The Bespoke Woodworker

After much effort, and many tantalizaing blog posts, I finally got the bench assembled.  I laid out the base, levelled it off (very little shimming was needed, just one leg about 1/32), and moved the top over to it from its temporary home on top of my cabinet saw.

I put in the drawbore pins, unglued, to make it easier to move it out of my crazy basement in the future.  Then, I hauled out all of the supporting accessories, and went to work on the finishing.

I fit the leg vise, made the sliding deadman, and fine tuned everything.

Yours truly, posing with a NEARLY completed project.  I still need to finish the other end cap, finish up the sliding deadman, and finish out the holdfast holes (you can see them pre-bored out to 3/8s, I’m going to plunge them out with a router bit and a jig to ensure I get them perfectly perpendicular to the top.

I also started out on the rails that will support the bottom shelf under the bench. I intend to store all my planes and saws down there.  The goal is to have all of my hand tools and hand tool accessories/jigs within a few footsteps of my workbench.

I had some indirect light in these photos, so they ended up overexposed.  I’ll fiddle with the lighting and get some better pictures in the future.

I also have some high res photos in my gallery, (including a couple that I didn’t bother posting) if anybody mid-build is interested.

So [Friday] was moving day, and I had to re-arrange a bunch of things in the shop to make room for a much longer bench.  My old bench (soon to be milling machine table) was 56″ long, and my new one is a full 8 footer, give or take a few.

Just a few last things on the bench.  Had to re-fit and try out the tail vise.  Worked great, even upside down!

Then I moved my old bench to the back corner.

… and hoisted up the milling machine.  Oy, that was a production.  You can see 3 separate moving straps, then I lowered it down to the legs of my 2ton engine hoist while I rolled it around.

I had to roll a LOT of stuff around to make room to swing that engine hoist around.  The base of the new bench, and nearly anything not nailed down was moved out of the shop.

After much effort, the machine made it to it’s new home!

Then, we moved on to…. ASSEMBLY!

Here’s how I managed to get this far, without a major setback (and I think I can fix the dog hole alignment issue without too much pain.)

My Procedure List

I try to break it down into manageable steps, then order them to make sure they’re done in the right order.

Would love comments AND Critiques!

I’m nervous about trying to keep my hand drill perpendicular, so I made a little jig to drill the holes.  Worked out quite well.  Just put some thick scrap in the drill press and drilled out the holes, then clamped it to the top.

The dry fit was tricky.  I did the dry fit, but it was going in tight.  I also noticed I had two nice long wedges from the tombstone shape of the leg vice.  They made excellent tools for forcing getting those tenons out of the too-tight mortises.

Another round of trimming, and I’ve got a nice tight dry fit!

And here is what it’ll look like when I finally get it flipped over!

Those legs ended up perfectly flush.  I can’t even register a chisel between the top and the leg.

Dry fitting done, the long wedges helped me disassemble.

And with the tenons marked, I drilled out the drawbore holes.

Now I’ve only got 2 small things left.  I have to route out the mortise for the sliding deadman, and install the end caps and vise hardware.

This is the true test of the legs.  To make sure they’re really going be as sturdy as I need them to be.

I purchased a top of the line manual drawbore dowel manufactory.

Glued up my tenons and mortises, and pounded in my first set of pins.

A perfect 90 degrees!

A second one, and I’ve got 2 perfectly coplanar legs.

While the glue dried (enough to flush cut the dowels anyway), I switched to the leg vice, which I shaped and planed it smooth.

Some careful heaving later, I had the base flipped, and I marked out the mortises from the tenons.  This part can be tricky, if you didn’t pay too much attention, (like me) to where your dog holes were going.

Since the tenons were the same size, I made a template so I could route myself some perfectly true sides for most of the mortises.

I’ll be away tomorrow, so I’ll probably have to hold off on preparing the drawboring holes and the dry fit for this coming week.   So very close!

Really starts to look like a bench tonight.

I did the dry fit on the long stretchers

Then I drilled out the drawboring holes.

Did my initial marking out.

I also twisted a pencil in the dot, to make sure I could see it well later.

I caught one shoulder not as tight as it should be!  Time to pare a little bit.

And a final full dry fit to check everything is square.  Since I had the top flipped over, I lined it up to see what i might look like.  Upside down anyway.

