New Year, new workbench -- mucho pics!

[Dave Anderson NH]

Hi Wilbur,

You're going to find out that flattening the two main surfaces of the top is a lot easier than straightening and flattening each single stick of the doug fir. Both surfaces will end up nicely flat time in no time at all. this next step is something you are just going to fly through. You've already got the hard part done. Congratulations.

[John Schreiber]

Looking good.

When I finished gluing up my top and set it on top of saw horses, I decided to reinforce the horses by screwing panels to all four sides. Before that, they just had the metal jaws like yours and I was afraid the weight of the bench and the stress of planing would collapse them.

[Wilbur Pan]

Hi Wilbur,

You're going to find out that flattening the two main surfaces of the top is a lot easier than straightening and flattening each single stick of the doug fir. Both surfaces will end up nicely flat time in no time at all. this next step is something you are just going to fly through. You've already got the hard part done. Congratulations.

Hi Dave,

You were so right.

Last night I got a leg up on flattening the bottom of my benchtop. When I was gluing up the beams, I tried to align the tops of the beams as best as I could. The top side looks pretty good, but what this means is that all the misalignments show up on the bottom side of the bench. Since I'm using a Roubo design, the legs are going to be mortised directly into the bottom, so if the bottom surface isn't flat, the shoulders of the leg tenons won't be in the same plane, and the legs and lower stretchers won't be square.

I forgot to take a better "before" picture, but you can get an idea of how much unevenness there is between the bottom surfaces of the beams here. In many places, there were 1/8" discrepancies between the beams.



I put an even more aggressive camber on my jack plane than I had been using -- about equivalent to a 10" radius. This allowed me to take off really thick shavings, close to 1/64". This meant that theoretically, 8 swipes of the plane would level a 1/8" discrepancy. Being able to take down this much wood at a time, the majority of the unevenness was gone after only 30 minutes.



Look at the mess I made! Not bad for just 30 minutes of planing, I think. I was pretty surprised as to how quickly this went. You can get an idea of how thick the shavings from the jack plane were at the front by the jointer plane. The jointer plane is just there to give a sense of scale for the size of the benchtop. I didn't use it last night, but I'm sure it will be put to use pretty soon.

At this point I realized that I hadn't made winding sticks yet to check for twist, so I called it a night.

P.S. This was just 30 minutes of hand planing! Who needs a belt sander?

[Wilbur Pan]

every clamp in the shop

One last thing: in preparation for making my benchtop I knew that I didn't have the ideal number of clamps, so I ordered a few more Wetzlers. They seemed to be a little slow in coming, and I wanted to get going on my bench, so I wound up borrowing some clamps from my neighbor to complete the glue up. Now that I'm done, guess what arrived in the mail?

[Hank Knight]

One last thing: in preparation for making my benchtop I knew that I didn't have the ideal number of clamps, so I ordered a few more Wetzlers. They seemed to be a little slow in coming, and I wanted to get going on my bench, so I wound up borrowing some clamps from my neighbor to complete the glue up. Now that I'm done, guess what arrived in the mail?

Great! You'll have them for your next bench.

How's the flattening going? I actually enjoyed flattening my bench top.

Hank

[Douglas Brummett]

At this point I realized that I hadn't made winding sticks yet to check for twist, so I called it a night.

P.S. This was just 30 minutes of hand planing! Who needs a belt sander?

Yep, get those sticks going. It is really easy to run off course with a hand plane. Fortunately it is also relatively easy to fix such deviations, but it does require constant monitoring of progress.

Also right on the sander comment. No sander I have ever used is as quick, quiet, and efficient at removing wood.

And what a mess
Actually it looks disturbingly similar to my shop, right down to the boxes and wooden screw clamps on the floor

[Travis Teichmann]

Hey Wilbur,
I'm working on my bench doing similar work. I don't own a jointer or planer, so I get to use the hand planes. I thought it would be a lot of work, but mostly I like it...it's quiet and it provides some exercise while in the shop. There have been those nights though... I look forward to more photos, and maybe I'll get a picture up soon with my progress.
Travis

[Wilbur Pan]

Great! You'll have them for your next bench.

How's the flattening going? I actually enjoyed flattening my bench top.

Well you can never have too many clamps, right?

I spent another 30 minutes on the bottom of the benchtop with a jointer plane, until it was flat enough for my purposes, and checked the table with winding sticks. (Actually, a four foot ruler and a yardstick.) No wind or twist. Yay!

