Thought I'd do a little build thread for a saw bench I'm building. I've been meaning to make one of these for a while, and I guess now's the time
I'll be building it from some stock I already have on hand and which is not likely to be used in any serious projects. I've got a bit of red oak that's been sitting in the wood rack for some time now- an 11" wide by 4' long slab of red oak, and a couple 5/4 planks about 6" long by 6' long:
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One design constraint is that the bench will built from only these three pieces. The 8/4 slab is about perfect for the top, and I think I'll turn the 5/4 planks into wide boards to form the uprights and tenon those into the top, using the remnant 5/4 to make a stretcher running between uprights. It will look more like a sitting bench than a typical sawbench, but it seems the best way given the material constraints.
An "artistic" rendering of what I've got in mind:
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Besides being a (hopefully) useful shop implement, this bench will be an exercise in through-wedged mortise and tenons, which is a joint I'd like to become more proficient with. Aside from that it will be a simple build; I'm not splaying the uprights at all, they will just be 90 degrees to the top. I may do a little shaping to the uprights and stretcher, something like you see in the drawing.
To start with for tonight, I cut the 5/4 planks to rough length so I can glue up the two uprights. A Disston D8 does the work:
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This is how I've chosen to orient the mostly rift sawn planks:
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Now I can work on jointing the edges. Type 6 Stanley No. 8:
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I decided to try an edge jointing method I've seen advocated here by Warren Mickley, Brian Holcombe, and others. Instead of first flattening a reference face and then jointing an edge square to that, I ignore the faces and just concentrate on making the edge flat and without wind. I also make sure it is generally square to the faces, but the critical reference is with winding sticks on the edge:
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The idea is to avoid extra work in flattening each face beforehand, only to again flatten the resulting panel afterwards. I'll just be doing the latter part; we'll see how it goes.
The edge jointing went smoothly and quickly, as it should since these are only 20" long boards. Ready for glue-up:
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And the fruit of tonight's labor:
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That's it for now. A lot of planing ahead