Well, it has been a couple of years in the making; mostly a few minutes at night every now and then, but it's finally done! I did a lot of the dimensioning of the top by hand, except for the initial ripping (circular saw) and for using the planer for thicknessing. For the base I cheated and used a J/P combo (I really wanted to speed some things up so I could move on to other projects). And a bandsaw was also involved at some points... and.. oh well.. the point is that I did use and learn a lot about hand planes, chisels and handsaws. Mike Allen: Your saws were used extensively in this project ... you made me a convert!
The last step was flattening the top with my LV BU jack and a #8, which was a breeze (took me perhaps 60 minutes, but no complications; so that qualifies as a breeze in my book). I based the build on C.S. plans ("The Workbench Book"), and took a ton of advice from this forum, either indirectly from others' build threads or from some questions I posted here that many of you answered very generously. So thanks!
It's mostly soft maple, except the last lamination in the front (which sandwiches the dog holes and takes the most abuse), the end cap and the leg chop, which are hard maple. And the shelf is just construction douglas fir. It's a little shy of 7' long and 24" wide. The height something around 34" or 35" I think ... I didn't really measure, after all that hand-planing and sawing and mortising on various surfaces, I had a good feeling of what felt right to me and acted accordingly when cutting the legs. The hardware is Benchcrafted, which is a splurge, I know, but if I am going to be making a project a year, I rather indulge in stuff that works wonderfully (and this really does), and is nice to look at!
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Originally Posted by Pat Barry
