Thread: A Bench Build Over Summer... I hope

G'day Jack good luck I know how you feel my first bench was way to small it has now become a finishing bench ( I DID NOT ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS or ask for any help when I needed to ) I will not do that again. There are a lot of crafts persons on here that will be able to help you out more than me I can tell you what not to do good luck & have fun while you build you roubo Dan.

This would be interesting to watch this progress.

You are about to have an experience that may well encompass the full spectrum of emotions
from despair to sheer joy. If not then you will have done something wrong!!!

Glad to see another member of The Grand Amalgamated Union of Scroungers and Recyclers
amongst our ranks. That calls for .

Good luck with it all and have more fun than is respectably legal.

A summer build? Let's hope that is an Arctic summer so you have a bit longer . . .

Will watch with interest!

Think I'll pull up a pew and watch this

and there's a good chance you'll get it finished before I do mine

Originally Posted by Groggy

A summer build? Let's hope that is an Arctic summer so you have a bit longer . . .

I've got to get it done over summer, I head back to uni in march and Dad will want the carport back soon enough

Originally Posted by Sawdust Maker

....and there's a good chance you'll get it finished before I do mine

Are you still pulling nails out of yours?

Hah

at the moment I'm looking at bits of wood which need nails extracted

I'm under instruction to have other projects finished post haste ...

After 2 weeks of being pretty tied up with work I finally found the time to finish pulling out nails today and have roughly cut the timber for the top to length.

Well - i have a seat, a glass of red and am now busy anticipating the next move.....

After a couple of weeks of delays I've finally gotten back to the bench this week.

I got my hands on some old red gum railway sleepers this week that i plan to use for the legs and vises, they've been sitting in the paddock in some farm land of my fathers for at least the last 20 years. This week i cut them up into manageable lengths and have made a start of roughly cutting them down to size on the band saw. In the end i'm aiming to get a leg somewhere around 6" wide and 4" thick.

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With the weather pretty miserable today i made a start of dressing the timbers for the bench top, a job i can do inside, but a missed nail in one of them has put a stop to that until i get the blades back from sharpening.

Lovely timber under that old railway patina, and I really like that you've taken up the challenge in recylcing those sleepers

What kind of blade are you running in the saw ? (I don't have any suggesions or recommendations, just curious)

Regards
John

I have a question, too, Jack, if you do not mind.
When cutting the sleeper on your bandsaw did you use the fence? Did you have any difficulty in keeping to a straight line? All please.
Many thanks, mate, Bill.

John, I'm running a 1" wide blade that's somewhere around the 1 1/2 TPI mark, not sure who made it, I can't eve remember where I bought it. Its coping ok but its still pretty slow going. I must admit that the main driver of my choice to use the sleepers was that I didn't need to pay for them but having seen the wood hiding beneath the exterior I couldn't be happier with he choice.

Bill, I have been using the fence to guide me, I've been lucky that this blade doesn't have any tendency to want to drift to one side or the other so it been fairly easy to keep a straight line.

Hopefully, if everything goes to plan i'll be able to finish sawing out my legs by he end of next week