I took this picture a few weeks ago, but forgot to post it… Here’s exactly why I ended up going with the split-top design. You can just slip your piece around the front part of the bench and grab it with the wagon vise. Bingo-Bongo, it’s not going anywhere.
Honestly, this drawer was a little huge and awkward, and it still worked really well. Sliding smaller drawers and casework around the back and clamping it down for finish planing is going to be a complete joy.
,
– Matt
So, we left off with the bench pretty much being done.. Just needed to flatten the top, apply some finish, chamfer edges, stuff like that.
Actually, one of the first things I needed to do was put some 3/4” holes in the rear part of the bench for holdfasts or any other standard 3/4” bench accessory. How do you drill a 3/4” hole in a 4” bench top? Well, I seriously considered setting the benchtop on my drill press (I’ve got a monster of a drill press). But, in the end, I figured a brace and a bit would do just fine. The secret is to stop right when the screw tip pokes out the bottom of your hole, and then drill up from the bottom so there’s no blow-out.
Here’s one coming along nicely:
And another one:
And another:
And so on… Chris Schwarz was right though. After you do a couple of these, you get a feel for what is perpendicular, and you don’t even really need the squares anymore. It was quite a workout though, ash is some tough wood.
Next, I had to do some final tuning in a few places before I could call it a day and move on to chamfering, flattening, and finishing. A ferret could make a home in this gap between the leg and benchtop…
Anyways, after some fine-tuning, some cleanup, I got onto the flattening. I’m not gonna cover that subject here, it’s been done to death. It takes a little while, and you need to be careful not to introduce twist, but it’s not so bad. And when you’re almost done, and you start getting 9’ long, full width shavings, it’s pretty cool. Also, if you happen to have a Lie-Nielsen No8? Absolute heaven.
Now, here is where I depart from the benchcrafted plans a little bit. I spent quite a bit of time debating whether or not I actually wanted a split-top or a solid top. I ended up going with the split top because I think it would come in very handy for securing pieces like drawers after glue-up, to do final planing. I wasn’t very interested in the tool storage in the “gap-top” in the middle of the bench. I don’t have a dedicated wall or handy storage spot for most of my stuff, so I knew that almost my entire tool set would come to live in that gap-stop, which would be a real pain.
So, I copied what I saw Jameel do on “steve’s roubo”, and built a nice tool rack for the back left part of the bench. Here’s a couple pictures of that coming together.
Like I said, I don’t have a spot for most of my tools, so I made sure this rack would have space for my saws, most of my chisels, etc..
So, we’re pretty much done!! Of course, there is much that was done that isn’t pictured. Chamfering, building the shelf underneath, making 18 bench dogs (Jameel said make a dog for every hole. I must obey.) But who cares, let’s get to the finished product right? I used BLO as a finish, and I’ll admit that I regretted it as soon as I wiped it on. I had gotten used to the very light color of the ash, and the BLO turned it just a little too yellow for my taste. I guess I could have used tung oil, or maybe even just paste wax.
Picture time!!
Sweet! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a lot of work, because it was. It was probably about 3 months from start to finish, with two trips to the hospital for good measure. Definitely worth it though. And if you haven’t had the chance to try out the Benchcrafted vises, well, you should. They are worth every penny. It is hard to describe the clamping power, but I guess all I can say is you can definitely believe the hype surrounding them.
Next up.. Finishing that blanket chest I’ve been working on.
– Matt
Man, this bench is taking FOREVER! Actually, it hasn’t been too bad. I’m just being lazy about posting, the bench has been done for like 3 weeks now.
Anyways, in the last post, we left off busting some fingers after gluing the top together.
Here’s a picture of the bench after getting the back section dimensioned, planed, and cut to length.
