The Bespoke Woodworker

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.

I began breaking down my boards into bunches based on their rough width, thickness, and general flatness.  I tried not to put 2 boards with any kind of imperfection in their flatness together, preferring to separate them by at least 2 straight boards.  There was some very very mild curvature after the planing work, but nothing that was not easily pinched out using just the strength in my hands.

Since I have no assembly table, I prepared my old bench with some rollers for extension (its only about 58″ long!) and gave it a nice non-stick surface via the cheapest economy size wax paper in the supermarket.

I decided to test out my clamping capabilities on the 7 foot stretchers (each will be cut down for 1 long stretcher 61″ , and one short 19″ stretcher.)

Looks good so far, but I did realize I’d probably like at least 2 more of those jet parallel clamps before I do the 8 footers.  Since I didn’t go buy a bunch of lumber, I think I can probably justify 2 or 4 of them.

I think I’m probably going to glue up most of the sections 1 day at a time.  This will both remind me to go slow, and also allow me to use every short clamp in sight.  I do have 2 footers, but I’ve discovered that trying to use clamps that are too long can sometimes backfire.

That first glueup went fast, and I had some extra ‘loud time’ before I hit the quiet hour (8PM).  Quiet hour is when I commit to stop making noise, as I live in a converted to condos 2 family house, and I live on the 2nd floor, but my shop is in the basement, right under my neighbor.

I decided there was maybe too much power tooling going on so far, so I decided to make my vise handle by hand.  And no, I’m leaving the lathe out of it.

Since my bench is currently acting as my assembly table, I laid the board that will eventually get doubled up and turned into my bench vise flat, and clamped a stop block on it.   Then I grabbed a roughly 4/4 square oversized offcut, rough cut 18 inches off with a handsaw, and went neander.

One or two passes with the jack both jointed it flat enough, and gave me a semi-smooth side to work with.  I switched over to a low angle block, tight mouth, and smoothed out anything that didn’t feel good.

Then I just started chamfering all over.  My theory on this is, I want something I can grab, that feels comfortable, but still has enough imperfections I can get a good grip.  I have a turned handle on my rockler face vise on my old bench, and I don’t really get anything out of it.  Sometimes its too smooth to grip when I’ve been sweating it out on the hand tools.

I just went at it until it _felt_ comfortable, and then I stopped.  Since I didn’t feel like donning the sanding gear, I just rubbed it on the rough board’s side until it got all burnished up.

Once I get the vise installed, I’ll probably drill a small hole, put a little dowel through, and sand the dowel ends smooth.  I may not even glue them in!

And since you love the photos, a gratituitous handplane money shot!

I may not bother to post daily progress on the big-chunk-glue-ups.  So it may be a few days before you see anything else!

I started yesterday grabbing all of the appropriate width and length stock out of my stash.  I used up nearly every 8 foot piece I had.  I could have easily done it with 7 footers, but I decided, if this is the ‘Last bench I’m going to make.’ (until I find a better one) then I ought not to short-change myself.

Here I am midway through the process.

I didn’t take a great deal of photos, because, by the time you’re on LJ, you’ve probably already surfaced rough lumber.  My process is this:

1.) Set up jointer, set up infeed/outfeed rollers.  Set jointer for a thick shaving, 1/8″ or so.
2.) Joint the ‘cleaner’ edge of each board.
3.) Set jointer back to fine shaving, 1/32.
4.) Run the flattest boards through it, stop when you’ve got a clean index face (enough smooth surface that the board can’t twist in the planer).
5.) Set jointer back a big rougher, 1/16
6.) Joint the worst of the lost for an index face.
7.) Push jointer aside, fire up tablesaw (yup, you heard me)
8.) Using TS, rip everything > 4.5-5″ wide down to a more reasonable size.  (twice this left me with another piece to joint up again.)
9.) Plane just enough to get 2 clean smooth sides.
10.) make pretty stack on top of the jointer, and temporarily clamp them all to keep warpage to a minimum, as I am dog tired and won’t be able to glue up tonight.

So why do it this way? Shop size. Turning an 8+ foot board around in my shop, which is only about 11 feet wide wall to wall, can be a production.

