Thread: WIP - My second workbench

The main sections for the benchtop needed flattening and thicknessing prior to final glue up. The blocks are approx 2m long and weigh in at around 36kg each. This is really on the limit for me to handle alone.
block.jpg
My over/under planer/thicknesser is just a roughie that has some issues with accuracy, having a couple of mm play across the infeed table of the thicknesser due to it's sloppy central raising screw.
table.jpg
I attempted to level the table by running a bit of whiteboard through the planer then flipping it to attempt to cancel out the runout across the cut. I then bodgied up some infeed and outfeed support and ran the sections first over the planer top to flatten the tops and then through the thicknesser to bring them all to the same size.
infeed.jpg

All in all I'm pretty happy with the result. The three blade head on this machine made a much better cut than the 2 blade head on my 6" jointer, the only minor irritation was getting hung up a couple of times pushing the sections through the machine while running around to pull out at the other end. This resulted in a couple of snipes, as Murphys's law would have it, most prominent in the front most section.

snipe.jpg

Might want to get someone to give you a hand to run them through a little more ... ?

Or can you now just redress with the jointer?

Otherwise ... is your outfeed/infeed support at two point locations?
You might benefit from making a single, flat extended bed surface - supported at several points.
Ideally, having to stop movement through the thicknesser to gather for a push or scoot to the other side shouldn't cause you too much grief in terms of surface condition.

Also you might slick up the bed surface with liberal application of WD40 or wax or whatever.

I got a lot of benefit out of building extended infeed and outfeed for my bandsaw for resawing large chunks of tree.
There are pictures on here - but I wouldn't take that mess as a guide

Cheers,
Paul

After Friday's effort my right arm said no more work for a couple of days. Tennis elbow from too much lifting and planing .

Today I assembled the blocks. Having gone to the effort of flattening them, I wanted to avoid introducing any excessive new twist now. While I got the edges flat enough for a gravity fit, when I checked the face there was definite cup across the assemblage (I think the light behind the rule is just visible in the pic).
balanced.jpg cupped.jpg

Not being able to edge joint the two boards together I was reduced to doing a few cycles of edge adjustment and test fits. More heavy lifting up and down and planing , I'll see how my elbow surfaces again tomorrow. BTW I was using a #5 with a Hock O1 blade today and it was just a pleasure to use.

glueup.jpg
It looks like the dog hole block isn't really straight but is somewhat crowned, not that my yard rule shows it up. I should have acquired a good 2 metre straight edge before I started. So a not insignificant final flattening with be require, but that will now wait while the frame comes together.

Now that's just not fair ...
getting tennis elbow doing something you want to do and something as important as a bench build

The cracks in one of the legs was more than I liked so I had to cut up and glue together some other stuff to make up a replacement.
gluedLeg.jpg

I then set about the morticing. None of the mortices go all the way through the legs. The rails will be glued up and possibly pegged with their mortices 60mm deep in the 70mm thick leg. The stretchers will be attached with knock down bolts and their stub tenons will only be about 30mm into the sides of the legs.

morticed.jpg

I keep asking myself why I'm doing this in 90% humidity. The Fuzzette wants to know why I come out of the garage looking like the creature from the black lagoon and not like Tim the toolman, although I think she'd probably be happy with even an Al look.

looking good Fuzzie.
I was going to ask how you did those mortices , then I spotted the link.
The link colours don't stand out to well for me , it could be my eyes.


This is what I do my mortices with,and there is one going up your way on ebay, it could be a cheap buy .

eBay Australia: Buy new & used fashion, electronics & home d


With one of these machines a mortice like that takes 1 minute each.

Rob

Thanks Rob. That auction looks like it's primed for a last minute bidding war.

I have no room left in the shed for more machinery! I'm tripping over stuff as it is with nowhere else to even dry store the timber I have acquired. Most of that is Maple Silkwood which with my hobbyist only project list is likely to see me out. I'm thinking these are the last really challenging mortices I'm likely to make.

As it happens my blue monster thicknesser in the above pictures is a Chinese universal woodworking machine that has a horizontal boring attachment. Because of space limitations I do not have all the parts mounted to be able to use it, but when I did originally try it out I was less than happy with the result probably due to the poor quality chisel included. The addition of a forstner bit to my current kit is probably all I will ever need.

I'm not sure whether the neighbours find the whining machinery or thump thump of hand morticing more annoying.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

...
I'm not sure whether the neighbours find the whining machinery or thump thump of hand morticing more annoying.

Mine dislikes the loud music - I dislike her smoking

Looking good Fuzzie, pulled up my stool for the rest.
Cheers, Ian

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Thanks Rob. That auction looks like it's primed for a last minute bidding war.

Sale price tripled in the last 60 secs.