What isn’t pictured is 1) mortising the top to the base, and 2) routing the dog hole strip. Mortising the top to the base was pretty easy. Some people cut a scrap piece the exact height of their tenon, and then get the top aligned with the legs and just mark the mortise directly. Other people flip the bench over and sit the base on both tops at the same time. I was too lazy for both of those methods. Remember, the only side of the mortise that really has to be accurate is the one that is facing the outside of the leg. Getting this side of the mortise dead-on means that your benchtop will be co-planer with your legs. The other 3 sides of your mortise can be, dare I say it, a bit sloppier. We’re not looking for a suction fit here. I found that the biggest forstner bit I had, coupled with a 1.5” bench chisel made short work of the mortises. I started off using a router, but after 10 minutes fooling with guides and jigs, I realized I was making things too difficult.
Routing the dog hole strips wasn’t quite as enjoyable. I copied Jameel’s jig from his blog post here. Now, the problem was that I was still getting terrible blowout in the bottom right-hand corner. After throwing a small temper tantrum after the 3rd consecutive failure, I realized all I had to do was screw on a piece of wood so that the back of the jig had a sacrificial fence just like the front. After that modification, no more blow-out. I did have to sit there for an hour with that howling beast of a machine though. Remember, I decided to lengthen my bench by 15”, so I had the pleasure of routing 17 dog holes.
Some people take the pains of routing one dog hole upside down, so that they could cut that off, flip it around and make it their wagon vise block. I guess this is important if you’re using a contrasting strip of wood in your dog hole laminate; I wasn’t, so I didn’t.
Let’s skip ahead now… I’ve routed out the recess for the wagon vise (did I mention I hate using routers), and now I’ve got to fashion the end cap. The mortise/tenon/bolts were all standard fare (although I had a hard time getting my shoulders flush, but that has to do with my lack of skills, nothing more). The dovetail was where I wanted to do something a little fancy. I really, really wanted to layout my dovetails like Konrad over at Sauer & Steiner. How sexy is his endcap? Seriously.
So, I spent like 45 minutes trying to fit 3 tails in instead of the standard 2 you see on Jameel’s benches. It just wasn’t working though. Finally, I realized that since Konrad has his tails on the endcap, they’re about 1.75” long instead of the ~ 3” long ones that I was laying out on the front laminate. At that point, I gave up, and just went for the standard dovetailed endcap. It still came out looking pretty nice, and I guess I can be proud of it. A lot of people (CSchwarz, *cough*) just bolt theirs on. I know, he did a retrofit. I don’t care. Here’s mine.
After getting everything cut and ready to go, I glued it all up. And I screwed it all up. It’s hard to see in this picture, but I didn’t get the dog hole strip and laminate exactly aligned with the rest of the slab. I was off by about 1/8”, which, honestly, might as well have been a goddamn mile. Boy was I peeved.
So, I had to rerun both slabs through the planer again, which is why I ended up with a top a hair under 4”. I was worried about spelching on the endcap, since that grain would be running parallel to the planer blades, instead of perpendicular like the rest of the top (similar to planing across the grain), but I crossed my fingers and everything came out ok.
I also had to bring the sliding dog block down to size again after planing the tops.
A minute or so with the jack andsmoothing plane took care of it.
Here’s a pic of both tops done, but before I cut the mortises for the front section.
After I cut those mortises, it was time to screw the top down and get to flattening. First, those spax screws Jameel provides are monsters.
You could buy a special bit to run these in, one of those star bits, but I discovered that any old driver turned around would fit in fine.
So just chuck that bit in your drill backwards, and you’re good to go.
That’s enough for today…
Next up: Flattening the top, and the yellowishness of BLO.
– Matt
In my last post, I had broken (smashed), two fingertips. Now that really cramped my style for a few weeks. The biggest problem was that I was supposed to be delivering a blanket chest to my wife’s best friend as a wedding present. With just a week and a half until the nuptials, I felt good enough to hold a hammer and get to dovetailing.
