YAWN - Yet Another Workbench Newbie

[MarkDennehy]

No rain today, but lots of errands in the morning and afternoon, so only got to work on the bench around five pm. Oh well. At least one of the errands was picking up a new mallet from the post office. Hand-turned lignum vitae from an old lawn bowling ball and a nice oak handle (this seller in case anyone's interested).

Isn't it pretty? And it works nicely too ("works nicely? It's a mallet, not a fire control computer, it's a lump of wood wot you 'it things wit', wot's e on about?" and so on, but it's lovely and well-balanced and solid and the weight's just grand). Anyway...

I did manage to get the legs squared up during the week, and cleaned up the stretchers though I didn't get a chance to square them up (but they weren't far off from it) so I started off by cutting the remaining two legs to length.

One of the legs has a rather odd defect - a small patch about two inches by eight inches was hollow-sounding on the face, as if there was a void inside the wood a few millimetres below the surface. I cut away the worst of it, and now I know which of the legs is going to the back right position and how it'll be oriented Not sure what caused it though.

With that done, I wanted to see what kind of width the overall table would be to get an idea of what size the stretchers would be, so I put the loose leg tenon boards, the center laminated section and the aprons together and clamped them up:

And then clamped the legs on:

That front leg is too far back - its front face will be flush with the apron, there's a long joint to cut out there. I was looking at that for a while and thinking about it and realising that if I did that on the vice leg, there's a 4"x4" post supporting the tabletop there, which is fine, but on the others there'd only be a 2"x4" support for almost the full depth of the apron. Which struck me as a bit weaker than it had to be, so if I leave the back legs inside the apron and just have the front legs flush up, only one leg has the 2"x4" weakness problem. I'd have to dado the back legs into the apron to get the cross-bracing effect from the aprons, so it'll be a Paul sellers bench on the back side.

Hm. There's a joke in there somewhere. But nevermind, on we go. Have to get the thickness of those leg tenon boards handled first though...

Out with sid, hog off most of it, then the #5½ and #7 to clean up. Didn't take more than ten minutes for each one.

And now, need to cut the benchtop to final length, more to get a reference face to measure off for the leg tenon positions than anything else. That job rather sucked.

Cut the knifewall line around the bench, as close to that end as possible (the other end will get a bit over two inches cut off, which will take care of a knot or two). Then got out the giant japanese saw and proceeded to hack away, but unlike the last few cuts, this one wandered a little (well, it's a larger cut I suppose, it'd show up a klutz wielding a sharp bit of metal more readily). I flipped the board over half-way through so the cuts met in the middle and left a millimetre of a step between the two, and then went at it with a plane to tidy it up. It's still a bit ragged, but by that point it was after sunset and I figured mucking about with sharp edged metal things in the dark was possibly not the best of ideas, so I drew a line under it at that point. The forecast for tomorrow is for dry weather, so I might make actual progress, assuming that the world doesn't end. I mean, the way things seem to be going every time I look at the news on twitter, I'm half-expecting aliens to arrive just after President Trump and the Queen are assassinated at their first official meeting by Prince Philip...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Nice work. Reminds me of all the years I wanted a bench with no apron, though.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Nice work. Reminds me of all the years I wanted a bench with no apron, though.

Oh you rotter

 

[MarkDennehy]

A lovely sunny day without any rain today, so obviously I made huge amounts of progress and am nearly finished.
And if you believed that, I have a bridge to sell you. I finished tidying up the end cut on the benchtop and started on the layout of the leg tenons. I started that by checking the mating between the leg tenon boards and the benchtop center section. You might remember that I had the great idea of leaving those two edge boards seperate from the center laminated section so as to make cutting the leg mortices easy. The problem was that some eejit left the two edge boards seperate from the center laminated section so that marking out where the mortices would go was nearly impossible. In the end, I gave up on the mortices and decided I'd glue the boards to the center section and do the mortices then; and in the meantime get on with cutting the tenons. The back legs should be a relatively straightforward tenon, about a half-inch shorter than the benchtop is thick (there'll be a dado on the underneath of the benchtop). But the joint on the front legs is a tad more irritating.

Front right leg:

Front left (vice) leg:

Cutting those joints proved... difficult. I mean, it'd have been easy, if I had a bench, but... well, you see the problem. In the end, I resorted to cross-cuts through the waste and splitting the tenons by chisel, then clamping the leg to the edge of the benchtop as it sat on the sawhorses and cutting the notch while kneeling in a bloody awkward position driving splinters into my knees. Yay?

