My New Bench* (*some assembly required)

[Michael Peet]

Well, here it is, my Roubo. I got one of the ash packages from Horizon Wood Products. Kudos to Dan Terbovich who was extremely responsive, helpful, and patient with my endless questions.

IMG00078.jpg

I admit I am a little anxious about attempting this. Among other things, I do not presently have:

- Jointer
- Planer
- Drill press
- Parallel clamps
- A bench plane larger than a #4

I've kinda been waiting to see what Grizzly's new drill press was like, but I might get a cheap benchtop model in the meantime to do the mortises. I also plan to get a bunch of parallel clamps and maybe a #7 or #8 as well. A power jointer and planer are not in the plans for now.

As far as cutting the large tenons, I'm not sure how I will do that right now either. I have a bandsaw I could do the cheeks with; maybe I could use my SCMS with a depth setting to cut the shoulders. I don't have the necessary handsaws (or skills) to do them completely by hand, I don't think. Sorry for all the blasphemous non-neander speak.

Thanks for looking,

Mike

[Keith Young]

That's a nice looking stack of wood. You do not need a lot of high tech tools to build your roubo. Mortises can be done with a 10 dollar brace and bits from ebay or a local antique shop, a spade bit and hand drill would also work. Chisels for the borg will work, picked up a cheap 1/2" stanley at lowes that sharpened up quite nice. The same with tenons, a hand saw from the borg will work, just take your time.
Start out with some scrap wood and get the hang of using hand tools before cutting into your ash. There is a lot of good info here on the use of hand tools, but watch out, they can be addicting.

Good Luck,

Keith

[Charlie Gummer]

Hi Michael,

I'm in the planning stage for my Roubo bench. I too am limited on available tools. I've picked up two old Stanleys for reconditioning (a #4 and a #7) and have a new #5 (semi ok for rough work). The first thing I invested in was Christopher Schwarz's workbench book Workbenches: From Design and Theory to Construction and Use. If you haven't already I'd definitely recommend the read. He has an interesting take on a tool-challenged method for making the tenons in the Roubo involving holding the outer pieces of some laminations short instead of cutting them down after glue-up. I'm not sure as to whether this would work with your kit.

Good luck, I'll be following along.

Edit: I guess I should look at the pictures before opening my mouth. The Schwarz trick will work well if you're like me and making the bench out of cheap construction grade lumber. With that quality ash it looks like you've got to cut tenons.

[David Gendron]

A #8 is my favorit plane. A brace and bits would take care of the boring. As for the tenons, there is a way of doing them without having to cut them... Look into Shwarz book or blogs, it shows how! And if you do thrue mortises, you can use the same principal and you wont have to dril and chop eather! Let me know if you don,t find the info, I will look into it!

[Michael Peet]

Dave / Charlie - I have that book as a matter of fact. Since the wood I have is so thick, I don't think I'll be able to take advantage of the method he uses to build up the tenons. Looks like I will be doing it the hard way, heh.

I was looking over things last night and re-read the Roubo build section from the book. I think I have enough here for a 4" thick top and 5" legs, but I will have to build up the legs. I'm going for somewhere around 8 feet long.

Mike