Thread: The Outdoor Workbench

Rain today. People throw out these canvas window shades ... I guess they are going out of fashion?

I've always liked good quality canvas and some of these are very very good.

A medium term plan has been - for more than a medium term - to extend the plastic-sheeting to the rest of the 'pergola/verandah' and use the canvas awnings to occasionally enclose the poor machinery. ("Looky they're toof")

The piece I have over the bench is one of the lighter weight materials, but does a good job.

I've decided I want to keep the nice jarrah for dining chairs ... you know ... after the refectory table.
Shouldn't be long.
Hah.

Cheers,
Paul

I suggest you may want to keep young children and the elderly away from this post.

I tried my first ever dovetails in some s/crap pine. The experience educational, the result ... pretty much what you might expect. !!

On the plus side, I took a mildly neglected bevel-edge Titan with a short bevel and sharpened it as a paring chisel.
Very nice. I also nicked myself twice just moving my hands around.
Once again - very happy with the Cro2 and strop.

The rest was ... interesting.
One little point I didn't think about beforehand ... pins and tails are cut into the endgrain of a piece, not the long-grain.
I wonder why that might be?



"F". More practice required. Must not distract the other children.


Harder wood next time.

Paul.

its coming along nicely!

Also need to think now about workholding ... I can do a leg vice in the front left easy enough. I need to figure out what else would suit me. I like the idea of holdfasts but wasn't planning on buying any ... but have now been wondering if something good enough for this bench might be made with round bar, some scrap and a welder???

just wondering if you considered a tail vice at all, they dont have to be the expensive benchcrafted ones, there are cheaper options...i'm just mentioning it because if you wanted 'square' dogs now would be the time to do the holes for em. it sure would be fun getting the dogs out with that deep front, might have to be inventive ,there are few ways to do it without putting your hands underneath that i can think of. if round dogs then they can be drilled in when ever you want (later), same for the holdfast holes


cheers
chippy

Yes definitely. I want to be able to do the clamp-between-dogs thing

I have an old unbranded (as far as I can see) quick-release vice that I'd like to make use of ...

but I had some semi-conflicting ideas floating around ...

- I thought it might be good to be able to clamp at the front left - so maybe the small vice there with a dog hole.

- I like the idea of a full-width (or nearly) vice jaw on the right-hand end, but I assume a lot of the clamping would be just along the front edge ... so have to worry about the racking effect on the vice or not?


Definitely round dog-holes by the way. Suit hold-fasts and easy to put in anywhere needed.

Thanks Chippy,

Paul.

We had some rain under the cover is ok.
P1010251.jpg

Getting some of the racking into place inspired a round of re-organisation that has been going on for a few days now.

It is inspiring me to (want to) finish the damn on-the-driveway rack also.

You can see the pile that used to be on the tablesaw ... just temporarily ... until the rack was made. Hmmm.
- Sorted and moved. Tick.
P1010264.jpg

Some thicker stuff pulled out for the legs.
2012-09-22 17.08.42.jpg

And room still down the back
2012-09-22 17.09.35.jpg2012-09-22 17.10.31.jpg

Re the actual bench - I found some more of the supposed Karri material - needs to be cleaned up and flattened.

And the dovetail lessons will proceed ... here's a little test joint I threw together ... Not.

Cheers,
Paul

Originally Posted by pmcgee

Yes definitely. I want to be able to do the clamp-between-dogs thing

I was wondering why I hadn't seen a recent pic of your very cute puppy!
The table will be too good to risk damage thru usage if you keep this up. But that's just jealousy talking.

Paul, i'm curious why you want the full width vice at the end? for what purpose i mean, nothing wrong with that those vices but i'm wondering is all. racking, depends on the vice quality i suppose, but in general if you placed the dogs in line with the vice screw you would expect it to work fine i should think, bit hard to line up the screw with close to front edge on some of those full width vice designs though

with that huge front skirt it opens a few possibilities for holding some substantial stock, from the front as well (lots of room for front holdfasts and resting posts etc)

cheers
chippy

Originally Posted by ch!ppy

Paul, i'm curious why you want the full width vice at the end?

Well partly I don't know (!)

I've seen them in pictures, and I like the sort of thing Andrew did here with the double-dog clamping (but as a tail vice) ...



and I figured I could still have the front left with a small vice for the more specifically along the front-top clamping.

It's just ideas at the moment, because i haven't had the experience before to know what I'd use most

I think the learning to dovetail might be a bit instructive ... I've seen those plonk-on Moxon vices, but I figure I would rather just sit on a stool and us the bench at the level it is ... ??

Sharpening and jointing saws is something I'd like to do at the bench.

