My First Workbench Build - A Journal

[Karl Andersson]

I wouldn't try to rip something that thick with a table saw unless it was a beast of a saw - not only would you likely bind the blade while trying to muscle the wood over it, but the wood may move (twist, warp) as it's cut - even a little and the blade is pinched. I've had success ripping 6x8 and 8x8 treated lumber using a handheld 7 1/4" circular saw with a rip fence attached and a rough cut blade (about 3/16" kerf). Thick wood loves to move as you cut it, especially wet treated lumber- you need to be ready to lift the blade out when you hear it start binding, and don't have your face/ leg right behind it in case it kicks back. I did have to rescue the blade once with a wedge... and the 8x8 lumber had about an inch left between cuts which I took care of with an unpowered rip saw.

If you don't have a circular saw, you can rent one at HD or other rental place - just make sure it has the rip fence in the box. I recommend you screw a 1x4 about a foot long to the fence to keep the blade as straight as possible as you go -and use the same side of the wood as your reference side when you flip the beam to cut from the other side. Don't try to cut the max depth at once -depending on how dry your wood is inside, take 2 or 3 passes (the dryer, the faster). No need to rush - this bench will be with you for a long time.

Or, make friends with someone who has a large bandsaw... like Brian, I tend to work alone, so this was my solution
good luck
Karl

[Tom Bussey]

Why not put a stretcher a crossed the top of the legs also. The put two cleats on the underside so they are touching the stretchers at the top. Screw the cleats on . you will have to elongate all the holes except for the first screw. That way the top just sets there on the legs. To move the bench all that is needed is to lift the top off and if you make the legs knock down you can mode it very nicely. Most benches are never built with moving to a different location and or fasten it to a wall also and then they have a mess.

This is just my personal opinion but I feel a person should be able to work on all four sides of a workbench.

[ken hatch]

Ken and David, thanks for your feedback!

I do have a workbench book from Chris Schwarz. I'll pull it out again for another read to see if there are any things that can help me out.

I had considered the idea of a split top. I definitely like the extra clamping options it brings. How wide of a split between slabs would be ideal? Splitting up the top like that would definitely make it easier to disassemble in the future. And I've wanted to try the double through-tenon/dovetail that is typical of many benches. So, that could be a fun way to accomplish both goals.

Eric,

The split on the current bench is 55mm, the one before 65mm. Of the two I prefer the 55mm split.

ken

[Eric Schubert]

Thanks, Ken. That will give me an idea of how large I'll need to make my base.

I did start working on smoothing out and squaring the rough lumber for the legs. I have to say, working on such large pieces is quite a bit of work! I thought the Douglas fir would be pretty easy to work with, but it's actually been somewhat the opposite. The boards have a few knots in them, which refuse to plane down. The iron will just glide over the top of them without digging in, leaving them higher than the rest of the surface. I ended up needing to try my scraper for the first time to see if that would knock those areas down. (It did, albeit slowly.) I now have two of the legs fairly square and straight. I don't plan to completely flatten the surfaces that will face the inside of the bench, unless that would be a wise idea. But, I did smooth all sides of the boards and put a radius on all the corners. I also marked which sides were parallel so I make sure to have them facing outward to line up with the edge of the top.

I'm sure I need to sharpen my irons again, but is this pretty normal for knotty areas to be difficult to get the iron to take shavings? Other areas of the board seemed to plane just fine.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

I'm sure I need to sharpen my irons again, but is this pretty normal for knotty areas to be difficult to get the iron to take shavings? Other areas of the board seemed to plane just fine.

When I am doing the initial work to flatten or square something, I am usually looking to take fairly coarse (thick) shavings. You will probably not be able to do take thick cuts over a large knot, but a sharp plane should be able to take a light cut over a knot with no problem. Here is a photo I just took from a a bench (for sitting, not working) I recently built. It is a nameless "white wood" (spruce I think), and this is the kind of knot I am talking about. It will degrade your iron pretty quickly to plane that sort of thing, so touch things up frequently. A scraper is not really a good tool for flattening or squaring, it is more for finishing.

image.jpg

[Robert Hazelwood]

Thanks, Ken. That will give me an idea of how large I'll need to make my base.

