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  1. #1
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    Default WIP - My second workbench

    My original workbench is 30 years old and while I'm not overly active it's served to renovate 4 houses and I've managed to build a few interesting pieces along the way. Now I'm retired and looking at things I might make over the next 10 years or so and I'm starting a new bench.



    The raw materials are salvaged joists and beams left over from the rebuild of a 40 year old pool deck at our current house and various pieces of hardware collected from garage sales and auctions accumulated over the last 15 years or so.

    The current bench has a Dawn 175 (i.e. 7") vice and a single aluminium screw up bench stop. This has really worked quite well for me. I drilled a couple of holes in the apron and added a couple of M8 bolts many years ago which support long pieces for edge jointing. The main thing it seems to be missing for me are more holes for benchdogs.

    Given the functionality of the current bench I am inclined to think the Kirby bench from the Workbench Book or a Phil Lowe style bench would be a sensible and functional upgrade.

    In my pile of stuff I have a 9" Joplin quick release vice, a partially complete Veritas Scandinavian Bench kit with face and tail screws, another sloppy no name bench screw and a couple of Record bench hold downs. Given I already have this gear I feel disinclined to go out and purchase more hardware for a new bench. With the hardware available to me it also seems silly to opt for a minimalist bench design. I was originally going to just use the Veritas set and build a Frank Klausz style bench.

    joplin.jpgscrew.jpgveritas.jpg

    The salvaged timbers however are suitable for building a much more substantial bench of the scale of the Schwarz Holtzapffel design.

    While the double screw face vice is appealing and could possibly be accommodated using the tail vice bench screw from the Veritas set together with the other noname bench screw, for no particular reason I'm inclined to use the quick release vice as the face vice. Using the Joplin as the face vice means I'll probably need to add a deadman/helper for long support. I might also add a Moxon style vice for dovetailing, although my experience so far is that the Joplin should be good enough for most things I'm likely to attempt. For the tail vice I could either use the Dawn 175 similar to the Schwarz modified tail vice or on the other hand I think I can make a serviceable wagon type tail vice using the Veritas face vice screw, in which case the vice configuration is going to look more like the Fortune/Nelson bench from The Workbench book.

    I expect the Record hold downs will perform somewhat differently to forged holddowns, but it hardly seems worthwhile chasing down something else when I already have the Records.

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  3. #2
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    Fuzzie,

    I'll be watching this one.

    My second bench (a modified 'Shaker Design' is still a WIP) is from recycled timber (in fact the only thing thats not recycled is the glue).

    Just finishing a router sled to flatten the top.

    Just post pics of the important bits (like all of it)

    Way to go

  4. #3
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    Default

    One to follow.

  5. #4
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    Default

    I'll drag up the beanbag and keep an eye on this
    regards
    Nick
    veni, vidi,
    tornavi
    Without wood it's just ...

  6. #5
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    All the timbers are now roughly sized.

    I had some difficulty finding suitable pieces for the long stretchers. I'm aiming for 125x45 for stretchers, but most of the remaining joists have rot in inconvenient places that prevent cutting long pieces of full width. I also had problems extracting the last few screws and broke a couple off below the surface and had to be careful to avoid them during ripping.
    stretchers.jpg

    The pieces for the top have been ripped to 85mm which is still generous, but given their weight it has been difficult holding the long lengths against the fence as they run through the blade and there is some variation in widths which will have to come out after glue up.
    rough.jpg
    The legs are nominally 125x75 but at least one has a deep crack running most of the length. I'll decide if it needs some sort of repair when I get to mortising it.

    Using the face vise screw as a wagon style tail vice is looking too complicated. The proportions of the screw would make it difficult to fit and it adds to construction complication by requiring an end cap as well. Although I roughed up a suitable piece of beam for the end cap, I have decided to just go the simple route and use the Dawn vise on the end.

    I'm now contemplating dog holes. As I have a couple of 3/4" Veritas round dogs, round holes seem the obvious route. However I'm unsure how to drill clean 3/4" holes in the thick benchtop. If I go for square dogs, the grooves could be cut in the side of a board before glue up.