Whoo hoo!

Managed to squeeze out some time after work the last few nights to get the mortises for the short stretchers out of the way.

I measured up my tenons, and trimmed them very square.  My theory on M&T joinery is the only time you’re allowed to touch your tenons is BEFORE you even mark your mortises.  So far, this rule has served me very well.

Once they’re all square, I mic’d them out to the nearest large forstner bit I have, a huge 2 incher.

Then rough out the waste.

Then I grab my 3/8ths LN mortise chisel, and a nice wide 3/4 bevel edge chisel, and true up the corners.

First joint, nice and snug!

And with a second joint, the first mockup.

And the most important part, nice and square!

Long stretcher mortises later this week, time allowing.

Been a while since the photos hit.  I didn’t take photos of everything, once I really got moving along.

I roughed out the end cap tenons with my Festool TS55.

Whacked the waste with a hammer, made a pass with the chisel, then went to town with LN 60.5R

Began to rough out waste from my vise end end-cap.

I probably won’t bother with the other end cap until the bench is built.  I need to finish this end cap to complete the tail vise, which I want to do while the bench is flipped over.

Looking good so far.

Fitted out the vise hardware, mortised the runners a bit.

Started in on the legs.  Cut out the hole for the vise screw, and mortised in the nut a bit.

Drilled the holdfast holes and tested them out.    I ended up counterboring a 1″ deep hole before I got any traction, even after sanding the holdfast.

I didn’t think to get a good set of photos of my dog hole jig, and the cutting process. I simply made a small template out of scrap ply, and routed out the dog holes with a big honking pattern bit.

While things were setting up, I got out my templates, and began to mark out the cavity for the Benchcrafted Tail Vise

Some circular saw cutting, hammering, chiseling, and gouging later, and I’ve got a rough cavity started.   From here on it was mostly worth with the gouge.  I made a small counter-template out of 1/4″ ply to make sure there were no high spots that would interfere with the action of the vise.

Finally, I applied the outer strip.  I wanted my dog holes a few inches in, so I could cleanly grab a board of decent width, 8″ or so.  The dog holes are about 4″ in.

(What you see sticking up in the back is the cutoff from the dog hole strip where the vise block will go.  I didn’t want to pinch that area, so I saved the cutoff so the spacer would be the same size.

While that set up, i switched to the base, and cut my legs and short stretchers to size, and roughed out the cheeks.

Before I left the shop, I set up the first cheek cut.  I find leaving something ‘ready to go’ is a good way to get back up to speed when you re-enter the shop, and also keeps your momentum going, so you want to head back to the shop the next day.

I finished prepping the boards for the last of the 6″ chunks

You can see the glued up chunks on the floor here, one mid-glue on table.

I put the big chunks on the bench, and began fitting them together, The clamps are just enough pressure to keep the boards together so I can locate the high spots and the gaps for fine tuning.

And the first “chunk” glueup!  Yes, thats a domino hole.  I was toying with the idea of using them to line up the top, but bailed on it.  It just doesn’t seem necessary, with so much surface area for the glue to reach.

While things were setting, I made the dog hole strip jig.

Once I had the top complete, sans the dog hole strip section, I decided to flip the bench to the bottom side up (not an easy task) and began to practice my jack and jointer plane skills for eventual use on the top.

Some nice curly shavings out of that jack.  I did get some tearout, but I’m not surprised.  There were a lot of cathedrals in this ash, leaving to gran direction changes mid-board on many, so no matter how much I wanted to make all the grain line up perfectly, it just was not going to happen.    But this is a user bench, not a dining room table.   The fact this is a low angle jack is probably not helping either, but I don’t have a #6, so I make do.

I switched to the jointer once I got the worst of the high spots somewhat levelled off.  I was aiming for perfection, this is the bottom fo the bench.  I was just trying to get a feel for the jacking (is that a word?) and jointing.  The #7 was definitly easier going.  Still, my arms are TIRED!  And the bottom isn’t even done.  The top is going to be far more work.  I will make sure to tackle parts of the top each day, so I don’t end up killing myself or giving up and going to power tools to level the top.

Last thing I did for the night was cut my dog hole strip to length.  Lets see you stop your tablesaw mid crosscut for a beverage break!

Tomorrow, I hope to cut the dog holes, and get the dog hole strip glued into place.