I forgot to say I had a "thinking inside the square, but kinda at the top-left only just inside it" moment a couple of weeks ago.

I'd been thinking (very part-time ... there's not that much cpu capacity) about saw filing and setting ... how might you setup something that can roll back and forth in front of you so you can sit in one spot and move the work, instead of shuffling along and back.

It eventually occurred to me that about the same thing could be accomplished by having a 'piano seat' that slid left and right. Duh.

I'm not saying any of it is even necessary ... but I thought it was funny to go from thinking "hmmm ... rack and pinion ... slide blah blah blah" to "Oh ... draw-runners".

Cheers,
Paul

Given I have some acme threads I thought I could maybe do a full-width hay-rake-type leg-vice for the tail vice.
Or maybe I should just take up drinking.

These projects just sort of evolve Paul.

I've been building a deck, or should I say I've been helping to build a deck.

The trouble is the whole thing was started without a real plan and much has been dictated by the price of materials and the whim of the builder.

Just go your own way. So far everything looks just great and if you want a full width vise then have it!

Have you moved away from the idea of a leg vice?

Originally Posted by Sawdust Maker

Have you moved away from the idea of a leg vice?

No - still the leg vice front left - I'd like to try one out.

... I was thinking/meaning one normal vice on the left-hand edge, and tail-vise on the right-hand end.

Plus the split top.

Cheers,
Paul

OK - well it's been raining quite a bit, so effectively the bench has been undergoing field trials
Looking very good under there - but the potential for expansion will need to be factored into the construction.

I've made some efforts on the saw-sharpening and dovetailing (ahem) fronts in the meantime, but I realised I can file them away into the blog section ...
https://www.woodworkforums.com/blogs/...rior-half-902/
https://www.woodworkforums.com/blogs/...d-attempt-903/

Sunny today. Nice. ... but the damn joint-making took so much concentration outta my poor 0.3hp brain - after working from midnight, that I think I'll just crawl out onto the back lawn and go to sleep

Cheers,
Paul

P1010288.jpg P1010282.jpg P1010283.jpg P1010285.jpg

Sunday or Monday a week ago I had started to prepare the second 'ratty' pair of boards to become the end-caps. These again had a brown and a green side ... and as I was scrubbing off the first board I realised that what seemed like a small open section in the grain was actually a biggish cavity. Further scrubbing revealed that it was about 100mm in diameter, and about 10mm deep.

I quickly realised that the bandsaw would be the best way to slice off 10mm or so of the board, which meant 'recommissioning' the big bandsaw which had been under covers for roughly six months or so. This was kinda handy, as some friends will also need it sometime soon, so all for the best.

Getting the bandsaw up and running well again was a slightly character-building process but I have learnt that I can sharpen the carbon-steel blade so that has been very interesting.

Today I pulled at least one finger out and got both boards prepared ... well flat anyway.

You can possibly make out the remaining 'cavity' after the bandsawing ...

2012-10-08 15.58.22.jpg 2012-10-08 15.58.44.jpg

and the final end-cap pairs.

2012-10-08 16.39.40.jpg 2012-10-08 16.39.13.jpg

Next I think I should glue and clamp the boards that will be the front and back aprons of the bench ... they have splits/cracks from a hard life and I think should be stabilised for being outside. Then there's the dovetailing to practise, the legs to assemble and the leg-vice to consider.

Cheers,
Paul

After knocking my little-camera-that-could off the bandsaw table, and amazingly not having too much damage, it is still on the injured bench and I had to use my phone to photograph my third attempt at dovetail practice.

Still minimising some variables, I went with proper pins (angled) but have only one and two halves, and used a fairly hard pine board - only 12mm x 100mm. What could go wrong?

I wasn't thinking of it in those terms at the time, but I made the pins first ... as it turns out, I'm not fussed about doing it that way. If you think I planned very narrow half pins ... hmmm ... they were 10mm wider until I twigged that - from where I had cut - I was gunna need tails that were parallelograms not trapezoids.

Cutting the first piece is ok otherwise, so it is basically transferring the marks, and then where to place the kerf relative to the mark that is my current/most-prominent weak-point. Next I will try to do a Frank Krausz joint with the mark made from the pin kerfs without removing the waste where the tails will go.

I don't know if I can rate a B- or a C+ on this one ... the tail-board unflattened a little after initial planing, and I butchered my half-pins a bit planing the joint afterwards.

I can feel some strength in it (unglued) and it only has one (full) pin. I'm looking forward to having one in my hands that really feels solid. Two pins next time and we'll see what we get.

I also notice there is a bit less of a mental barrier to going out and trying it, now that I've made a small start.

Cheers,
Paul

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