Thread: WIP: Split top bench

Have made a little bit of progress since the last update.

I cleaned up surface glue on the legs with my orbital and 40grit. I used pencil lines to help find and remove high points and ended up making the leg surfaces quite close to square. One leg has been squared up with the hand plane and the sanding helped make the process much easier.

The two tops had been flattened and thicknessed but I rechecked my work the next day and was not happy with what I saw. I feel that I did a poor job sharpening my plane blades on the first attempt making things harder for myself. I resharpened the blades and went worked to correct my mistakes and am happier with the results.

Knots on the top have caused me a bit of grief so I used the pencil line and sanding process to help flatten a bit better for the time being. The top, front edge and bottom are square so I'm happy with that. Once the table is built I'll plane the tops level and flatten to a tighter tolerance. I'll need to increase the camber on one of my plane irons to help handle the knots.

Flattening the tops has helped me learn more about planing the face of wood at different angles to give a uniform level of flatness.

Thicknessing

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More garden ground cover

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Lines for flattening sanding
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SDB

That's an awful lot of fire starter you have there.

The split top Roubo is probably my favourite style of work bench so from my point of view a very good choice.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

SDB

That's an awful lot of fire starter you have there.

The split top Roubo is probably my favourite style of work bench so from my point of view a very good choice.

Regards
Paul

It's all cleaned up now but I'm sure that I'll have another pile soon enough though lol.

I'm hoping that I can use the split to help with my workflow and make things more efficient. One example is making a strop that slots in there for when pairing so I can just strop without needing to leave the bench.

I've finished squaring up the legs and am now looking fixing the width deviation on the bench tops. The back edges are not parallel to the front and this will make things difficult when making jig which utilise the gap between the two tops. One tops back edge is pretty good but the other has a deviation of about 9mm across the length. The plane is to use a circular saw.

I have used a scrap of tassie oak to increase the reference area of the circular saws fence. I did some test cuts on some 45mm thick construction ply and am very happy with the results. The back edge doesn't need to be perfect but an improvement is needed.

I reground all my plane blades as it was about time and cambered one heavily for scrubbing. I'm now kicking myself that I didn't camber a plane iron for scrubbing earlier as it's made a huge improvement for heavy removal. On the topic of planes I am using two number 4's one for scrub and one for general purpose / targeting removal and a number 7 for overall flattening.

I've drawn up a rough layout on one of the tops to get an idea of how my planned sized will translate from design to real world and made some adjustments.

Next steps
- Fix back edge
- Dry layout to determine lengths for rails and boarders
- Make rails
- Make edge boarders

So far it feels like so much work has been done but also like the surface has barely been scratched. I am honestly surprised at the amount of time required to prep stock by hand, however I have learnt so much about the process I have no regrets going the hand tool route.


Circular saw fence and test cut
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Layout and notes to self

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The plane gang

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Originally Posted by sdbrett

Knots on the top have caused me a bit of grief so I used the pencil line and sanding process to help flatten a bit better for the time being. The top, front edge and bottom are square so I'm happy with that. Once the table is built I'll plane the tops level and flatten to a tighter tolerance. I'll need to increase the camber on one of my plane irons to help handle the knots.

i reckon you could drill and chisel out the knots down to an inch or so depth, like cutting a big mortise, and then inlay a bit of clear timber in their place? and then you wouldn't have to plane the knots at all, this time or in the future when you want to reflatten it

Originally Posted by banana

i reckon you could drill and chisel out the knots down to an inch or so depth, like cutting a big mortise, and then inlay a bit of clear timber in their place? and then you wouldn't have to plane the knots at all, this time or in the future when you want to reflatten it

I had that exact thought but it was after I'd done the initial flatten but I'm am intended to revisit it before the final flattening.

And now I feel ashamed for thinking like a banana.

I saw exactly this from this Japanese shokonin.... knots and holes

Route out the nasty, put in a bung, flatten it off....

If you use Instagram, this is well worth adding into your list: Chantarokichi

Originally Posted by sdbrett

I'll need to increase the camber on one of my plane irons to help handle the knots

Hello there, sounds like you've got the wrong end of the sthick.
That's the exact opposite that you need to be doing!
Learn to use the cap iron, and the grain won't get plucked, regardless of grain direction,
Something like this will work, if you can match this profile, that's about 1/64"
I'd shoot for a larger camber like 1/32" if you can get away with it not tearing out the grain.
(If you have a wee bit more work to do)

SAM_3787.jpg
Regarding info on the subject specifically David W on youtube or search Mr Weaver's "Setting a Cap iron article"on woodcentral.
Honestly, there's not much others you can trust, Derek Cohen's a good source for this info either.
Most gurus have vested interests not to show this!, whether that's selling kit or making silly clickbait controversial videos like recently.