Before I could do that though, I need some nice, flat boards. Now, I had a dying walnut tree milled into boards a year or so ago, and had some nice 10” and 12” 4/4 stock on hand. But, I’ve got an 8” jointer. I needed 20” wide panels, so I wasn’t about to take a nice, two board glue up and turn that into a 3 board one just so i could fit the boards on my jointer. Well, after much flattening by hand, I ended up with some pretty flat panels.
One or two were still cupped a little, but as long as you pull it flat when you mark your pins, everything will work out in the end. Mainly, I realized what the hell is the point of a 15” planer if I’ve got a 8” jointer? I’ve since read some tips on flattening boards wider than your jointer by removing the guard and blah blah blah. I just need a 12” jointer, end of story.
I guess it was because I cut 48 dovetails in two days, but I think I’ve got the hang of it at this point. AND seven out of 8 of the corners went together right from the saw cuts. I’ve discovered there are really only three things you’ve got to get right. First, you must saw straight across when cutting your tails. Exactly straight across. I use a marking knife, so I find if I let the saw fall right into that line, it works pretty well. Secondly, mark your pins accurately. That means don’t let the board shift, don’t reset it while you’re marking them, don’t screw up. I don’t do the “140 trick”, but it would probably help. Go ahead and search for that on google if you want to know what it is.
Thirdly, cut your pins to the line, and cut EXACTLY straight down. Just start on the waste side of the line, and your saw will drop right on to that mark, and you’ll be good. I use a little square to help make sure I’m cutting straight down. Some would consider that cheating. Whatever.
Eventually, you’ll end up with some nice tight dovetails like so:
Now that I had the base and the carcass together (is it called a carcass on a blanket chest? I dunno), it was time to whip up some internal structure to support the drawer. I’m copying the Thos. Moser blanket chest, if you’re wondering what this thing is supposed to look like. So, I was squaring up the mortises in the drawer framing, and disaster struck. First, a picture of everything a few days later after I got it all together.
Anyways, I was squaring up the mortises with freshly sharpened 1/4 mortise chisel, and it got stuck. Now, remember, I was rushing to get this thing done. I had been working about 6 hours straight on this, and was pretty tired. One indicator of that was that I had been too lazy to clamp down the board that I was smacking my chisel into. So, that’s a bad move. Secure your work appropriately, folks. The second thing to remember is to NEVER have any part of your body in front of the sharp part of your hand tool. And never have any part of your body anywhere where your sharp, pointy hand tool might travel.
So, the chisel was stuck. I placed my right hand on the board to hold it down (with two broken fingers, I might add). And grabbed the chisel with my left, and gave a mighty heave, as if pulling the sword from the stone. Predictably, that chisel popped right out, and in an effort to keep from smacking myself square in the nose with the handle, I brought that extra sharp mortise chisel right down into my forearm. I let out a deep sigh, and walked over to my lovely wife, who happened to be in the basement with me. I asked her if she thought I needed stitches, and she said something about “sub-cue” tissue, so yes. Half and hour or so later, here I was.
Twenty minutes later, I had these:
Awesome! So, that blanket chest didn’t get finished in time. The real lesson here though, is that just because something isn’t plugged in doesn’t meant it doesn’t require care and safe practices. Mainly, keep the sharp, pointy things heading away from you. And keep that rule in mind ALL THE TIME.
February was definitely a “learn the hard way” month. I’m hoping that I can apply those lessons for a long time, and keep myself out of the hospital for at least, like, 6 weeks.
Next up: attaching the top of the Roubo, the tail vise, bench dogs, and more! I took very few pictures, so really I’m just going to gloss over all that stuff. But stay tuned!
Or, slow down so you don’t hurt yourself. I spoke in an earlier post about my lack of patience. Well, it caught up to me in a big way in February, twice. For me, taking my time to make sure things are done correctly, and safely, is as much of a learning process as anything else. Have I chamfered that edge to prevent spelching when planing across the grain? Am I taking a heavier cut with the handplane when it could result in some nasty tearout? Is that piece of wood secured appropriately? And on and on.
