Thread: Mat's Split Top Roubo

Nice work !

Coming along nicely.

Couple of observations: Years ago I tried making wooden springs for my dogs. First I did it by making the dog a bit fat, then cutting out a slot to make a spring. After a while, the spring leaf lost its mojo, so I tried a few remedies like putting screws in the sides to push the spring leaf out a bit, but that only worked for a short while, too. Then I tried adding the leaf like you've done, which worked a bit better, but eventually I discovered the simplest, & so far the best solution which is to put a ball catch in the stem. This worked very well and all the dogs with catches have gone on working for many years: Dog breeds.jpg

I understand your problems with barrel nuts - getting two holes drilled at right angles 150mm or more apart to intersect precisely is no mean feat! I've long since given up on them & find simple bolts & nuts far easier (and cheaper). Rout a generous slot for the nut, and it doesn't matter if your bolt hole is a bit off, you can still get the nut on easily. You have to hold the nut with an open-end spanner as you tighten it, but that's a small price to pay....

Cheers,

yeah thanks Ian, I'm going to try a few different wood species for the leaf, the BlackButt splits to easy, I have some Hoop Pine that I think will work great. the ball catch looks like it would work pretty well.
As for the Barrel nuts, compounding my issue was the hole wasn't drilled wholly vertical causing racking of the nut, leading to cross threading, not a massive deal, its assembled now and I don't envisage having to remove it anymore.

Completed the dovetails today, used a process I handy used before, worked very well, quite pleased with the outcome.

I started by creating a template on the tablesaw


Using an 8mm spiral bit and a copy ring I removed some waste the followed up with a pattern bit to establish crisp clean edges then another pass with the copy ring togged to the desired depth and a final pass with the pattern bit


Flipping it over I used and edge guide to establish the rear face and ever so carefully remove the waste from the rear face ending up with a crisp pair of dovetails


EndCap

Next was refitting the end-cap into its final place, which required me to fix an earlier ailment, the recess for the end-cap bolts want quite large enough to allow enough clearance for the bolt movement. Firstly I had to replace the drill press motor then a quick hole enlarging fixed it all up satisfactorily.


offsetting the dovetails to allow my marking knife to establish the edge, then very very very carefully hogging out ~12mm of waste freehand with the router, made it super easy to come in with a chisel and create a very accurate housing for the Dovetails.


refitting the pattern bit and using the established housing allowed super easy and a great fitting joint. cleaning up the corners with a chisel.




next is the fitting of the tail vice

but its looking pretty good I must say

Ripper job so far mate. I have all the gear to tackle one of these builds but other things have popped up. I'm watching with interest and loving the detail and accompanying photos.
Mentioning your mishaps and what to look out for is also useful so thanks for throwing them in there (we all have them, I usually choose to block them from my memory)

It's looking amazing so far, can't wait to see the finished product.

Nice fit with the D/Ts, but such a complex routine would do my head in, I reckon. I have enough trouble with "mark, saw, chisel-out waste". Your method would increase my capacity to stuff up, several-fold.....

Cheers

cool build

Nice work and plenty pictures. We all like that.
Regards
John

Hi MatMann,
Great Pics, & nice new Machinery + He who has the most Clamps, WINS.
I have always had the feeling, that there should be a 3rd. leg in the centre, as when you hammer anything, the bench still bounces, very slightly, but still bounces.
Justmy2senceworth.

Originally Posted by IanW

Nice fit with the D/Ts, but such a complex routine would do my head in, I reckon. I have enough trouble with "mark, saw, chisel-out waste". Your method would increase my capacity to stuff up, several-fold.....

Cheers

thanks
it was a little tedious changing bits all the time but a pretty easy way of doing dead accurate D/T's. I would of used the bandsaw but it broke.

Originally Posted by Gabriel

Ripper job so far mate. I have all the gear to tackle one of these builds but other things have popped up. I'm watching with interest and loving the detail and accompanying photos.
Mentioning your mishaps and what to look out for is also useful so thanks for throwing them in there (we all have them, I usually choose to block them from my memory)

It's looking amazing so far, can't wait to see the finished product.

thanks
so far it hasn't been overly hard, patience and measure measure measure gets you through, there are tons of build logs around for these type of benches so they make it easy to comprehend the processes needed.

