Thread: Sort of a Workbench WIP - Slow...

Looks the goods.

So when does it get initiated with its first scratch.

I like what you have done. As with the finish I would use as Woodwould suggested and that would be a type of poly. It has a more durable finish.

Should I go on.

Well just a little bit. No reason to put on a Shellac as the first coat to bring out the grain of the timber and then finish off with an oil based poly. I say oil as that is what I used in the past, I am not sure how a water based poly would go.

There are more options and this goes on to how you feel at the time.

Thanks Woodwould and Christos. I guess the polyurethane is the way to go then. I gave the scrap piece another coat of the Scandinavian Oil and I'm really impressed with how it came up. I'm a bit disappointed it's not suitable for the bench so looking forward to using it on some furniture in the future.

Plenty of damage has been done already artme, fortunately for me I'm still at a stage where scratches can be sorted out prior to finishing. The phenolic top has copped a bit of a beating already but I guess that's the purpose.

I recently acquired an old block plane and did consider the suggestion of a slight chamfer on the edges of the benchtop. Luckily for me, and probably the bench, a trip to Carbatec was planned for today to replenish the glue supplies and they just happened to have a 1/8" round over bit in the display cabinet begging to be released...

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I used the left over piece of formply to make the saw table today but since I didn't have enough to double it up I glued a piece of 16mm MDF to the bottom of it to bulk it up in place of the second formply layer. This has also been edged in hardwood and is clamped up overnight. One annoying aspect of using the recycled timber is that glue tends to get pushed out of all the holes and I have found a couple of clamping blocks attached to my workpieces after the clamps are removed.

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A second hobby of mine, aero-modelling, has a bit of a tradition where an as yet incomplete model is mocked up on the bench to get a bit of a feel as to how the finished item will look. This is often referred to as "bench flying".

I decided it was time to do a bit of "bench benching" so with the aid of a few clamps I chucked the mitre saw on the bench to see how it might turn out. Gotta say I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. Just for fun, here's a bench fly of the current plane project as well. It does have Tassie Oak leading edges on the wings but has taken a back seat unfortunately till the new bench is complete...

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Long post, sorry about that, one last thing.

Whilst browsing the many Carbatec goodies on display I got sucked in and bought myself a bench vice. I'd not planned to fit a vice to this bench so haven't yet decided whether it will go on this one or the other bench. If I were to fit it to this bench it would have to be on the right hand side as the router table will take up all the space on the left. More decisions.

Not much progress this weekend.

I managed to round over the top edges of the three bench top sections and the mitre saw shelf. Also gave the bottom of the shelf a coat of the water based polyurethane to seal up the MDF.

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Given Woodwould's suggestion that the block plane would do nicely on the edges I decided to give it a run on the bottom edge to gain some skills and see how I'd go. I'd purchased an old No. 220 Stanley from ebay recently for about 25 bucks but had just put it away for later. It was blunt as hell so not having researched plane blade sharpening yet I just hit it on the belt sander for a bit then honed it off a little on an old stone previously owned by my grandfather. Though my methods were crude it actually came up pretty sharp and certainly serviceable.

In the end it worked quite well. A quick chamfer took 2 or 3 passes with the block plane then a couple of light strokes with a cabinet scraper and it was nicely rounded. Probably to about 1/16" radius I guess and definitely one to remember.

Had a spare couple of hours this afternoon so I decided to cut the hole for the router table.

I scored the phenolic top with a dremel tool first to stop it chipping past the edge of the router plate then knocked out the centre with a jigsaw. It's a pretty rough job but doesn't really need to be neat. Still need to rebate the top of the hole to drop the plate down to benchtop height.

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Bit of a question now.

I'm looking for a bracket type thingy that looks like the pic below. Please excuse the crappy drawing, I didn't have time to Sketchup it. Not sure what it is called so I haven't had any luck trying to find them.

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I'm thinking of using something like this to lock the mitre saw shelf into position when it's raised.

Thanks for your help.

Found something at Bunnings that I thought might do the trick of holding the mitre saw shelf up. It's kind of like what I was looking for and is adjustable so I'm hopeful that it will work.

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I've mounted 4 blocks to the bench that will be used to hold the middle section of bench top in place when the saw is stored. The front two blocks will also be used to attach the above bracket for the shelf. This is a photo of a dry fit of one of the front ones but it's since been extended a little for the bracket. I'm not real happy with adding these little blocks but I couldn't think of a better solution to mount the removable section of bench top.

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I think I'll use 4 small dowels in the base of the middle bench top section to mate up with these blocks so that it locks when placed into position.

Made a big mess in the shed routing out the router table insert hole but it came up pretty good. Spent as much time cleaning up as I did on the job... I did it in two passes as I had to remove about 20mm worth of material to a depth of 10.5mm all around. The first pass was just a rough cut to remove about half of the material and is shown in the photo below, a second run then finished it off.

I also used the router to clean up the original hole edge that I'd jigsawn out. Camera batteries died though so you don't see that bit.

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Not a great deal left to do. Just need to sort out the saw shelf support and mount the mitre saw, buy a decent router, think about a fence for the router table and then apply a finish. Done!

Powering along now.

Today saw the very first lowering and raising of the mitre saw shelf. It's hinged at the back and the two Bunnings brackets seem to be doing an ok job of holding it up. I did need to hit them with the angle grinder to remove a bit of excess metal that was hanging out past the mounting block.

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I think a bit of finish and it could almost be over!

That's great. You say only the finish to finish, then the job is finished. Now that would be a good finish with finish.

I got a little impatient and just decided to finish this thing off with the oil that I had on hand. I know the poly would have been a better choice but wanted to test it out anyway...

So here it is, finally completed. The grain in some of the pieces is quite good and I'm pretty happy with the results.

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Thanks for all the help and advice provided along the way. It's been very much appreciated.

Back to the model planes for a short while now before I start on the furniture list that's growing bigger and bigger...

stevemc32,
youve gota buy a riuter now dont you?
Harrison

That I do Harrison.

Just taking some time to convince myself to buy a good one instead of just chucking some cheap rubbish in there and having to replace it later...

Sounds like you need to add another systainer to the picture then.