[Michael Sobik]

Thanks for sharing all the info and pics, Wilbur. I'm about to start my benchtop glue up this weekend, so this is really helpful. Please keep us updated.

[Wilbur Pan]

I finished flattening the bottom to the degree that I wanted to. Again, it went much more quickly than I expected. Only 30 minutes with a jointer plane, and the bottom of the benchtop was flattened to the point that I couldn't identify any twist or wind with winding sticks. (Actually, I used a four foot level at one end, and held up a yardstick at the other.)

So here's what it looks like relative to the rest of my workshop:



And a better view of the surface. Remember, this will be the bottom side of my bench:



I'm going to let this top sit like this for a little bit, while I figure out what to do about the final size and location. Originally, I wanted to have this bench up against the far wall in the first picture, but I would have to shorten it a fair amount. In its present position in the middle of the room, I lose space, but I could keep most of the length. I might trim about 6" off to make it easier to get around the bandsaw. Or I could reconfigure the base of the bandsaw to move it a little closer to the wall, which will give me more room around the bench. Another thing in favor of the bench's current position is that the lighting is really good here.

This will also give me a chance to see how much this top is going to move, left to its own devices. In the meantime, I can use this surface to make the legs and stretchers.

Thanks for reading along so far! I'll post more when I really get going on the base.

[Wilbur Pan]

I ran into a snag with my bench. My plan was to use the same 4x4's that I used for my top to make the legs. However, after thinking about working on the legs for my workbench, I realized that I had made a tactical error. This bench is going to be a Roubo, and making 4x4s for the legs would give me legs that are slightly less than 3-1/2" square. Problem is, the plans I'm working from call for legs that are 5" square. At first I thought, "Who cares if the leg is 5" or 3-1/2 inches square?" and so I would just use the 4x4s as they were.

Except that I then realized last night that for this bench design, in addition to providing support, the legs also make up clamping surfaces, and I'd go from a leg vice that's 5 inches in width to a leg vice that's 3 1/2" or less in width. I don't think that the leg thickness matters that much for the sturdiness of the bench, but I can see how clamping would benefit from a wider surface.

I thought about laminating wood to the 4x4s to build them up to a 5" square leg, but after some pondering, that probably won't be a good idea over the long run.

So I have some green Douglas fir 2x12's from the borg that will eventually make my 5" square legs stickered in my workshop. It looks like progress on my bench is going to be on hiatus while I wait for this stuff to stabilize.

I know that the rule for drying is supposed to be 1 year per inch, but I probably won't wait that long. I plan to use drawbored mortise and tenon joints for joining the legs to the top and the stretchers to the legs, so if there is some shrinkage over the long haul, the pinned joints should help keep the joints tight.

Of course, if I run across a good source for some cheap 8/4 dry hardwood, I'll get going on this more quickly. I priced out some 8/4 ash to make the legs at one of the local places. It turned out to be $225 for the amount of wood I need, or 2.5 times the cost of the wood in my benchtop.

[Wilbur Pan]

My Roubo workbench project went on hiatus due to some unexpected complications.

First, I made a miscalculation regarding the size of the legs.

Then I bought some more wood for the legs, and had to give the wood some time to acclimate.

Then I got a bad cold/sinusitis that knocked me on my butt.

Then I got some free wood from a friend who had a tree in their yard blown over, and made a bunch of roughed out bowls on my lathe.

But over the past few days, I got the legs for my Roubo bench glued up.



Boy -- I thought my workbench top was substantial, until I got these legs glued up. Now my benchtop looks puny. Right now the legs are 5-1/2" square, and I plan to mill them down to about 5". I also have to cut mortises in the bench top, tenons on the top of the legs, and mortises in the legs for the stretchers.

[Justin Green]

That's going to be one sturdy bench! I have 3.5" cedar legs with stretchers running lengthwise and widthwise between them and the bench doesn't move. I cut a 1/4" deep square mortise the size of the legs and just set the top onto the legs. It doesn't budge.

[Walter Lay]

That's going to be one sturdy bench! I have 3.5" cedar legs with stretchers running lengthwise and widthwise between them and the bench doesn't move. I cut a 1/4" deep square mortise the size of the legs and just set the top onto the legs. It doesn't budge.

I like that. I think that's what I'll do on the bench I will soon be building.
Walter
PS What is the BORG?

[Justin Green]

borg = Lowes or Home Depot...