Originally Posted by issatree

Hi MatMann,
Great Pics, & nice new Machinery + He who has the most Clamps, WINS.
I have always had the feeling, that there should be a 3rd. leg in the centre, as when you hammer anything, the bench still bounces, very slightly, but still bounces.
Justmy2senceworth.

thanks
the Machinery isn't that new, all the Hammer gear is 2010 vintage and I do tend to keep a clean shop, which helps to keep things in better condition imo.
as for the leg, I simply could not imaging anything allowing this bench to bounce. a third rail across the centre of the bench make alleviate that bounce.

tail vice installation
this was a very straight forward process.
Laid out the profile and marked it up, back to the router with the edge guide and rout the 2 rabbits, square them up with a chisel



with that all sorted, I slot in the screw only to find that its a little offset and with the dog block installed, binds up at the handle end. after measuring and checking I see that my original positioning for the screw and bolts are out by 2mm at most, not much but enough to cause dramas. I drilled the bolt holes from 8mm to 10mm with seems enough to free up the binding, and I'm satisfied with the smoothness of motion. I think the out of whack positions wasn't inaccurate measuring when i did the holes, I can only assume the the D/T's have somehow moved the end caps relation the the front lamination.


now on the the base...

That is a great looking unit!! Well done!!

I haven't been Idle, a long weekend and busy kids activities has kept time limited but progress has been made.


I managed to mill up the legs and rails, and I also needed to move machines around the shop to better facilitate the bench where I want it. So that meant disassembling and re-assembling the DC ducting. What a pain.


once the laminated legs ( 140x100x850) were dry, onto the mortices for the draw-bored mortice and tenon's. More routing with the edge guide made it simple and repeatable on all four legs.


Tenons were done using a dado stack then rounded off with chisel, rasp and blockplane


the moxon vice again proving itself


took some fiddling with the block plane to get nice fitting tenons, but when it went together...
it appears the my rear lower rail is actually brush box, not the blackbutt like the rest of it.


pull it all apart again to drill the holes for the pegs, offsetting the holes on the tenons by ~2mm and a small chamfer to help them through..


and its even square !!!


leg vice is up next.

Originally Posted by MatMann

...

it appears the my rear lower rail is actually brush box, not the blackbutt like the rest of it.
...

Not sure how you will be able to live with that, you'll just have to start again

things have been very slow the last week, the way I started off I was hoping to see this one in as little as 2 weeks, but there are always things ( namely kids ) that inhibit progress.

grass
We finally had a dry day or 2 so an urgent task in the backyard had to be completed, after 10 years of lawn failure after failure, 2 months ago I bit the bullet and removed 10m³ of sand and hard packed clay, removed the small retaining wall dividing the yard and redid 2 other retaining walls, brought back in ~7m³ of quality soil and laid 30m² of Sir Walters finest. After the rain we've had, it was time to get the pavers re-laid.


sharpening
then the next day I had, the power went out, for the whole day......... so it became a sharpening day. The sigma power select stones from Tools from Japan do an awesome job!


mortices
then my next free day involved car servicing, that used up 1/2 a day because i need to wait, so that left 3 hours, First came the mortices for the Crisscross mechanism. my 1/2" spiral bit is shagged now, it didn't enjoy all this hard wood.


and as I'm using the "solo" version, holes for the pins got drilled and had to add a bevel the pins to aid insertion


the toe-in(taper) looks a lot but its within their recommend spec of 3-9mm bottom gap but when the top goes on it'll push out even further, will be easily fixed by deepening the mortice another mm or 2. I'm up to doing the 70mm recess for the acetal bushing, was hoping to use the mfs-400, which is a great little bit of gear, but the smallest hole it will do is just under 80mm, , then I thought I'll use the jigsaw and circle jig to cut template, , it just couldn't do it nice enough to even try and clean it up for the router to follow, short of buying a trim router and making a jig for that, not sure how I'm going to do a clean 70mm recess.

I haven't decided on any embellishment for the chop yet, I have some other plans for the bench so don't want to do things that I may have to undo later on.

next up is the acme screw install, acetal recess, through hole and the nut and flange mountings. Taking the young fella golfing tomorrow so hopefully Thursday gives me enough time to finish up the leg vice, before I have to change my attention to finishing the bedroom Reno whilst the Minister takes the kids for a long w/e.