First though, let’s take a look at where we were in this bench story. The leg vise is on!
Oh man, that thing is nice. Such sweet, sweet action.
Anyways, what’s next? Well, laminating the top together obviously. I glued the rear section together first (didn’t take any pictures of the glue drying, sorry), and once everything was nice and dry I just had to run it through the planer.
Now, here is where the first disaster struck. Again, I was rushing like usual, and not listening to the little voice in the back of my head. In this case, the voice was telling me that maybe, just maybe, the rollers I set up in front and behind my planer weren’t up to the task of holding a massive slab of ash. I was acting pretty retarded when I think about it. I sat one end of the slab on the roller (a stupid move in and of itself), and when I went to pick the other end up, the roller just tipped over forward. I’m not sure how it all happend, but I guess the other end of the slab fell about two feet, but I was only holding my end a few inches off the ground. When the other end hit the ground, I was able to get eight of ten fingers out of the way (it makes me feel better when I think about it that way), but I guess the force sort of whipped my end of the board down, and caught the tips of my middle and ring finger underneath.
Now, we don’t have to go into details, but I will anyways. Let’s just say that when my wife was driving me to the hospital, I fully though that I was going to be coming home with three fingers and two stubs on my right hand. Both tips were broken into 3-4 pieces, and one finger had burst like a grape (the doctors description, not mine), so I got 3 stitches in that one. Picture time!
And here is the xray. Looks pretty awesome.
So, that really hurt quite badly. Luckily I avoided crushing a knuckle, so the hand specialist said that I would be back to normal in about 6 weeks. I would lose the fingernails of course, but he said other than that there wouldn’t be any long term effects. So, how long did that keep me out of my workshop? A few days. I ran that damn top through the planer less than a week later.
Next up: My inability to hold a mallet delayed me from working on a blanket chest with a lot of dovetails. Rushing to finish that a few weeks later landed me in the hospital again. Horray!
– Matt
Well, now that I’ve got the base more or less complete, time to actually play with some of that sweet sweet hardware from Benchcrafted. I didn’t take too many pictures that day, I must have been concentrating too much! It seemed like there were an endless amount of steps to take for what seems like a straightforward vise, but it was really just very, very thorough instructions. And honestly, I would have screwed it up royally without them.
First, we cut the through mortise on the bench leg. I didn’t take any pictures of that process, but trust me, it happened. Then, we drill and tap a few holes to hold the roller guides.
I just bought a cheap $20 tap set off of Amazon.com. Never having used a tap in wood before, I was a little skeptical of how well it would work. Well, it worked great, and those bolts are in there tight. I dont think there’s any better way to do it, honestly. And now that I know how well it works, I think I’ll do it quite a bit more often from here on out.
Oh look! The roller guides are done already. They were pretty easy to make. I just used the drill press to mill out the slots, and used a float and rasp to pretty everything up. I went for a simpler shape than the one Jameel has in his plans, but I think it came out pretty well.
Now, I didn’t take any pictures of making the parallel guide, or milling out the holes on the chop, or installing the glide screw or bushing. I was busy! If you mosy on over to benchcrafted’s blog, however, there is an excellent series going on that details all these steps pretty well. I recommend it highly because, well, you’ll learn more over there than over here. Click here to check it out.
I did take a picture of drilling the holes for the drawbore pins though. I used a brace and bit because I didn’t have a normal drill bit long enough.
That brace looks pretty sweet, huh? It’s an old miller falls that belonged to my Grandpa. Of course, When I got my hands on it it looked like this:
So I sent it over to Wiktor Kuc at WKTools.com for a little TLC, and it came back looking absolutely incredible.
Insane work; I highly recommend Wiktor if you’ve got some old braces or eggbeaters laying around.
Oh look! The vise just jumped up into that leg and installed itself.
Just kidding of course. But the whole process wasn’t too bad. I’m sure most anyone could do it faster though.