I did start working on smoothing out and squaring the rough lumber for the legs. I have to say, working on such large pieces is quite a bit of work! I thought the Douglas fir would be pretty easy to work with, but it's actually been somewhat the opposite. The boards have a few knots in them, which refuse to plane down. The iron will just glide over the top of them without digging in, leaving them higher than the rest of the surface. I ended up needing to try my scraper for the first time to see if that would knock those areas down. (It did, albeit slowly.) I now have two of the legs fairly square and straight. I don't plan to completely flatten the surfaces that will face the inside of the bench, unless that would be a wise idea. But, I did smooth all sides of the boards and put a radius on all the corners. I also marked which sides were parallel so I make sure to have them facing outward to line up with the edge of the top.

I'm sure I need to sharpen my irons again, but is this pretty normal for knotty areas to be difficult to get the iron to take shavings? Other areas of the board seemed to plane just fine.

I've worked a bit with Douglas Fir and it is quite a bit more resistant to planing than something like white pine. Some boards seem tougher to plane than an average piece of oak or cherry.

The plane riding over knots sounds like a sharpness issue. Hitting the knots can dull the edge, and then the dull edge rides over the knots and cuts inconsistently - a vicious cycle. I wonder what shaving thickness you are using. When your blade is lacking some sharpness, it can actually be easier to take thicker shavings than thin.

I like to use two planes when I'm doing a lot of flattening work- a #7 with a moderately cambered blade to take medium-thick shavings, and a #8 with a barely-cambered blade to do final passes with thinner shavings. I also have a jack plane with a heavily cambered blade for hogging off wood if necessary. The jack and #7 will cut for a long while without re-sharpening - especially the jack. If the #8 is set for a fine shaving, then I have to sharpen it more often or else it starts behaving badly, not taking shavings where I think it should, etc. But having the different planes means I can do the bulk with the #7, which saves me having to sharpen as often during a flattening session (the flattening also gets done quicker using thicker shavings).

I guess what I am saying is, sharpen your irons, then consider using a heavier cut. You may need to put a larger camber on the iron to facilitate that heavier cut. Consider dedicating one plane for this.

Also, I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the inside surfaces not being fully flattened, but if you have any joinery on those surfaces then you'll want to get them pretty flat. They don't need to be pretty, but you'll want to get rid of twist, make sure its parallel to the outside face, and get rid of any bumps. You can probably live with some hollows on that inside face as long as they don't occur where you want to place a mortise or something.

[Joe A Faulkner]

To your question about options for attaching the top in a way that is strong and secure, I pretty much took an approach similar to what you were thinking and it has proven to be quite stout and yet avoids being semi-permanently attached to the frame. Rather than chopping the mortise all the way through the top, I just made them 1 3/4" deep. The top is then dry fitted over the legs and one lag bolt at each end of the bench is used to draw the top down a bit. As you noted this requires an additional stretcher running from your front legs to the back legs along the top of the base frame. Note: one implication of adding these stretchers is that it impacts the clearance for an end vise or tail vise, depending on the design of the vise and how much your bench extends beyond the legs. For instance, I think the Veritas Twin Screw needs 16" of clearance, and if you design your bench with 12" of overhang, the upper stretchers wind up reducing your clearance to 12".

[Brian Holcombe]

Eric, I would recommend a try plane for 95% of the roughing work, short of heavy stock removal. Set it to a moderate cut and keep it sharp and slightly cambered.

Are you you setting up reference faces at this stage?

[Tom Bender]

Making the top thinner is a good plan, 4" would be plenty. Rip the beams with a circular saw from both sides.

6 x 6 legs sound like a good plan; a good look and some weight down low. Put a generous chamfer on them, maybe an inch or more. My bench has 6 x 6 legs with massive aprons connecting them. No stretchers needed. Easy sweeping underneath. Below the aprons I turned the legs round for a furniture look.

