wagon vise.

More to come…


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

*Cutting the leg tenons and gluing up the top*

Cutting the tenons on the legs. I was really impressed with how well my new Japanese-style pull saw worked. I have never used this type of saw before and it tracked very well once you had an accurate kerf to guide it.










Here is one half done. I then used a chisel and a block plane to clean everything up. You will notice that even on the beveled sides of the tenon I left a little ledge just to ensure the top wouldn't slide up the tenon if pushed upon…like from the leg vise! You see, I don't intend to wedge or pin the tenons.










And here they are all cleaned up.










It is starting to look like a bench! You can see the cutout for the wagon vise.










They fit pretty good…not perfect but then neither am I…










One half of the top glued up. You can see I used every one of my hodge-podge of clamps.










Here are the two halves ready to be glued up. I took them back to the woodworking shop on WPAFB to run them through the sander. The two halves mate perfectly and the top should be perfectly flat.










Here is the complete top glue up. Now…I made a mistake here by only putting clamps on only one side. The top set up slightly bowed. So…though it killed me to do it…I cut it in half, ran both halves through the table saw to clean up the edges, planed off just a little from the center of each mating face, and glued it up again. This time I made sure to have clamps on both sides. All of this could have been avoided if I had another few hundred dollars in clamps!










The top is better now…just a little bow (the other way this time) but that can be cleaned up later. Behold! My upside down bench!










Next on to the stretchers…


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

*Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*

Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.

Here is an over all look from the bottom of the bench with the chop not yet installed. You can see I used some spacers between the chop and the drawer glide; I did this in the hope that I can keep some of the debris from interferring with the glide mechanism. You can see that I set up the wagon vise opening in line with the leg. This should allow for better stability if I clamp a long piece.










Here it is with the chop installed. It took a bit of fine tuning to get it to run smoothly.










I found that the chop when fully extended was a bit weak in the vertical dimension. I was afraid that any pounding on a clamped item would bend the mechanism. So, I installed some hardwood runners to carry the load.










This picture might show better how the runners limit the movement of the chop.










Although the bench is upside down still, here you can see the whole assembly with the screw and chop in place.










I don't know yet how this system will work…I haven't tried it under the strain of an actual project. I will let you know how it holds up. I expect it will be just fine…the drawer glides really just take the place of the traditional wooden runners.


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## AKAndrew (Oct 20, 2010)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


how is it holding up?


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## Smitty_Cabinetshop (Mar 26, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


How 'bout now?


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## JGM0658 (Aug 16, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


Clever idea, but I would be afraid the bearing would come off loose when you apply pressure.


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


so far so good. I haven't done anything dramatic yet but I am about to start a cherry sideboard for my wife. So, after this winter I should have a better idea.


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## Frustrator (Jul 12, 2015)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


How did it work out?


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## WheelsAF (Nov 10, 2011)

WheelsAF said:


> *Wagon Vise w/ drawer glides*
> 
> Here is my wagon vise. It is pretty standard in that I used a Lee-Nielsen vise screw. The innovative part is using 8" full-extension drawer glides to ensure smooth travel.
> 
> ...


Frustrator,
It worked out well. I used the bench to build a buffet for my wife (added to my projects as "Dichromate Stained Cherry Buffet"). The wagon vise was very useful in holding work while planing the edges of parts. It has never bound up and can take all the pressure I can put on it.

Thanks for asking…if you are interested in building something similar feel free to ask more questions.


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