Thread: My multiple workbench odyssey - because it's more that a journey

Originally Posted by Aussiephil

Yep it should glue fine, but the timber is not fresh, that fault has been in that board for years and the surface could use a little clean or scuff up at least, meant to do it last thing but forgot it'll wait hopefully

Cheers
Phil

I think I would try a wire brush in that case as you don't want to alter the shape too much.

Regards
Paul

Some more glue, some more ripping on the TS, some more glue...

Seems like all i'm doing at the moment is going boards. Sadly i'm about to run out of clamps I can use as my long I-beam clamps won't work with the wall directly behind the bench.

P5080010.jpg
this was sometime on Saturday, with one of the Merbau gt stripes glued in
The dark patches are where i've started to patch defects with dyed epoxy

P5090017.jpg
This was Sunday evening with the next Merbau GT strip started at the far end

I've been sanding it as it's going together... 36 then 80 grit with the belt sander then back to 40 on the ROS at the moment. The plan is to get the back 200mm to finished state before it ends up against the wall.

Cheers
Phil

Sadly still short of timber..... it's really starting to feel like one very large

Well it looks like the last post had and error .... whilst i thought i'd bought some 36 grit to knock it flat i'd actually picked up 2 packs of 80 grit belts

Well some more glue up time, some purchasing of a few more clamps, some macgyvering of the long 1200mm clamps we got the last sections glued up over the weekend.

Most of the issue the last couple of weeks has been getting the timber up to a glue-able temperature, it's measured around 3c most mornings and the last two weekends has need at least a couple hours of the heater blowing hot air under the bench to raise the whole lot up.
P5220027.jpg

As you can see the last (front) sections had to hang nearly in free air so i could get the clamps on the back... everything was cut completely square and that allowed this to work. Could not have done it without the tablesaw.

P5230037.jpg
Full view of the bench, 4100mm long, 860mm deep/wide, cant move it by hand anymore oh it's around 54mm thick ! it's sitting on 16mm MDF so full bench thickness 70mm

P5230039.jpg
Sanded, 80grit belt sander to get it flat, i used some techniques from a professional floor refinisher guy to get it flat. Then ran 120grit on the belt sander to take the 80grit marks out, then it's now had a 120grit ROS over it.

I'll now go back and find all the little defects. The plan is to carve them out a bit more with a Dremel carving bit to give the Epoxy they will be filled with some more wood area to attach to. So at least another weekend before I can even think about putting a finish on it.

Going to take a slight detour and talk about using technology to solve a problem for me and the dangers of drilling things not clamping the vice in place.

As I hate marking out center lines or finding center on round stock ends to drill center holes or even mount holes i've taken to drawing up an appropriate jig in Fusion 360 and printing out drill guides.

Here is the one for drilling the ends of some 20mm rod. This is a component for some 4way panel clamps i've started making whilst i was waiting for glue ups to dry.
P5220026.jpg

The white plastic bit has a 3.5mm hole exactly on the center of a 20mm cap that fits over the round, line up a 3.5mm drill and go for it. First was a pilot hole to 12mm from both sides, followed by a 5mm hole to 20mm that drilled through to the M12 threaded rod, that piece was sacrificial.
Inspecting it afterwards looking from one end the holes lined up pretty well.
Here's the little versions, 500mm long with 25mm steel
Plan to use these to glue up some of the offcuts and scrap i have lying around at the moment

P5080014.jpg

Now for the Warning and danger of not doing things safely....

Or better put the stupid idiot moment

Have a close look at the top photo..... yep i've have the piece of rod securely mounted in a 3" milling vice... these are reasonable heavy - positive tick
big negative cross - i have nothing to stop that vice rotating if the drill jams !!!

When drilling the M12 cross holes you guessed it - i had a jam .... I had already drilled a 10.5mm hole to spec to tap the M12 but there was no way i could manually start a bottoming tap (the only one on hand) in the 10.5 hole so decided to just accept a slightly looser thread fit and drop a 11mm drill through.

The Nova was running at 450rpm and has plenty of torque and being direct drive has no chance of slipping belts

Well the drill caught and jammed, the vice was ripped out of the hand holding it on the left and ended up a few feet away on the garage floor to the right hand side, plenty of sharpish edges on that mill vice so count myself very very lucky that i only got a nice mark on the thumb
P5240041.jpg
Considering i'm on blood thinners for my heart this could have been very nasty.... damn well thought i broke it at first.