Cleaning out the mortices, cutting the tenons and making them all fit together had it's own challenges. The tenons were hard to cut to the line, I had originally intended to use the bandsaw but I couldn't make a straight cut in the 110mm depth. I ended up kerfing the tenons, splitting off the waste and cleaning up with a shoulder plane.

Everything now mostly fits, but the bottom rail tenons could probably still lose a shaving or two. The timber in the legs is really quite brittle so I have put a good 6mm chamfer around each leg up to the bottom rail.

dryLegs.jpg

I've cut a stub tenon on the top of each leg and will mortice these into the top. Although this is essentially the design of Chris Schwarz's Holtzapffel bench, I'm beginning to wonder if any additional precautions will be needed to prevent racking?

Next steps will be glue up of the legs and then back to the top to cut to length and fit the vices. Lifting and flipping the 100+kg top will be educational.

Time's moving on. A chainblock or hoist would have been preferable but I used what came to hand to lift and flip the benchtop - a boat winch hung from the ceiling.

hoist.jpg

I quickly gave up on trying to flatten the underside at ground level and soon lifted the top onto some supports. There was a slight twist but it planed out fairly easily. It seems to be easier working the wider top across the grain. I'm gaining a little more confidence the topside will be better behaved when it comes time for its final flattening.

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Fiddling around trying to fit the Joplin Quick Action vice to the bench. The vice has been on the floor in the garage for many years after I picked it up at auction. I haven't really played around with it until now. I noticed it has a bit of an issue winding out. At about 1/3rd way out the split nuts lose grip and the screw mechanism slips.

Looking around at quick action vice threads here, it looks like most have some issue or other. The Joplin mechanism looks substantially different to pics of the Dawn and Record models I can find pictures of. The Joplin holds two halves of a split nut together with a binding spring. It looks to me like that spring could be somewhat stronger. On the other hand the nut sits down into a bit of a collar when under load which helps draw them together.

quickAction.jpg
I took the brush to the crud in the threads and rubbed a bit of surface rust off things. The threads all look pretty clean so I don't think there is anything major wrong with the vice. I'll guess I'll just have to wait until the bench is in use and see how the vice works under load.

After a couple of weeks holiday and a diversion into some landscaping work I'm finally back on the workbench build.

Having flattened the bottom of the benchtop and trial fitted the vice I tested the face board against the dog hole strip and things didn't look pretty. It appears I messed up the dog block edge while trying to adjust it for fit against the rear vice jaw and the bottom side flattening had increased the out of square. More disappointment with the face board which had developed quite a spring since I dimensioned it. Of course the spring was opposite to what could be readily clamped out as I had already run the groove in the side for the dog block runner and couldn't just flip it.

With the face board springing out I had to consider how I am going to align everything. This home brew wagon vice is causing me problems now. The face board is a different depth to the benchtop, the dog hole strip is now a different dimension to the sliding block section I cut off, the end cap has to be aligned with the dog hole strip and the face board has to be fitted into the end cap somehow.

I originally imagined the face board dovetailed into the endcap to resist the pull of the vice when under load, however with the board springing out that joint probably wouldn't hold. Dovetailing in the other direction would hold the board but be of no assitance when the vice is under load. Also since I don't know how stiff the sliding dog block mechanism is going to be and I don't want to glue this joint as a precaution if I ever need to take the endcap off to service the mechanism.

To address some of these issues I re-flattened the face board, then lifted the benchtop onto its edge and attempted to edge joint it as well as I could. The mongrel grain didn't help my poor planing technique and there is probably a bit of twist in the face board as well. Fearing that I will just make things worse and worse and end up reducing the dog hole strip too much, I've just got it to what appears to be an acceptable fit and hope things come together OK in the end. As nice as it might be to get things to engineering tolerances this is after all just a recycled timber workbench.

edgeJoint.jpgrefaced.jpg

Before I can work on the endcap alignment and face board joint the top had to be cut to length. With only a 71/4" circular saw to work with I had to make cuts from both sides of the top. This necessitated setting it down on the floor again and flipping it as well. Did I mention how heavy this thing is? Thankfully the cuts aligned and I'm now read to work on the attaching the endcap.

trimmed.jpg

Another issue I've got is the total top width is now a couple of mm narrower than I've made the legs. The legs haven't been glued up yet, so I will have to shave a few mm off the rail shoulders to bring the total width down to size. I probably should have made the legs undersize to start with. Although I wanted the legs flush at the front. In retrospect there is no need in this design for them to be flush with the rear and a small overhang is acceptable.

If I ever do this again, I definitely would not choose a design that has so many alignment issues around the tail vice design. If I had made a simple slab top and used the small Dawn as a tail vice I wouldn't be doing all this fiddly stuff with cranky wood and I'd probably be finished by now.