    In any case the next step is a bit of handplane cleanup of the boards prior to glue up. A bit of blade sharpening being required first.

  7. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzie View Post
    ...

    I'm now contemplating dog holes. As I have a couple of 3/4" Veritas round dogs, round holes seem the obvious route. However I'm unsure how to drill clean 3/4" holes in the thick benchtop. If I go for square dogs, the grooves could be cut in the side of a board before glue up.

    In any case the next step is a bit of handplane cleanup of the boards prior to glue up. A bit of blade sharpening being required first.
    brace and bit (for exercise sake)
    plunge router (not sure about how deep you can plunge)
    electric drill (with one of those keep square and upright attachments)
    drill press but before full glue up so can still maneuver the top

    I'm thinking of using the plunge router to start the holes then using those holes as guides and using an electric drill to finish. but I might just end up using the drill press (if I can work out infeed and outfeed support)
    regards
    Nick
    veni, vidi,
    tornavi
    Without wood it's just ...

  8. #7
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    Several of the sticks destined for the top had cosmetic issues due to the nail holes and splits and I decided to rip another cm or so off them to get a cleaner top. I have cleaned all the machining marks off the faces by handplane and started the glue up.

    begin.jpg

    Lacking enough room to move I have resurrected my rolling platform to move the stuff around the garage. I had all the timber loaded on the platform and tried to move it but one of the el cheapo castors disintegrated immediately so I made a quick trip to Bunnies and replaced them with 55kg rated ones and it now rolls like a dream.

    I'm gluing up the bench top in blocks of 5 laminates. These will fit through my thicknesser and I think I will be just able to man handle the blocks, but I'm waiting for the first lot of glue to dry to get an idea of how heavy the components are really going to be. Raising the complete top to bench height will be interesting.

    Cleaning up the faces raised a few design issues. I have recently changed over to water stones for sharpening. The resultant mess on the old bench got me thinking I'll probably have to devise a separate sharpening station once the new bench is commissioned. I was also reminded that my current one and only planing stop is too far in from the front of the bench. Giving thought to that I have decided to revert back to the bench design that has a wagon style sliding dog end vice.

  9. #8
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    The top is now in 5 pieces. Two laminated widths of around 200mm, two blocks of 2 laminates and a single board.
    endcap.jpg

    As laid out in the picture, the two 200mm blocks to the left are the rear and middle sections of the top. The wider of the 2 smaller blocks is the next section of the bench toward the front. The next narrower block is the dog hole strip. The single board will be the front face board.

    I need to cut off a section of the dog block strip to use as the sliding section for the end vice. This portion and the mating faces of the adjoining boards will all be grooved to fit alignment tongues on both sides of the sliding dog block. I intend to get the dog block things sorted out then glue up the remaining front pieces to form the front 200mm block. The endcap will be cut out of the piece of old beam with the face board kept long in order to dovetailed it to the endcap.
    tearout.jpg
    I have squared up the three elements that will make the front block, but unfortunately I've got horrible tearout from running them over the jointer. I'm not surprised because the grain in these old joists is just plain gnarly. I'm not sure what to do about the tearout. It is up to 1mm deep. The edges of the joists cut relatively cleanly on the table saw, but both the jointer and my hand planing is resulting in tearout.

    The three 200mm wide sections will then be resurfaced somehow, thicknessed and squared before gluing together to form the final benchtop. I expect the benchtop will then only require minor hand planning for final true up. This sounds more straightforward than my machinery allows. I'm particularly concerned about how do the final surfacing to eliminate the tearout.

  10. #9
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    Nice looking wood

    coming along well
    regards
    Nick
    veni, vidi,
    tornavi
    Without wood it's just ...

  11. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzie View Post
    .... I'm particularly concerned about how do the final surfacing to eliminate the tearout.
    My reply to this would be to use hand planes. But then I also read this,,,,


    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzie View Post
    ... The edges of the joists cut relatively cleanly on the table saw, but both the jointer and my hand planing is resulting in tearout.