First thing i did afterwards was set the fence up behind the vice to stop it rotating.... yeah i know i removed it again by the time i got to drill the end holes, when i snapped that photo at the top
I actually snapped a M6 tap tapping those end holes, was lucky i could remove it.

I actually figured that i had more than enough leverage holding the vice on the left.... dumb

Cheers
Phil

I can feel a low profile decent XY table being bought.

Since getting my lathe, perfectly(ish) centred holes in round stock have become a non-issue.

I hope your hand heals up soon, and that you don't have further bruising which can take a while longer to heal. On the bright side, the clamp is looking good.

Originally Posted by Aussiephil

...

P5230039.jpg
...
I'll now go back and find all the little defects. The plan is to carve them out a bit more with a Dremel carving bit to give the Epoxy they will be filled with some more wood area to attach to. So at least another weekend before I can even think about putting a finish on it.

Looking good, Phil.

I use a lot of repurposed timber and 20 years ago got over using epoxy to make little defects go away. It always looks like an epoxy plug unless its prominant enough to be a "design feature". I prefer wooden plugs.

My technique is to make some plugs from the same timber, drill out the defect and glue in the plug using PVA (or epoxy) aligning the grain as far as possible. For longer defects I "gang" the plugs. Plugs are made using a Veritas plug cutter.

Hearth Surround.jpg "Plugged" defects in a celery top pine hearth surround.

For larger defects I cut rectangular plugs - what the shipwrights call "dutchmen".

Originally Posted by LanceC

Since getting my lathe, perfectly(ish) centred holes in round stock have become a non-issue.

I hope your hand heals up soon, and that you don't have further bruising which can take a while longer to heal. On the bright side, the clamp is looking good.

Some of use have to make do without a lathe

just noticed that the section over the large knuckle is getting a deep bruise come out now ....

I just need to come up with a end for the m12 rod that presses against the timber and doesn't rotate.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Looking good, Phil.

I use a lot of repurposed timber and 20 years ago got over using epoxy to make little defects go away. It always looks like an epoxy plug unless its prominant enough to be a "design feature". I prefer wooden plugs.

My technique is to make some plugs from the same timber, drill out the defect and glue in the plug using PVA (or epoxy) aligning the grain as far as possible. For longer defects I "gang" the plugs. Plugs are made using a Veritas plug cutter.

Hearth Surround.jpg "Plugged" defects in a celery top pine hearth surround.

For larger defects I cut rectangular plugs - what the shipwrights call "dutchmen".

Thanks for an idea Graeme..... for at least a couple of spots I will slice a few very thin wedges to use, hammer in and cut/sand flush

Most of the "defects" in my case will likely benefit from being epoxy filled even when it still looks like epoxy... it's ultimately a workbench that will get dinged up but i would like to start from a good place

I nicked my photo from the other weekend when id thrown a bit of turps on to see the grain and circled some examples

P5160024.jpg

No 1 front bottom is one of maybe half dozen voids that exist and will benefit from getting some epoxy in them... these i will carve out a little to get more contact area. (maybe) at least one i know really needs filling up based on the offcut that just fell into two parts

No2 are the butt joints between sections, in the photo above the left and right ones are already filled, the one in the middle is a low point, not sure it exists anymore

No3 is an already filled chipped out void that was black to start with.

I have some black, dark grey and copper colour dyes for the epoxy and the copper with a hint of black is blending quite well

Overall i'm happy to spend some time with the Dremel and epoxy as it's turning into a bit of a labour of love and a show piece item for me.

Cheers
Phil

I notice you have your WW DP table under the DP vice.

My solution is to use a 5" cross slide permanently fixed to the DP table and when needed mount the WW table on top.
Mine has a 35 x 50 mm piece of wood fixed to the underneath of the middle of a WW DP table and that's what's held in teh vice..
That way metal swarf doesn't mess up the WW table and the cross slide vice features can still be accessed to move the WW table around if required.

This was when I had a 4" cross line vice
DPtable.jpg

I also have a similar metal working DP table
20mm thick steel plate with a piece of 50 x 50 x 5mm SHS screwed into the underside.
DPtable1.jpg

Be careful you silly bugger,
I hope the thump heals soon.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by BobL

I notice you have your WW DP table under the DP vice.

My solution is to use a 5" cross slide permanently fixed to the DP table and when needed mount the WW table on top.
Mine has a 35 x 50 mm piece of wood fixed to the underneath of the middle of a WW DP table and that's what's held in teh vice..
That way metal swarf doesn't mess up the WW table and the cross slide vice features can still be accessed to move the WW table around if required.