I then went through the wonderful process of jointing and flattening fourteen 8.5’ long boards for the top. Hooray! Remember earlier I talked about some 12/4 or 16/4 stock? Yeah, get that stuff. Laminating sucks.
But now… Oh man, it almost looks like we have a bench. Of course those boards are only held together with some clamps, but a guy can dream right? I’m probably, what, like 90% done, right? Sure…
Next up: Laminating the top and a trip to the Emergency Room.
-Matt
Now that all the mortises have been milled (chopped, bashed, cursed at), we’ve just got a couple more tenons to cut, and then we can slap the base together and sit back and admire our work.
First, before I cut the tenons, I decided to go ahead and drill the rest of the holes in the legs so I could warm up a bit before I went at it with the handsaw. This, obviously, was easy. Nothing like a drill press and some good forstner bits to make you feel like you’ve got skills. ”Man, those holes are clean. No tearout at all… I’m really good at pulling this lever down on the drill press.” you’ll say to yourself.
Anyways, holes for the drawboring, and then some countersunk holes for the knock-down hardware, and we have this:
Pretty! Looks like I even know what I’m doing.
Anyways, now that I’m a little warmed up, I need to cut the tenons on the front and back rails. For those of you with the Benchcrafted Roubo plans, I’m making my bench 15” longer than what’s specified. To simplify this, I just stretched the base by 15”, and left everything else the same. However, that means that I was cutting tenons on the end of a 60 5/8” board. The only way I could see to do that was to clamp it to my poor excuse of a bench, and stand on my sawbench to make the cuts. It was somewhat awkward and vibration-prone, but I got it done eventually.
Now that I’ve got all the mortices and tenons done for the base, let’s see if this thing will go together…
Success! Well, with that minor victory, we may as well get the holes drilled for the knockdown hardware. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of that process. You’re probably thinking “of course not, it only took you like 10 minutes. All you had to do was drill 4 straight holes”. Well, please remember that I’m a rank amateur. First, here is a picture of the hardware:
I felt like a midget holding those things. Benchcrafted is selling them for like $30 for a set of 4, and honestly that’s a pretty good deal. It feels like you could use those things as a weapon. Anyways, see how long those are? Well, that’s a long way to drill a perfectly aligned whole with a brace and bit. At least for me it is. Two of the nuts/bolts went right together, another set after a little bit of fiddling, and then I spent 45 minutes cursing and yelling at the 4th one. Why would I curse and scream? Because I’m a child, that’s why.
Anyways, after MUCH consternation, I got them all in, and the result was a huge, heavy, rock-solid bench base.
Next up? The leg vise! Stay tuned…
Now that I’d milled, glued, and squared up an adequte stock of lumber for the bench legs, it was time to create the mortises for the stretchers and rails.
Before I get to that though, let me speak about the tenoning of said stretchers and rails. Now, I like handtools as much as the next guy, and even own a pair of very nice 14” back saws specifically to cut tenons of this magnitude. However, after about 30 seconds of my rip saw chattering through what felt like concrete (Ash), I abandoned all thoughts of doing the bench joinery by hand and walked over to the table saw.
Tenon shoulders on the table saw are easy enough. Set the fence as your stop, and use your miter gauge. Presto-chango, 5 minutes later I’ve got perfect shoulders cut for all 8 tenons.
What about the cheeks, you ask? Well, I don’t have a dado stack. That would obviously would have been the easiest thing. Instead, I’ve got a delta tenoning jig which is worth more as a boat anchor then as anything to do with wood working. So I used that to get close (within a 1/16), and then used a router plane to get the cheek faces in line and to the correct depth. After I got tired of sharpening the router plane blade, I just grabbed my router and a spiral upcut bit to finish the rest of them off. You may accurately sense my impatience; it will prove to be my undoing shortly. Just keep reading for the next few posts.
Also, I didn’t take any pictures of me cutting or truing the tenons. Sorry.