    So I think you may need to go scraper path. If it was me and my work bench I would not be too concern about some tear out. I would more likely just leave it as over time it will be scruff up.

  12. #11
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    Christos, tearout from the jointer is by far the worst. Handplaning is catching as the grain changes direction and digging in a bit while the jointer is far worse pulling out chunks as the timber passes over the blades with no mouth to close up.

    However given the density of the timber, the grunt of the machinery to do at least the first pass of flattening of the glued up blocks is definitely required. The only other option I can think of is to find somewhere that could surface sand the bench top, however outsourcing parts of the build is not on the agenda.

    Leaving a light amount of tearout will provide the bench with instant patina.

  13. #12
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    Hi Fuzz,

    I had similar issues, and had good sucess with planing directly across the bench with a moderately cambered blade on my #7 directly across the bench. I think I also tried a toothed blade diagonally across the bench on my #62. I then went with a very finely set blade on my #7 or #8 and it didnt really matter which way the crazy grain was headed.

    Occasioanally it came unstuck, and an angled blade or slight change in planing direction resolved the issue.

    Its one of those experiences that builds character, takes a few hours, and requires several breaks to wonder if all the sweat is rusting your plane in front of your eyes. Several frequent honing breaks are a must.

    I too agree though - a little "patina" is ok for a bench as long as its flat enough to serve your individual woodworking purpose.

    Nick

  14. #13
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    A couple of frustrating days. For my planned tail vice I need to groove the the face board, dog block and backing block before glue up. To have the greatest chance of getting things properly aligned I figured all three pieces have to be truly flat and square before starting the grooving.

    The method of getting things flat and square is the handlplane. I have a couple of the M2 blades from the 2nd group Stanley Plane blade order and this is the first time I've seriously tried to use these blades. Apart from the issues of making the blades fit my Stanley bodies, the other problems have been with sharpening. The blades had been sharpened at 25' and since I've been using a honig guide I decided to just polish the bevel and skip a higher honing angle. All I can say is the edges didn't seem to last very long. I've now upped the honing angle to add a micro bevel, but compared to the standard blades sharpened the same way, the M2 blades don't seem to be holding an edge any longer. Strangely the M2 blades however don't look to be dull to my naked eye. After a bit of use they just stop cutting easily and want to skate over the surface. The edge then seems to be a bit more polished and is probably rolled over a bit whereas the standard blade edges look a bit ragged.

    The board I had selected for the bench face was the one with the straightest grain from what I had. Unfortunately it seems being straight grained doesn't make it nicer timber. It planed easily, perhaps a bit too easily. I'd describe the timber as being a bit stringy and the edges sort of crumbled easily. As the face board is also the rear jaw of the front vice I'm guessing it is not really suitable. I'm sure it will splinter easily down the track and not be suitable for the leading edge of the bench.

    So back into the pile to find something else to use for the face board. More cursing and swearing to dig out old rusty screws and dimension, but I'm now back on track with I think a stronger face board.

  15. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzie View Post
    Christos, tearout from the jointer is by far the worst. Handplaning is catching as the grain changes direction and digging in a bit while the jointer is far worse pulling out chunks as the timber passes over the blades with no mouth to close up.
    How deep a cut are you making with the jointer?
    And when were the blades last sharpened?

    I suspect from reading a few WsIP that many people wouldn't be too fussed about some tearout on a workbench ... but I understand if you are wanting to get the best result possible.

    Cheers,
    Paul

  16. #15
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    The jointer is set for a 1/32" cut and gets a reasonable finish on most of the faces, but not so much on the board edges for some reason. I didn't sharpen the jointer blades to start this project, perhaps an oversight. I have a veritas jointer blade sharpening jig although I seem to have some issue getting it to hold my blades at the same angle as they have originally been sharpened. Perhaps I need to revisit the blades and check the actual sharpening angle.

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