Thread: The Outdoor Workbench

So, How's it going?

There's a long answer and a short answer

Physically it is exactly how it was in post #73 (https://www.woodworkforums.com/f213/o...ml#post1557988)

I knew when I started on it that - being completely unexpected as a project at that time - if it wasn't done in a few weeks then the rest of the things I was supposed to be doing would rise up and push this away to the side.

As it turned out, about November enough work was required all at once to damn near sweep me out to South Africa ... or Madagascar at least!

Looking back on it, it is good to have the pictorial/text record od what has been done - I'm pleased with where I have got to with it so far. The timber has proved itself outside. Rain, heat, whatever it hasn't moved in the least. At some stage in the past few months I was looking at the end grain of the ex-roof beam and realised that it was the very definition of quarter-sawn timber.

q-sawn oregon.jpg

I have had three good practices at dovetails now, and that is what the project is waiting on basically. I still want to dovetail on the end-caps. Bolts or a finger-joint would be easy, but the point is to learn something along the way, so that's the aim. And the leg vice. I've had some thoughts in that direction too - Chris Schwarz has been blogging about different ways to avoid having a moveable pin at the bottom fixture. Still thinking that all over.

In the meantime, other than work we have fostered and found a home for a very trying delinquent of a malamute slabbed a moderately large chunk of huon pine by handsaw, discovered some good anti-rust protection for the tools in the garage (finally) and set about working through them all, and actually made a significant reorganisation of (part of) the garage. Not to mention spending a good deal of time looking at and playing with handsaws
So all-in-all fairly happy with where things are at.

Here's a couple pics from Farm Woodwork - LM Roehl - available free online as a Google book. It's kinda the same look.

farm woodwork - lm roehl 1.jpg farm woodwork - lm roehl 2.jpg

This is another specimen of posting in the attempt to excuse the lack of movement on the Workbench front.

It started ... almost ... with the Lanolin.

Being in Perth there is not a big humidity problem ... or salt air either where I am. But my tools in the garage that were not in drawers were slowly collecting some red rust on their upper surfaces. Generally the sides facing downwards were fine. It had been nagging at the back of my mind to clean and protect them.

Having realised it (Lanolin) was available at Supercheap in a squeeze-spray pack I was eager to work my way through the inventory, cleaning and protecting. But before I could get to that step I needed my grinder with the wire-wheel to be accessible and usable. And that was contingent on two other issues ... the benchtop ... and fixing down the grinder.

When we moved here (1st and only house) I built a 'bookshelf' ... but there wasn't any concept of 'woodworking'. Dressed jarrah in (seemed like) any width and length was plentiful at the semi-local hardware store, and it was built with a hard-point tenon saw and a drill. They had a flimsy pamphlet on wood joints, and I thought I was was advanced because I used a 'quarter-lap' joint (I guess) instead of the two printed options ... butt joints and dowels.

Sometime after that I got the brown jarrah-ish workbench that I have from a skip on someone's lawn, and much later than that I picked up this kitchen cabinet body off another lawn. It seemed - and is - solidly put together and altogether too good to see junked.

Garage 019.jpg

For a long time I only had a pretty thin length of melamine-covered chipboard as a top, screwed down in two places, and that Ryobi grinder was 'secured' right at the front edge which protruded over the cupboard.

Eventually - I can't remember why - I needed to move the grinder to the back of the top so that the front section was clear. I unbolted the grinder - and for months and months very time I used it I used one hand to stop it wandering around over the top due to vibration as I used the other to grind or wire the thing I was working on.

Also - perhaps through depression - the thin saggy top had achieved a resonance with the grinder so that 30 seconds after turning the grinder on, everything in the cupboard was contributing to a general rattle and hum that made it a bad look to just whack the grinder on for a minute at 12am because I wanted to clean something up a bit. (There's a house fairly close behind the garage)

Last year I pounced on a long and solid kitchen top that had been thrown out to the roadside. At 3m x 55cm x 40mm it looked ideal. I paced off the estimated length of the cupboard and broke it at the last ~80cm to fit it into the van.

When I got it home and wrestled the pieces down the drive to the garage it was just what I wanted. So I stood it vertically in front of the grinder and power-board - because it fit there - until I got determined enough to undertake the job of shifting everything, removing the old top, and installing the new one.

This is the way of things ... that a job needs to be in my face ... smacking me annoyingly across the forehead every time I walked far enough into the garage ... taking up about 50% of the 1m wide space in front of the cupboard ... making me walk like a drunken John Cleese to get past it to the stanley planes and chisels I wanted to clean up ... in order to make sure that eventually it might get done.

What followed was probably at least three months of reaching around the vertical obstruction to turn the flouro on and off ... or use the grinder ... which still wasn't bolted down. So I would be lying vertically against the new top inclined at 15o to the vertical, holding the grinder with the left hand while de-rusting a chisel held in the right. If the angles got tricky I would be leaning heavily on the new top, using two hands on the chisel, as the grinder drifted slowly across the bench.