The mortises! Well, I don’t have any fancy-pants hollow chisel mortiser, and I HATE routers (despite what you may have read just 3 sentences prior), so that left me with a drill press and forstner bits. This honestly wasn’t that bad of an option, considering the fact that I have a monster of a drill press.
A quick aside – That magfence you see in the above picture is another ill-advised purchase, an engineering disaster. A good idea in theory (magnets! they’re magical!!), but poorly executed. The problem is in setting the fence. Those levers to the left and right are how you release the fence. But instead of retracting the magnets, they actually lever the fence off of the table. This means it is impossible to set the fence accurately where you want it while those levers are down, and once you’ve put them up so the fence sits flat on the table, the only way to move the fence is to smack it with your hand or a hammer. So fine-tuned adjustments aren’t really an option.
Anyways, after getting that fence in place, drilling out most of the waste went pretty quickly. I then cut out the corners using a combination of chisels, corner chisels, and a Lie-Nielsen float (I had the good fortune of visiting the LN showroom in Maine this past summer, and Deneb recommended the 1” bed float. Who was I to say no?). The float was magical. It’s also the only tool my wife can reliably recognize because she’s a veterinarian, and apparently they use floats on horses teeth. That sounds painful to me, but what do I know? But seriously, the float was incredible. It beavers through wood, and leaves a nice smooth surface.
This is where the malaise set in, though. Squaring up 12 big mortises (and I’m using the term “square” loosely) is tedious work. Especially when my previous experience in squaring up mortises was exactly zero. Was I maybe a little ambitious in thinking I could build a bench like this? Would this thing have a 90 degree angle on it anywhere? About halfway through, I would have traded my SUV for a hollow chisel mortiser. Eventually though, I finished, and was rewarded with some pretty decent leg assemblies, and things even ended up pretty square and straight.
Didn’t I say I would talk about the knockdown hardware in this post? Well, I’m tired of writing and I haven’t even cut the tenons on the front and back rails yet.. We’ll have to wait for the next post!
– Matt
I’m pretty new to woodworking.. I mean, I’ve been reading the Schwarz for about two years now, so I feel like I KNOW a lot. But actually DOING those things is another story. Mitered dovetails sure look easy in a blog post, I’m just saying.
Anyways, you can only stare at beautiful furniture and tools for so long; eventually you’ve got to get cracking. I’ve built a couple things, but nothing huge. I’ve done enough, however, to know that my sears craftsman workbench and it’s horrible, wrack-prone vises and barely attached top is more of a hindrance than help. When you spend half your time trying to secure your work to the bench so you can actually get to doing the joinery, you’ve got a problem.
The solution? Well, like I said I’ve been a disciple of C. Schwarz, so obviously a Roubo. But if Schwarz is our modern woodworking Jesus, than Jameel Abraham of Benchrafted is the Father and Holy Ghost. I mean, look at this bench.
That being said, I ordered up a pair of Benchcrafted vises and Jameel’s bench plans. The bench is almost done, but over the next few posts I’ll detail the build a little bit, and show some of the construction pictures (the few that I’ve taken).
To start off tho.. A pile of Ash. Oh, Ash. A heavy, damned wood that will take my freshly sharpened chisel and turn it’s edge into something that resembles a lawnmower blade that’s taken a turn through a gravel driveway.
After a bit of milling, we’ve got a pile of square, leg-sized lumber ready for glue! I love glue-ups! Just kidding, of course. I hate glue-ups, and if I was doing this again my primary goal would be to buy some 12/4 and 16/4 lumber to avoid the glue-spread and clamping dance.
Eventually we’ve got some glued legs, some stretchers, and plans to hit the drill press for some mortising. We’ll leave that for the next post though.
Don’t you love these build threads? It compresses hours and days of works into a 2 minute read. Makes chumps like me think “oh, man I could build that bench in like, 2 weekends tops, no problem.” Wrong.
Next up: Mortising, tenons on looong rails, and massive bench hardware.
– Matt