I wasn't happy with that machete-work and there followed a lot of paring and planing to get things more square than circular and a little tidier, but I don't think Doucette and Wolfe are quaking in their boots.
After that, I spent a half-hour working on the mating joint between the center section and the leg tenon boards and tried to get them to mate a bit better, because frankly the mating I initially had there was more reminiscent of a cross between a great dane and a pug. But I was able to get it to a so-so state and glued up - and then spent ten minutes swearing and running about with a mallet beating the extenstial angst out of the edge boards trying to get them to line up with the center section of the benchtop because the clamps kept shoving them out of alignment. Whose stupid idea was it to leave these things out of the benchtop glue-up in the first place? That silly person needs his head examined.

In the end, managed to get them kindof aligned (there's going to be a benchtop flattening in my future anyway I suppose, oh well) and they're clamped up and under a tarp as we speak.

Next week, unfortunately, I'm on-call at work (which isn't as bad as it would be if I was a doctor or something, but it does pretty much guarantee at least one night spent working on something that breaks as the US guys wake up), but I might get a few hours during the evenings if I'm lucky. First order of business is either to cut the mortices for the stretchers or to cut the mortices and dados for the legs in the benchtop; either way, the idea is to try to get the leg frames made up and ready to plug into the benchtop. Then I can work on cutting the joints in the aprons so that they can get attached to the benchtop - one at a time I think, after today's fun and games - but before I glue those on, I'll have to remember to do the mortice for the planing stop and the mounts for the vice.

Actually, on that point, I must see about getting some lag bolts to attach the vice with. I don't think I can superglue or duct tape the vice in place, it's a record 53 and I'm starting to wonder if even lag bolts will hold it well in this crappy pine...

 

[Roughcut]

Would of been easier to cut the joints in the legs before laminating the sections together......wouldn't it?

 

[MarkDennehy]

Foresight, hindsight, a bandsaw, a bench to build the bench on, a CNC milling machine, any/all of the above would have made it easier you rotter

 

[Bm101]

Would of been easier to cut the joints in the legs before laminating the sections together......wouldn't it?

Evil.

 

[Roughcut]

I apologise if it came across smug, it wasn't meant to.
It's just that I experienced a light bulb moment after having a similar hard learned task in the past. #-o

 

[MarkDennehy]

No, I had the same idea in the middle of it; but markup would have made it a pain because the individual 2x4's are not all 2x4 and are all slightly different in size because they were all rough-sawn.


Why no, I hadn't priced planer thicknessers and jointers, why do you ask?

 

[Bm101]

Really enjoying the thread Mark. Keep up the good work mate. Much as I enjoy reading the wips of the masters and so on its great to read about your trials and tribulations because I can relate so closely. Fitting it in between real life. Messing it up, learning, doing a little better each time. Looking at it after and thinking 'it didnt end up like this on that youtube video.'
Great stuff. You also do it in a style that has me chuckling away in a way that has my Mrs casting me odd looks and wondering what I'm looking at on tinternet. Looking forward to the next update fella.

 

[MarkDennehy]

So anyone looking at the Irish weather forecast knows by now that the dead have risen and dogs are lying down with cats and everyone is complaining about being a little bit melty. Still though, it wasn't so bad after sevenish, so last night I took the benchtop out of the clamps to check the glue-up.

Soooo many clamps, and still this happens:

And this, but at least I could fix this with a mallet (and remembering the greaseproof paper trick for next time):

That void aside (and thankfully it's on the extreme far back right of the bench, so like the BNP, you can mostly ignore it, I hope), the overall glue-up wasn't too terrible. The difference in heights was expected because of the different board sizes:

And the other glue face was fine:

So I got out the #5½ and planed the edge boards down to the bench surface on the underside. The top will need proper flattening later, but I was overheating after only two boards so I stopped there because melting would have ruined the finish on the wood. Instead I got out my widest chisel and some shoulder planes and started tidying up the leg tenons a bit more, I wasn't happy with them still.

Also, these arrived ahead of the inset tail vice -- there's no room for a repurposed face vice and a wagon tail vice seemed a bit complicated to start with, whereas with the veritas one, you just cut a hole and drop it into it. So I had fun playing captain hook and terrifying the four-year-old.

I must drill a test hole in the bench for these at some point; it was mentioned up above that it might be too thick for them, so I'll need to check that. I'll do it when I start drilling all the dog holes and the like rather than drilling a hole now before the benchtop's even close to being done.

