Woodworking Blog

In the last month, I've made some progress. I had finally picked out the pieces to function as stretchers for my bench, sifting through my dwindling supply of silver maple lumber. I don't have anything really thick, so I made each stretcher by cutting a long piece to function as the tenon on each end, and a shorter piece to thicken the center of each part.  I managed to thickness plane and joint all of this rough lumber back around the New Year, then I glued up my stretchers.

With all four stretchers glued and once again jointed square, I laid out the entire undercarriage of the workbench for the first time. I Used the tenons to mark the mortises on the legs. As in the original Christopher Schwarz design, I'm trying to make all of the outer surfaces of the bench fit on the same plane, so the legs and edges of the bench will all serve as bracing surfaces for work.  Having that shared plane for the outer surfaces of the stretchers and legs made it easy to layout and mark the mortises. I just placed both pieces on a flat surface and traced around the tenen end. 

After the holidays, I managed to grab just a bit of time before heading back to work to accomplish some work on my jewelry armoire project. At this point, I've got only two projects in progress, my two big dinosaurs. The jewelry armoire is now up on a dolly so I can work on all sides. My Roubo workbench parts are glowering at me from a corner of the shop. She'll have to wait. (I've decided the workbench is a 'she'.)

I took a gift I received from my beautiful wife for Christmas as an excuse to put the back on the armoire case. I know that doing the back is usually left until the end, but I wanted to use my new Lie Nielen rabbet block plane to cut the edge rabbets on the shiplapped back panels. When I went to pull the lumber for the back, I realize that, as usual with a project that hangs around too long, the poplar lumber originally earmarked for the job had been used for something else. So I started by going to Home Depot and buying some clean poplar. (Quick and expensive, but no more delays.) I thickness planed the plank down to 1/2" and then sized three pieces for the back.

The last time I tried to rush on this project, I just about screwed up the legs while trying to cut their tenons on the table saw. Over the last couple of days, I got back into the shop and basically treated these like I would a handcut dovetail layout and preparation. Since I don't have a good workholding surface at this point, I've gone back to simple tools and simple solutions. First, I took the two front and two rear legs through the surface planer so that each pair has the same width and depth. The lengths were already accurate. Once that was done, I used hand tools to fix the tenons. Since I glued the legs up from planks of varying thicknesses, I ended up with tenons that are not exactly the same  distance from the front and back of the legs. Instead I focused on the side to side location of the tenons, and making sure that the shoulder is accurately at the same depth all the way around on all four legs. 

I got them to a point where they won't embarrass me when assembled. The tenons, though differing sizes, are all square and beefy enough to hold offset pegs. And in any case, the exact locations of the mortises for these tenons will simply be traced from the tenons themselves after I assemble the whole undercarriage into one assembly. I'm still working on dimensioning the boards for the stretchers. Since I have no boards thick enough to function simply as stretchers on their own, each of the four will once again be a glue up of a wide board and a thinner board. I probably need to sharpen up my planer blades. This maple is HARD.

OK, I'm finally going to try to finish this thing. I almost gave it up as lost last October when, while trying to square up my bench legs, I ended up doing more damage than good with my table saw. The problem, I didn't have most of my tools, jigs and assorted materials located after our move from Roswell house #1. I've spent the last 10 months slowly (s l oooooooo  w l   y) getting my shop and house back in order enough to do some at least moderately skillful woodworking again.

The first, critical step now is to identify the rough lumber that will function as the stretchers on this thing. Unfortunately, I don't have thick enough lumber for one piece stretchers, so once again I'm going to need to patch together two pieces for each of the four stretchers. Finding pieces of silver maple from my dwindling stash of lumber from the farm tree was a sketchy proposition. I didn't think I even had enough left. There are more pieces in storage in Ohio, but I have no way to get it back to Georgia easily any time soon. So it was a major victory last night that I did manage to find  enough pieces for the entire undercarriage of the bench. A major victory was that I actually located my folder of bench plans. (I still can't find my folder for the jewelry armoire project, which is why it's still on the back burner right now.) But with the bench plans in hand, I could finally see my original dimension calculations and knew enough to identify rough lumber. 

Nearest the table saw is the long front-piece for the benchtop. This had long been my intended piece in which to carve a message. I was the only fairly clean long-enough, wide-enough piece I had. Beyond that at the far end of the outfeed table you can see my two big and two smaller legs. The larger legs will be on the front of the bench. And then on top of the legs are the four longer pieces that will serve as the front and rear stretchers. The inner parts are only going to be 3 ½" wide, rather than my original plan of 4", because I simply don't have any long pieces that are straight and wide enough.  Near the orange square (Hey, it's cheap, works well, and most importantly, AMERICAN MADE!) and orange ruler (ditto) are the four pieces to make up the left and right stretchers. On the floor behind the outfeed table I have the end cap of the top. The front and tail vice hardware are stored on the lower shelf of the outfeed table.

As you can see, my outfeed table is once again, effectively, the only work surface I have. That's the reason I desperately need to finish this bench project. The benchtop is sitting propped up against the far wall. Here, here's a better picture of it. 

So, I have all of the parts, FINALLY, and I can get to work on squaring up the stretchers and cutting the tenons for the legs. After I run the lumber though the planer and jointer, I'm going to attack this with hand tools as much as possible, particularly the joinery. The incident with the table saw and table leg tenons last year has made me very leary of using power tools for any of the fine joinery attempts.

Shit! I just realized that I don't in fact have all of the parts needed. I still need to source the wood for the front vice chop and lower support. Well, I knew that was the case all along, but I had forgotten. I know I don't have anything large enough for that one. I'm going to need to go find those parts eventually. But for right now, the goal is to get the basic bench put together quickly. I can't screw around with this much longer.

After moving our entire house (and my shop) during the last four months, I've finally got my shop set up well enough to be usable. So I pulled out the parts for the bench and started working on the legs. You can see that I'm finally taking the time to work out the dimensions for the Benchcrafted wagon vice. I'll figure out the leg vice later. I had the legs and vices stored under the planer, since it's about the only tool in the shop so far with the rolling base installed. Since the photos, I've pulled out the legs and dimensioned them for length and width.  I still need to fix the depth. The front two legs will be nearly square, but the back two will not be as deep. It's a simple and practical matter of the available stock. The front legs will be 5" x 4 7/8". the back legs will be 5" by 4".

After agonizing for a while, trying to figure out how to fit the wagon vice around the front leg of the bench, I finally noticed a line in the instructions that let me off the hook . . . "These instructions do not match the way that Chris Schwartz installed the vice on his famous workbench. HIs slot is moved toward the back of the bench by several inches so the vice and dogs will not interfere with the front leg." There you have it. It's allowed. The Schwartz has spoken. :-)