Note that what you see is only about 22.5″ wide, when clamped.  I still have to pick up the one piece of 8/4 ash I have to buy, for the doghole strip.  I knew I could probably get by using multiple pieces of 4/4, but I’ve nearly exhausted my 8 footers, and I think it will be easier to get a single 8/4 board, even if I have to take a little drive for it.  (I priced out the local woodcraft and rockler, and nearly peed my pants.  They price out 8/4 ash at something like $20/bf.  Who on earth would ever buy lumber there?)

I also set aside some thicker 7 foot stock for the stretchers.

Next, I start gluing up workbench chunks.  I think I’m looking at around 4 chunks.  3 ~7footers, and one shorter one with the dog holes in it.

Hopefully, I’ll move on to gluing in the evenings this week!

I had a fun time jointing up the legs of my Roubo on my older 6″ Delta jointer.  But my experience with the first 8 footer soon showed me the difficulty I would have with 26+ 8 footer laminations on it.

I’ve been eyeing the G0490X, and I finally noticed that the following conditions combined for the perfect storm:
8% cash back via ebay/paypal.
Grizzly’s Free Shipping offer.
$600 in the ‘tool fund’
~$350 value in the used jointer.

Between those, the numbers were only shy a hundred fifty or so, and the wife convinced me to go ahead and get it.  Actually she said to get it before she know how little it would cost.   (Stealth wife gloat)

I have tomorrow off, and I hope to be able to at least joint up the first batch of boards for lamination.

I’ve been thinking it through, and with an 8″ jointer and a 13″ planer, I’ll probably aim just to come up with 3-4 big blocks that can be planed, then slowly work my way up until I reach final thickness.

Not much progress.  My better looking half enthusiastically pushed a new jointer on me, so I sold my 6″ delta and ordered a Grizzly G0490X.  I’ve been a big fan of Grizzly tools ever since I got my first true cabinet saw, the G1023SL, which I highly recommend, if you’re in the market.

While I await the Large Truck of Tool Happiness, I moved on to dressing up the legs.   Even though the boards were all jointed and planed, I re-jointed the glue-ups to ensure a perfect square, and replaned the legs down to a uniform 4 7/8 inches square.

The ash finished nice and clean.  The ends are still rough, and weighing in around 33-34 inches long, so I’ve got plenty of room for the Tenons that will attach them to the top, and extra wiggle room while I decide on the actual workbench height.  I’m looking for this bench to be a hand tool specific bench, so it is likely I won’t go for something overly tall.  I’ve got to run a few tests using the dimension in Workbenches, and I’ll see what makes sense, height-wise.

Here, the massive legs are resting on the old bench that the roubo is replacing.  This old bench, while sturdy, predates my interest in hand tools, and it’s lack of appropriate workholding properties, combined with it’s length (56 inches!)  severly limits my hand tool skill progress.  It consists of horrible mortises and tenons made in laminated up Home Depot maple (god, the cost and the warp involved ought to be a major Felony), and a top made out of a discarded kitchen counter top from an out of business restaurant supply house.

The old bench will take on duty as a stand for a 500lb milling machine and a small metal lathe (in the future).   Did I mention I also have an interest in metalworking?  But that is a blog for another day…

So brief background is that about a 18 months ago, I bought a small load of lumber off ebay from a local seller.  While there, I ended up also buying 350 BF of flatsawn white ash for $100.  I figured, even if it ends up being ‘test’ pieces and shop projects, it would still be worth it.  Fast forward to recently, and I’ve been planning to build a new bench, and I’ve pretty much decided on a Roubo.

I picked up the lovely Benchcrafted tail/wagon vise, a german bench screw for a leg vise, and some Grammercy Tool holdfasts.

My local attempts to find SYP failed miserably.  Then I considered 8/4 ash.  Both places I went to had suboptimal supplies, and by my calculations, I’d end up wasting something like 70% of the raw board footage, and at ~$3.00/bf, thats a lot of change.

I then considered the 4/4 stock that I had.  It was cut pretty generously….  A couple of beers later, I was able to dismiss in my head all of the additional work involved in not using the same dimensioned stock as in the Christopher Schwarz Workbenches book,  it seemed like a real genius idea.

Aside from picking through some of the ash for the weird grain patterns, and saving for later..

I did manage to grab the stock closest to 5″ and get it cut to a workable size, jointed and planed.

I’ve got all my leg stock cut and glued up, and it only took me 5 layers to get a hair shy of 5″ square legs.  They’re about 33″ long, to leave some extra room for trimming later.

I think this is doable.

Lets see if I can survive the top though!