My New Work Bench arrived today (sort of)

[harry strasil]

I have lots of saw tables from short short ones to tall ones and also a board jack. I always make saw tables (horses) or as the old timers called them (tresles) in pairs, also did the same in my blacksmith shop.

[Jason Morgan]

Harry,

A little off topic, but my folks live in SE NE, in Auburn. You do any smithing at Indian Cave St. Park? Went there last summer and saw the exhibits. Very well done and informative. Kids loved it.

[harry strasil]

I started the smithng at Indian cave, 18 years ago. did it all week so on week ends was too much, one of my proteges a lady smith does it now. I occasionally take my mid 1800's wood shop up there and demo woodworking.

[harry strasil]

my bday present to myself arrived from Lee Valley, tail vise screw.
But workbench is on hold for awhile, had to take my wife to Horsepistol on my Birthday. Got Dr. to make a house call so she wouldn't be exposed to flue people in office. A whole 3 blocks to hospital. luckily its not Influenza, really nasty strain going around, and its not pneumonia. some kind of minor viral thing which combined with her COPD from hairdressing and teaching it for 20 years starting in early 60's makes breathing difficult. She is responding well to treatment and lung capacity and blood O2 is improving. I stay with her at night to keep anxiety attacks from getting the best of her when she has trouble breathing.

[harry strasil]

Jason, if you visit again, let me know, I will bring my demo WWing shop and you can help set it up and play with my toys.

[harry strasil]

Free lumber again, Neighbor brought me over 10 - 2x6x80 inches and 4 - 2x4x80 inches and 2 4x6x48 inches. it was packing crate lumber, SYP, lots better lumber than I can by at the local yards. only one of the 2x6's is bowed. each one had 12 nails in it. Nails pulled, mud and grass cleaned off, and its stickered on my shop floor to dry. More bench parts. I Love it.

[harry strasil]

Update on the workbench project.

My daughter and S-I-L showed up and he helped me run the timbers thru the lunchbox planer to get the rough off, but he was more interested in sweeping the little bit of shavings that were on top instead of holding the end of the timber up, so I got some bad end snipe.

I went ahead with constructing my outfeed support among other projects, and changed the blades in the planer yesterday. After setting up the outfeed support and adding some stabilizing rods I finished up the planing today, ending up with them all 1.840 inches thick according to my Wixey planer DRO. One side is real smooth and I left the bottom side with some imperfections.


The outfeed support.


In use.


The stack of timbers now.


Instead of cutting them up and glueing face to face, I have decided to use them as is, for a lot less work in assembly.

The outfeed support will be used with the table saw to square the edges, and with the 6 inch jointer prepping the edges also. Its adjustable for height.

[Jim Dunn]

Harry does the outfeed support reduce snipe? And as to sweeping up chips tell him it's easier of the cat's feet than concrete

Hey I just noticed that stainless aluminum tree in the box. You should put that on the bay and sell it to some of those retro people.

[harry strasil]

Yes Jim, with the column locks and the outfeed support there is no snipe.

[Jim Dunn]

I just remembered that you retro fitted your planer with some type of newer column locks. As I remember you were trying to work out a deal with Delta weren't you?

[Russ Hauser]

Harry:

The Emmert vise you have has dogs, why not drill a double row of holes down the length of the bench and use it as an end vise when you need one? I have mine set up like that.

Russ

[harry strasil]

there will be a double row for the patternmakers vise too as well as a row for the wagon vise that will have a row on each side spaced halfway between the ones for the wagon vise, I use the wedge system a lot like I do on my demo bench.

[harry strasil]

I made lots of chips today. LOL

I brought my 8.5 ft 1/4 by 3 Aluminum straight edge home from the shop and cleaned it up to use as a router guide to edge the Pin Oak Planks for my Nu Bench and also used the router to square them to width also.

The first pass with an old B&D Router and an edging bit and the straight edge to do the first half. Lots of chips so I made some ALuminum brkts to clamp one of my 2.5 inch Vac Nozzles to the routers.




Flipped over and the second pass with my new Sears 2 hp router that also came with a plunge base, and a Bosch bottom bearing edging bit.



Sure beats running them thru the table saw and then the 6 inch jointer to get nice square clean edges.

One of the planks has a really bad spot in it and I will need to rip it down to get the bad spot out.

As it stands now I have enough planks 5 ft long to make up 41 inches in width, but the finished top will be 24 inches + wide.

I will update the progress as the bench progresses.

[harry strasil]

Oops, second picturee is a dupe. Should be this one.

[harry strasil]

bench update 8/29/08

Drilling holes for doweling together.