So eventually - and The Lanolin Solution played a key part - I moved everything off the bench - removed the old top -and finally placed and secured the new top. Then I decided on a spot for my 6" grinder, put another 40mm of chipboard under it - and bolted it down. Then I brought the three-phase grinder (that I had scored at the very end of an auction) in from under the eaves outside to its own place on the bench.

Pretty damn happy. The cordless drill battery chargers are now screwed to the chipboard already on the wall from when we bought the house instead of lying about on the benchtop. And the top is *much* more solid and better attached than before. I can turn on either of the grinders, even with these files sitting about on the bench between them, and barely raise a hum. The Midnight Grinder rides again!!

cleanup.jpg

Why are the files there??? It is the obstruction principal in operation again. The cupboard had a single false draw-front ... but everything else there is the same ... so I decided to make a real drawer and use it for my large files.

Garage 021.jpg

Consequently, I expect they will be sitting there for the next 6-9 months. <sigh>

On the brighter side, I then started on the rust removal and lanolin slathering.
Vintage try squares, hammers, dividers, and chisels were all successfully addressed to the wire-wheel and the desirable wet-sheep-soaked-in-metho smell of the lanolin.

(See here: https://www.woodworkforums.com/f152/s...ml#post1607136)

Next ... september 2012 ... I scored some metal racking ... more than I bargained for ... at an auction.

The stand-alone rack that I was interested in came apart in three sections and eventually appeared down behind the garage like so ...

P1010225.jpg

and shortly after ...

2012-09-22 17.10.31.jpg

The other three sections were thrown in 'for free' - not bad for $75 all up

They looked like this, and have been twisted about a bit ...

P1010027.jpg

eventually wanting to set them up in a row like this ... except the driveway slopes and I want the racking level.
Hmmm.

P1010055.jpg

It didn't take completely forever to get one section set up, and them another roughly into place - but that's where it stopped for some time.

P101018.jpg

The next breakthrough came about in January ... thanks to the wastefulness of Coles

We delivery there ... to the back dock ... and they had two huge 'skips' there for about a week ... throwing away old metal shelving ... a bit like the 'brownbuilt' stuff, but not bolted together and not brown. Orange in fact. Bright. Orange.

Anyways ... I pulled up alongside it for several days, tut-tutting at the waste and looking it over for anything useable. Actually, now that I remember it, I pulled out an entire 6-wheeled two-level trolley that works perfectly well - we are using it at work.

Then about day four ... a quite heavy-duty aluminium framework appeared in there - holus-bolus, not even unbolted - a no red-blooded male could resist its siren call. Nor me neither for that matter.

Consequently the side of the garage which previously featured the longest planks and boards that I have (about 4m) supported on two old saw horses ...

2012-09-22 17.11.18 wood side.jpg

suddenly and with little effort became much more space-efficient ...

cleanup 004.jpg

This had immediate flow-on effects for cleaning up the whole near-garage area. After a couple of years of thinking about it, I was able to remove the very long jarrah boards that stuck out the front of the garage door and ran halfway into the garage to a more Not-Beaten-Up-By-Your-Wife-friendly location

The last one of three ...

cleanup 001.jpg

and the rack put to good use ...

cleanup 010.jpg

This has had further disturbing consequences. For one, the prospect of being able to close the garage door soon.

cleanup 011.jpg

A re-positioning of the workbench-in-progress ... including a life-extending decrease in area of lawn covered by "stuff" ...

cleanup 015.jpg

And finally enough motivation on the weekend just gone to finish the second section of the big wood-rack!

cleanup 017.jpg cleanup 019.jpg

Cheers,
Paul

Far out, and I thought my shed was untidy

Hah!

Pish-posh to that ... you're seeing the tidy version

Just a tad envious of the racking and shelving!!1

Used to work for a fellow that dealt in 2nd hand shelving.

Used to get a fair bit from Coles and Woolies until they both
decided that thier smaller competitors were getting an "unfair
advantage by buying the replaced shelves. They were then taking it out to be buried!!!

Originally Posted by artme

... they both
decided that thier smaller competitors were getting an "unfair
advantage by buying the replaced shelves. They were then taking it out to be buried!!!

Outrageous!!!

Originally Posted by pmcgee

....This had immediate flow-on effects for cleaning up the whole near-garage area. After a couple of years of thinking about it, I was able to remove the very long jarrah boards that stuck out the front of the garage door and ran halfway into the garage to a more Not-Beaten-Up-By-Your-Wife-friendly location.........

There is an alternative to actually storing them and that is by using them.

Bigger pieces were bought green ... 2 years aging is about done for some.

Then a lot came when they knocked down the house next door

Originally Posted by pmcgee

...
Bigger pieces were bought green ... 2 years aging is about done for some.....

I am so sorry as it did not occur to me that these might be green. I might suggest that next time you inform your other half that these need to be dried before they can be used. Another piece of advise for everyone and that is not to tell her how long you expect it to take before it can be used.

She knows ... she was there at most auctions ... still enjoys giving me a hard time tho

Those three boards that were in the garage ... 50mm x 400mm x ~4m ... I remember them ... just about last item at one of the Harvey auctions.

No-one was after them. $40 for the three I think. What can you do?

Cheers,
Paul