Thread: Bench - big, solid, cheap, no tools, no bench to build on

keep it up, your doing a great job. this sounds funny but "dont be in a hurry, the tools will come back faster than you think, but this time you will think deeper about what you want, what you need, and what you will use it for" iv been there as well as a property loss due to breaking my back. anyway keep up the great work

Greg:

i love your backsaw clinton it looks really good,its a shame you have a plastic handled crosscut saw if you lived at newie i would give you some wooden handled saws

That backsaw is a Bowden.. looks good but needs a serious 'sorting out'.

Greg, I have managed to keep my handtools... I have a stupid amount. I am using 'starters tools', old ones where they are have not been rehabbed, and suggesting or referring to new nasty ones, to replicate 'starters' tool sets.
I have a grand plan, which is to radically depart from the WIP's which use a large amount of tools and machines which the starter does not have.

Artme:
Not the black dog, but the "D.I.V.O.R.C.E"... which brings on the black dog, I guess. Thanks for the offer of material and tools... isn't this forum great when members like you are around!

John:
"honest woodwork"... there is a lot of 'basic' stuff on the web... Bob Smalser and Harry Tindall spring to mind.
To take the liberty of 'speaking for them' (so anything they don't like, is my fault)... know your tools, buy old tools and through rehabbing them or making them, learn them, then use them.
Bob Smalser, in particular, does 'no nonsense, basic stuff'... probably took him quite a few years to learn that basic stuff.

Sam: good advice... I'll bin dive tonight and pull the doors out of the skip bin in my neighbours yard. Lots of useable timber in that.

Groggy and Ivan:
Thanks gentlemen.

Reading the post is like running a race really fast.

Reading the post is like running a race really fast

Christos - yeah man, I think I know what you mean.
The posts are really wordy, but at the same time they skip over so much detail, which 'should' be explained.
My comments on 'epoxy and gaps', or 'mortice strength' could take 3 or 4 A4 pages to get down to the nitty gritty.
A smarter man than I could put it better... but 'suffer in ya jocks'... its my thread and you are reading it!
Seriously, where to start and where to finish, and what to put in between...

Opelblues: thanks mate. Appreciated.

Dont forget old hardwood (and pine) pallets are a great source of free timber for something like a work bench and are plentyfull.

Jack - yeah, thought of that, but found some good timber nice and cheap.

Ok - so one evening last week I cleaned up the tenons.

1. run a file across the tenons to identify all the high spots, and knock them off.
2. use a plane blade as a scraper to create a reeally flat face on all the tenons.

1st pic you can see the material I've taken off - I put it on the tenon face, and the plane blade is standing as I'd use it.

In the pics I've scraped pencil lead on the tenon face, rubbed it in with a finger, then taken two scrapes of the plane blade to remove a little surface material.

The graphite colour is in the grain, and in any depressions.
In reality, as opposed to trying to see what it means by a pic, the tenon face is sweetly schmick!

32 tenon faces sorted out took about an hour, but I had a beer and a smoke 1/2 way through.

So, whats the point of this?

Well, I should have used a shoulder plane/rebate plane/Carriage makers plane... I have them... but a $15 file that I had already, and a plane blade used as a scraper and 1 hour. A lot of your time is spent undoing the clamp and flipping the timber and applying the clamp.


So, although I cut against a wonky surface, used a wonky saw, and didn't muck around.... I cleaned up the tenons not much slower than using a specialised +$100 plane.
How?
By learning to saw to a line. Not being smart... everyone can learn and all it takes is a little practice till your body learns what to do.

Nice tenons that I'll cut the mortice to, so that I need to fit it with gentle taps of a mallet.
A 60mm x 45mm tenon into a tight fit mortice will not need glue if I drawbore it, and if I epoxy it I'll need to stuff the tenons up a bit to create the space epoxy needs.
I reckon I'll epoxy and drawbore, because if I lay it out right, the drawbore will remove the need for clamps to be used. If I lay it out right!

OK, off to cut mortices and then oxalic acid the timber and hose it down.

Couple of quick comments:

1) If there are kids about, the Oxalic Acid MUST be in a locked cupboard & preferrably a child resistant bottle - it should be labelled 'Poison' and it is.

2) If you are in northern Sydney there are a few of us with some machinery & tools that may be able to assist you with cutting etc.

Yep, all poisons to be locked up when not in use.

I'm actually happy to work by hand at the moment... but I think that I'd benefit from a bandsaw for the next few projects. Having to cut 30 or so meters (cutting out components from a large board)... and my saw lines end up a little wonky. That would be the result of 'maintaining zen' through beer!

Originally Posted by Clinton1

That would be the result of 'maintaining zen' through beer!

I don't get that at all. Half a glass and sleep from beer.

Well I would not want to drive.

Anyway, not too many pics, not too many words.

Saturday and Sunday I grabbed what spare moments I could and banged out the mortices. Just a 25mm (ish) chisel and a ball pein hammer. Banged is abut right for the technique... perhaps also "bash the bejusus".

Finessing the tenon to square, then making the mortice is pretty easy... just a matter of marking and using another story stick to make sure the diagonals are spot on before marking. This story stick is a piece of hollow metal curtain rod with dowel inside it... bodge the fit with gaffer tape, and mark the extension.

Here is the end result covered in oxalic acid and water... scrub it with a stiff broom and as usual, follow the directions on the chemical bottle.
Remember I have not laminated together the pieces that have the mortices in it... so its not a true mortice.
Suppose the important part here is making sure the diagonals are spot on.

About 3 hours for the mortices, a few cuts to the thumb where I got distracted and put the chisel to flesh.

Just cruising the bench section. should really make myself a decent one seeing all i have right now is a steel frame on wheels with a fresh packing sheet on it once every couple weeks!

What's WIP stand for guys??

Cheers,

~Josh.

Originally Posted by jshalay

What's WIP stand for guys??

~Josh.

Work In Progress

Glue up. Draw Bore with Dowel.

Anyway, made up some dowel... rip out stock to 'near enough' size, and plane round while holding it in the sash clamp. The Bunnings Dowel seemed likely to break when driving it home, as it is just pine.

Then made sure everything was nice and neat... glued up the legs, driving in the dowels to pull the legs down nice and tight.