Need to start marking out for the leg mortices tonight if the weather holds off. Could cut one already, but I want to tidy up the other front leg tenon before marking out for that one.

 

[MarkDennehy]

BTW, €6.84 in total including P&P for these:

Yeah, they're not all agreeing to within a gnat's eyebrow of one another, but that's not bad for five digital humidity meters to scatter about the shed, the place I've stashed some hardwood, and anywhere else I can think of...

 

[Bm101]

When I was gluing up the top on mine I had a little bit of a brainwave regarding the excess glue and clamps. I cut a roll of clingfilm down into 3-4 inchisssh bits. Don't go too many Inishmore though unless you have a good boat.
(See that!?! Irish pun 'specially for an Irish built bench).
Works pretty well. Bit faffy tbh. In the end I got irritated and found it was easier to just clean the glue up after. You have to clean it up anyway so unless you want to keep your clamps shop new I kinda thought why bother. Especially when you you make your own clamps anyway. Cos you're tight like me. 8)

 

[MarkDennehy]

Another day, another few hours learning why I'm an engineer instead of a carpenter.
No rain, but on-call at work, so I no sooner had the tools out and the tarps off in the back yard than the phone rang, and that was three hours gone before I'd gotten started. But on we go.
I'd planed one of the stretchers out of twist during the week and tidied up the leg tenons a bit more till things at least looked square, so I started off planing the other stretcher out of twist. I've been using a clamped spare offcut as a planing stop on the benchtop to now, but during the week I came across an article by Chris Schwartz which led to both another article by Chris Schwartz and a Richard McGuire video, so out came the saw and I cut myself a notched batten:

Works like a charm. Still putting in a tail vice to have the option (and because it's already ordered, so strap in, we're committed). But I can see how people could get along without one using one of these things and a holdfast.
Got the second stretcher out of twist, then picked a back leg to match the front vice leg, and cut the (much simpler) tenon out of it:

Then I cut the tenon out on one end of the stretcher by sawing the shoulder and chopping out the cheeks with a chisel, which is how I've been doing most of the joints so far.
I think the end result is very reminiscent of modern art, in that it doesn't look anything like what I was thinking of and definitely doesn't look like something someone should be doing for a day job. But at least it'll work and drawboring hides a multitude of cack-handed sins. Speaking of cack-handed sins, I then tried to cut out the top mortice on the vice leg using Peter Seller's method of chopping a mortice.

I might as well have tried using Bob Seller's method for all the good it did me.

I damn near split the leg down the side with one tap on the chisel while taking out that haunched bit at the top, and I still wasn't far into the leg. So I dropped that idea and cheated.

Well, sod it, if Douchette&Wolfe can cheat with morticing machines, I can cheat with a bit and brace

I think it's quite likely that they cheat better though.
I got the mortice holes drilled out, then spent fifteen minutes trying to get the inside to look like a smooth-walled rectangular hole. This proved impossible and I settled for leaving it roughly the right size and looking like someone had emptied a double-barrelled shotgun into it at point-blank range. But again, drawboring, a method which is going to have to do some very, very heavy lifting over the next few days...

And then while sitting down and having a cup of tea, I realised that while I'd cut the first stretcher to the right length (with a few mm of excess to trim down), I had cut the second stretcher to match it in length.
Only the second one was meant to be the bottom stretcher, and that one has to be two inches longer because the apron cuts into the front of the front leg but not the bottom part of it... Oh well. Made a start on that, cut one of the two remaining stretchers to the right length and started to plane it out of twist. The other remaining one will get the same treatment and the one I cut to the wrong length will do as the top stretcher for the other pair of legs, it's the right size for those. Worked through till dark, still made not a whole lot of obvious progress. I'm starting to gain an appreciation for people who can do this stuff fast. I'm kindof hoping that by the time I get to the last mortice on the legs I'll have gotten the hang of it and then I can fit the legs to the top and mark out and cut the tenons for the back part of the stretchers, trim everything to fit, glue up and drawbore. And then I'll probably find the drawbore will drag the legs that half-millimeter closer together, ruining my alignment.

Should I wait until everything's fully assembled and never needs to come apart again before driving home the drawbore pins?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I see Schwartz's advice to get holdfasts made in 1" bar - but I can imagine the face of my blacksmith friend if I asked him to make the bar seven thou undersized. I would think that especially on a thicker bench top they would work well if the bar were 25mm and the holes bored an inch - that's nearly 16 thou difference.