Basically ..
1, Just make sure the mouth is NOT SMALL i.e frog should be all the way back flush with casting,
2, The cap iron honed around 50 degrees, steeper means more camber/cap iron can be set further away.
3, Don't set the cap further than 1/32" from the edge, I hope you haven't knocked the corners of the smother you have already.

And you'll never need a scraper again for flat work ever again.
Best of luck with the build

Tom

Originally Posted by Tom trees

Hello there, sounds like you've got the wrong end of the sthick.
That's the exact opposite that you need to be doing!
Learn to use the cap iron, and the grain won't get plucked, regardless of grain direction,
Something like this will work, if you can match this profile, that's about 1/64"
I'd shoot for a larger camber like 1/32" if you can get away with it not tearing out the grain.
(If you have a wee bit more work to do)

SAM_3787.jpg
Regarding info on the subject specifically David W on youtube or search Mr Weaver's "Setting a Cap iron article"on woodcentral.
Honestly, there's not much others you can trust, Derek Cohen's a good source for this info either.
Most gurus have vested interests not to show this!, whether that's selling kit or making silly clickbait controversial videos like recently.

Basically ..
1, Just make sure the mouth is NOT SMALL i.e frog should be all the way back flush with casting,
2, The cap iron honed around 50 degrees, steeper means more camber/cap iron can be set further away.
3, Don't set the cap further than 1/32" from the edge, I hope you haven't knocked the corners of the smother you have already.

And you'll never need a scraper again for flat work ever again.
Best of luck with the build

Tom

Thanks for that info, setting cap irons and reducing tear out has been an on going challenge that I'm still trying to resolve. I'll have a look at the video and article in detail. The cap iron bevel is new info that I need to check.

Since the last update there have been few set backs due to mistakes and rework was required, but overall I'm ahead.

I tried to repair some cracks in the vice chop with epoxy resin which didn't cure, the most likely reason being inaccurate measuring. The mistake was extend to the wood intended for the table boarders; I decided to use the excess epoxy to fill tiny cracks and protect fill the gum veins.

Thankfully the boarder pieces weren't thicknessed so cleaning up didn't screw anything up, just cost time.

The wood for the chop isn't worth trying to salvaging for it's intended purpose, instead I will be laminating a new one from about 9 batons. I have considered just buying a 190x35 (or so) board to speed things up, still haven't ruled that out.

Another set back was mis measuring the amount of wood I removed from a board piece by a couple of mm, making it too short. So more stock prep and lamination.

On the positives!!!

Stock preparation is nearly complete and that feels like a massive milestone is about to be completed. It has taken a huge amount of time but I can definitely see improvement in my dimensioning skills and workflow, tasks are much faster and less mistakes.

The screw hole and criss cross mortice have been completed on the leg vice leg.
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I've cut out the shapes which will be inlayed into the vice chop. Imaginary points for anyone who recognises it.
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Rails and legs have been labeled and assigned, all are ready for mortice and tenons.


A fair bit of time has been spent on tool maintenance, fixing chip breakers and flattening the backs of my chisels.

Tuning the chip breakers has make a huge difference. After reading the articles provided by Tom I looked closer to the chip breakers and found that their tips were either rounded or the contact point was behind the tip meaning the tip as lifted. I spent a lot of time fixing that and getting them sharp enough to cut paper.
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One chip breaker is so bad that it's going into the bin.

Originally Posted by sdbrett

I've cut out the shapes which will be inlayed into the vice chop. Imaginary points for anyone who recognises it.
IMG_8507.jpeg

A certain WW2 German political party?

Originally Posted by woodPixel

A certain WW2 German political party?

No, it's not political at all

The tenons at the top of the lets have been cut and the results are a pretty average and I don't think that they will form a great fit when I chop the benchtop mortises.

I haven't really cut tenons before and I think that the size (180x85) of the tenons made things a bit harder, especially sawing straight.

I've decided to work with what I have and thought of a couple of methods to help make up for the short falls in from the tenon cutting.

Using polythene glue instead of PVA to help fill small gaps
Use wedges to help fill larger voids
Drive a large dowel through the legs and table, like a draw bore but without the offset, below is an image showing what I have in mind for the dowel

Screen Shot 2021-05-19 at 11.17.41 am.jpg

What is wrong with the tenons?

If you haven't cut the mortises yet, you should be able to fix the tenons and then cut the mortices to match.