A split top with 3" gap in the center minimizes expansion problems.

Start on the legs to give the top lumber some time to acclimate.

Worry less about moving it. A lever will move the earth and a mover will move it to another address. Or you can stand it on end and use a hand truck against the top. And the size you are talking about will go thru any door.

[Phil Stone]

if you go much over 3.5" thick, you may have difficulty getting holdfasts to work (at least the Gramercy ones), although some report that slightly larger holes or counterbores under the top to bring it locally to about 3.5" will solve the problem. You likely WILL want holdfasts if not now, then after a short time of use.

Yes, I wouldn't worry about this aspect of top thickness. If you counterbore one inch diameter or slightly larger holes from the bottom, so that there is about 3-3-1/2" length of 3/4" inch diameter hole from the top, holdfasts (specifically the Gramercy ones) hold just great.

[Pat Barry]

... I want to make sure that I can disassemble this bench, in the event that we move. (We're in a smaller townhome now, so it could happen at some point.)

If you seriously intend to move this beast then you need to figure out how you will lift a "laminated 24"x8"x6' bench top". Lets go with you 100 pound estimate for the beams - 4 of those to make the 24" width will be about 400 lbs. Good luck: 1) assembling your bench (no doubt several times you will need to put it together, take it apart during construction), 2) finding friends to help you move it.

There is no reason to have a bench that thick IMO. 4 inch thickness is still overkill but since its Doug Fir I could live with that I suppose.

[David Eisenhauer]

Brian and Pat have laid it out pretty well in a real world fashion. 3-1/2" to 4" is plenty thick enough for working on. I wonder if you could ever tell any difference between working on 3-1/2" or 6"-8" and you are going to have to move/flip/handle the top as you are fabbing it up. I would not install the top as three separate boards and feel that you really need to join them into a single piece. Joining the top to the base via tennon on the tops of the legs fitting into mortises on the bottom surface of the top is a time tested design. As someone else up above stated, perhaps start on the base and let the top material continue to dry. You may want to have a look at the designs put out by the "workbench" books written by Scott Landis and Chris Schwartz or purchase the Benhcrafted plan for ideas. You have a good start in acquiring some beefy timber, now maybe have a look at some very workable ideas for design. At any rate, I believe you are going to end up with something that will be solid to work on.

[Eric Schubert]

Brian, I've found the faces of these large boards to be mostly straight and square, which makes my job a lot easier. But yes, I'm smoothing them out and setting up reference surfaces.

I'm of the assumption that the kegs don't need to be perfectly smooth or flat, but I do want the faces pretty square so that everything comes together correctly during assembly.

[Chris Hachet]

Brian, I've found the faces of these large boards to be mostly straight and square, which makes my job a lot easier. But yes, I'm smoothing them out and setting up reference surfaces.

I'm of the assumption that the kegs don't need to be perfectly smooth or flat, but I do want the faces pretty square so that everything comes together correctly during assembly.

Would be my approach....

[Eric Schubert]

Didn't make a ton of progress tonight on the workbench. However, I did discover a serious issue with how I sharpened my plane irons that hampered my previous session of planing: I sharpened my irons too steeply.

I tried sharpening freehand, but wasn't paying enough attention to my sharpening angle. Because I sharpened so steeply, the irons bottomed out on the top edge of the bevel and were just gliding over the surface of the wood. That's why it was so difficult.

So, tonight I resharpened a couple of my irons using my Veritas MKII honing guide. I first did my PM-V11 blade for my #4, then I took on the wider cambered blade on my #7 after switching to my guide's cambered roller. And, boy did those irons ever turn out sharp! And being at the proper angle, they actually took nice shavings, too! Now I can breathe a sigh of relief, since this project won't be nearly as arduous as I was anticipating after my first couple of boards. (I may go back and smooth them out again, now that I know why they were so difficult...)

Anyway, I did manage to smooth out one side of my third board tonight. This one I tried to get nice and flat, and I kept it pretty square to the neighboring face. Now I have a solid face to go from next time.



Notice the nice, curly shavings..? Much better than last time!