 

[MarkDennehy]

This weekend's been that point where all those lovely square CAD sketches and notebook sketches and watching youtube videos and so on has been translated into a set of really scruffy joints in really low-class timber. I notice that this point is not covered very well in most of the youtube videos out there. Mainly because you could just write "yeah, don't bother, save up for a mcguire bench instead" and it'd be less unpleasant!
Anyway...

Not a full day, but a good four or five hours at least. Started by tidying up the mortice and tenon on the leg joint a bit more.

And there's a shedload to clean up. Those are the after photos. I'm starting to believe that no matter how sharp your chisel (this was just after taking the 1.5" off the 1200 grit diamond plate and stropping it), you just can't chop through pine from the side of the grain like that without it being incredibly messy. At least this bit gets hidden away behind the apron.

Honestly, that's embarrassing. On the upside, it at least is a snug fit over most of the tenon and it's hidden, but still. Yeesh.

Anyway, I then planed the bottom stretcher out of twist, and marked out and cut the tenon on one end (I marked for both ends but I've left the other ends untouched on both stretchers for the moment), and drilled out the mortice through the bottom of the vice leg. Today, I learned that drilling through six inches of even crappy pine is hard work with a bit and brace (though I don't have an electric drill that could have even managed it and there's no way I could have chopped that with a chisel neatly), and I then learned that if you drill through six inches of crappy pine with a bit and brace, the bit gets hot. A bit of swearing later, I finished the drilling and chopped the mortice to something that could be called rectangular if you were blind and had had all your fingers removed and were in a generous mood, and at least the joint fits and works, but damn if it isn't ugly. Maybe I need to wedge the tenon just for aesthetics to close up that unsightly gap at the top and bottom.

Then I finally stopped fapping about and marked out for the leg mortice in the benchtop, got out the japanese saw and cut the sides and then chopped out the waste with the chisel, in as small a bite size as I could manage. And it's better than the first two mortices at least. And it needs a shoulder to take the shoulder at the top of the leg.

Next was to cut the dado for the shoulder, and I don't really have any tool that's quite up to the task (the edge is too far away and too irregular to use as a reference for the fence of a #50 or #778 or any other plane I have, though I'll be using those to clean up the dado later), so it's knife-line and chisel time.

And after chopping out the bulk of the central waste there with the chisel, I got out the #71 and cleaned it a little bit (it's still scraggly, but cleaning jobs are weekday evening fodder because you can grab one plane from the box, go out the back, lift off the tarp and spend twenty minutes doing something simple before dinner, instead of needing half the toolbox for laying out and doing something larger).

It was too tight a fit for the stretcher, even after cleaning some obvious irregular bits in the wall, so I planed down the stretcher a few shavings and that gave a nice snug fit.

At this point the not-quite-our-pet cat decided it was looking too much like a small gallows and legged it.

Gaps abound, but when drawbored, some of that should go away, and it's still all loose and the end of that mortice is missing because the apron's not in place. And besides, there's waaay uglier things to point at elsewhere. I can live with this.

This bit, though, I'm not so sure.

Can this be wedged and drawbored for both strength and not having cack-handedness-induced gaps?
If anyone has any tips, now would be the time, because I've got to repeat this all over again a few times...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'm sure the finished product will be great, but I'm also sure you'll look back and wonder why you did so much work unnecessarily.

 

[No skills]

I've not seen anyone sink a stretcher into the underside of a bench top before.

Don't fuss over less than perfect joints in pine on your first workbench, if the assembly feels good when it's dry fitted together then it will be plenty good enough by the time you have glued or draw bored everything together.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Another day, another hole.

Getting slightly better, but it'd help if I didn't manage to mark out the mortice gauge lines against the wrong face, giving me four lines for the mortice edges instead of two and confusing the carp out of me when carving it out...

 

[BearTricks]

Didn't want to start a new thread so thought I would hijack a post on here.

I'm building a workbench next week, and I have a lot of very good pine from the spare room bed. It's one of those low beds that's about 6" off the floor, which would look alright in a modern house, but we've decided we don't like it. The pine slats are really good quality, however, and I'm sure the pine under the painted headboard etc is the same. I was thinking of ripping the slats in half to give lengths that are about 2.5" wide, turning them on their sides and laminating them together for the bench top. They're (I'm guessing) about 18mm thick so will laminating that many thin pieces together give the bench top performance issues, compared to laminating thicker chunks as Mark is doing?

Now back to the scheduled content. I'm really enjoying this thread, I keep finding myself checking for updates.