Thanks Bob

what you can't see in the photo's is that wooden platform is designed to come of in a few minutes as it's attached to the main metal table by 4 simple m6 bolts.... could have taken it off and bolted the mill vice directly down.

I had designed it so I could drill metal, but as I wasn't using cutting fluid or coolant the cleanup was easier than removing the table

Cheers
Phil

Originally Posted by Aussiephil

....

P5160024.jpg

All good, Phil, there can be so many approaches to the same problem and all work. My approach to the three issues circled by you would be:


Circle 1

The issue here is whether that resin pocket is surface only or if it extends right through the bench.
Step1: Route a trench along the resin pocket - say 5 x 5 mm using a jig,
Step2: If resin pocket persists drill a row of 3mm holes on 5mm centres along pocket, scrape out loose resin,
Step 3: Wrap a small piece of plywood in plastic and tack to underside of resin pocket (to stop leaks),
Step 4: Wet out pocket with 50% diluted epoxy, wait 10 minutes for penetration, then fill with undiluted epoxy,
Step 5: Make "dutchman" to just fit the original 5 mm trench,
Step 6: Wet trench with diluted epoxy and then glue in "dutchman" with slightly thickenned epoxy,
Step 7: When cured, plane flush.


Circles 2

Just thinking aloud; if you cannot hide something then make it a feature...

One approach might be to glue in a series of parallel "dutchmen" so that the joint appeared to be a loose tennon finger joint, rather than a simple butt joint.


Circle 3

A prime candidate for my round plugs technique. (Still?)

Thanks Graeme,

I'm glad we are tossing options around as it can give others options as well.

I went and had a closer look and thought on it and grabbed a couple more images..... never take closeups as it shows ALL the little things like the sanding scratches not yet removed

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

All good, Phil, there can be so many approaches to the same problem and all work. My approach to the three issues circled by you would be:

Circle 3

A prime candidate for my round plugs technique. (Still?)

Here is another/better shot of that area, a goal I guess is to keep some of the natural shape so that from a distance it just looks like a solid bit of resin.
Threw a bit of turps on to show how it should look.
P5260043.jpg

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Circle 1
The issue here is whether that resin pocket is surface only or if it extends right through the bench.
Step1: Route a trench along the resin pocket - say 5 x 5 mm using a jig,
Step2: If resin pocket persists drill a row of 3mm holes on 5mm centres along pocket, scrape out loose resin,
Step 3: Wrap a small piece of plywood in plastic and tack to underside of resin pocket (to stop leaks),
Step 4: Wet out pocket with 50% diluted epoxy, wait 10 minutes for penetration, then fill with undiluted epoxy,
Step 5: Make "dutchman" to just fit the original 5 mm trench,
Step 6: Wet trench with diluted epoxy and then glue in "dutchman" with slightly thickenned epoxy,
Step 7: When cured, plane flush.

I may do this for the few resin lines that run straight like the one below but make the routed section the same width as a board so i keep the same basic edge grain cutting board layout.
Fairly certain none of the resin pockets go all the way through, besides there is no way i'm getting to the bottom side due to weight
Plenty of offcuts to make a dutchman or two.
P5260047.jpg

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Circles 2
Just thinking aloud; if you cannot hide something then make it a feature...

One approach might be to glue in a series of parallel "dutchmen" so that the joint appeared to be a loose tennon finger joint, rather than a simple butt joint.

now that just sounds like seriously hard work, happy to make these joins features like grout lines on tiles
P5260048.jpg
Considering the sheer number of glue joints in this top i'm really not dealing with many joints.

Statistically: there is around 3.5L of glue actually used, no nails were harmed in the making of the benchtop

Time to layout some draws for at least on half of the bench and think about placing a vice on the other one.

Quick measure gives a 1910 x 540 opening on each half. This gives three draw carcasses with 550mm wide x 650mm deep draws. I laid this lot out one one 2x height on the bottom and 3 x 1x height above.

draw set for new bench.jpg
The carcass frames a just normal 16mm MDF with two sides and 6 cross braces similar to kitchen cabinets, it worked fine on the draws on the other bench.

The lesson from the first set was to actually make each carcass individually not trying to save a side in mdf by combining 2 into 1 .... the pain to offset draw slides so the screws didn't clash far outweighs the minor cost from an extra side and the 16mm of lost space is trivial in the big scheme.