This is the End, Beautiful Friend, This is the End...

By matthew

Jul 02, 2012

So the bench is drawing to a close, and this will more than likely be the end of the road for the string of build posts. True, I do have plans for a some upgrades and additions, like the nesting cabinet that is going to reside under the bench like a happy little troll gobbling up all my hand tools and a whizbang Moxon vise, but those are going going to be built in a more relaxed and off the cuff manor...much like my overall building style; no plans, no directions, only what my mind and heart direct at that given moment. Ok, so that's not totally true...I will probably sketch out the base cabinet and jot down the key measurements, but there will be no true formal design/plan and the Moxon will probably follow the Bench Crafted instructions to ensure proper function, but that'll be it for following plans.

With that said let's put this baby to bed and get on with building something that doesn't weigh hundreds of pounds...

At this point there were 3 tasks left on the to do list before I could really put this puppy to work: 1 - shape a dead man & track, 2 - build the gap stop, and 3 - put a coat of finish on everything.

Lets start at 1:

The dead man was a piece that was throwing me for a design curve, much as the leg vise had. It too was an up front and in your face piece that really needed something that said, "Look at me and my shiny new body", but wasn't over stated and gaudy. I was stumped...stuck in the woodworking equivalent of writers block...So what now? Well, I took a similar step to how I pulled the leg vise together by milling up my blank and propping it up on the bench rail and then hunkered down across the shop staring at the thing like a mad man. The more time I spent staring at the damn thing the more I thought that I really needed to continue with the art deco'ish theme. I also knew that I wanted to keep the base as wide as possible to ensure the piece would always be stable when in use. I also wasn't convinced on tapering the piece as it neared the slabs either...so how do I make this piece interesting and not just a block of wood with holes in it? That's when it hit me...pull the rising sun rays from the leg vise and incorporate them into the deadman as well, but make them more differenty...you heard me...I said differenty...

I ran through a few different options over the next few minutes with the rays originating at the bottom, the middle, the top, the left, and so on, but I always returned to them originating at the bottom but had trouble with them as they neared the top and keeping them clean and inline with the holdfast holes. What to do, what to do? On a whim I mirrored the rays and had them originating at the bottom and the top and meeting in the middle...AH HA! that's it...the clouds parted and mana fell from heaven...ok, that's a bit over dramatic but I had the design and I was satisfied with it. The added bonus to the look was one of a butterfly or dovetail and easily fell into the fit/finish of the bench.

It's a butterfly...it's a dove tail...no...it's Zombie art deco

After roughing out the butterfly shape at the band saw I used a large flush trim bit and a strait edge (in this case my woodpeckers bench rule...it does so much more than measure) held in place with some double sided turners tape to smooth and clean up the cuts. With that out of the way it was over to the drill press to put a bazillion and one holes into it. As I laid these out I followed the recommended patter in 1" spacing. The overall effect was more of a 180* mirror image to the piece, but as I finished up I realized that I wanted one more hole closer to the top of the piece to allow for better support with narrower stock and ended up putting one last hole in; effectively screwing up my nice mirror image...

With all that out of the way I turned my attention to shaping the rays; following the same process as I had on the leg vise using a fence (again held in place with double stick tape) and a 1/4" down cut spiral bit; slowly chewing through the material in order to keep it from splitting out the grain as the ray approached the focal points. Once everything was shaped to satisfaction I turned to my trusty chisel plane to bring the ray meeting points to a sharp transition. After some block plane work and a sanding block the dead man was fully zombified and ready for a test run in the bench.

Dead Man Track Glued in Place

With the dead man out of the way I then turned my attention to step 3...true I totally skipped over step 2, I admit it...I neglected my poor poor gap stop. Actually this was done on purpose simply because of my overall timing and needing to let the finish have a good 24 hours to cure between each coat and my available time fit perfectly to this schedule so that I wasn't losing any potential build time while I waited for the finish to cure. So you see...there really was a method to my madness.

There was a fair amount of discussion throughout the guild as to what the best finish was going to be to put on our benches. After reading through the discussions and hearing the feed back I stuck with my original choice...plain and simple tung oil. It builds a finish easily, is easily repaired and dries quickly and in my 85* shop with very little humidity, it dried VERY quickly at that. For those of you that are interested the official finish is Formby's low gloss. Overall I'm fairly happy with it in function...it's not the best looking finish that I've ever used but it did dry a little rougher than I had expected; so between the 100 grit sanding and the rougher finish the top is not overly slick and should give any pieces I'm working on that extra stickum power. Ultimately I've given the entire bench 3 coats; which should last me quite a while...or so I hope.

With the finish dry and a few more hours on hand to actually do some work I turned back to number 2 on my list. I mulled my options over on the best material for the job as I still had a full stick of 8/4 hard maple, a number of pieces of 8/4 alder and a few 4/4 alder pieces that were left over from prior builds. The thought of re-sawing a piece of 8/4 hard maple down to a few pieces of 1/2" material wasn't too enticing. Nor was the thought of doing the same on the 8/4 alder...although less opposing, was still not sitting well. That's when I turned my attention to a few pieces of 4/4 alder that were in the lumber rack that mostly survived the flood. They were water stained and the ends were checking from the abuse of "disaster shop". They had dried satisfactorily and were still fairly flat (even after they took the full brunt of the flood) and in my mind had earned their place as a part of this bench...they were a part of my history, just as this bench will become a part of it as well.

So after bringing the alder strips into flat and milling them to 9/16" I was ready to build the stop. If you've been following along from the start of my build you'll remember that I've changed a number of dimensions over the entire bench. One of those dimensions was the overall width of the bench which in turn widened the gap between the two slabs to just over 2-5/8" wide. I know it sounds like a lot of room between the slabs, but when it really comes down to it, it's not that much. However this did pose a problem for the gap stop...even with the strips being 9/16" thick, I was left with about 1-1/2" of open space. I, like many of the others building the bench was drawn to the bench by it's ability to hold tools nicely in the gap stop and work as a pseudo tool caddy; but with over an inch of open space, this was not going to be possible. In order to remedy this I milled up two fillers that I fit into the two center most openings of the gap stop, which brought the open dimension down to just under 1"...just right for catching the handles of the majority of all my hand tools.

Look at that GAP!

I will admit that I do have 2 additional tasks that still need to be completed before I can officially declare the bench done. I still need to apply some finish to the gap stop and to the bench dogs, but in all honesty this is so minor that I'm not worried about it.

So that's basically it...

What?

You're still here? It's over! Go home...

No?

Ok, how about some pictures then, will that make you happy?

Art Deco Rules the Bench

Tail Vise & Condor Tails

Bench-a-polooza

A Head On

Parallel Guide Block

Bender, You're The Greatest!

And with that...all I can say is: This is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end...

Was it worth the time, effort and monetary cost? Absolutely...as a wise man (boy in this case) once said..."It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up!"

Total Build Time:

- 1.5 hours (lumber selection, transport & stacking)

-4 hours (Top Slab milling)

- 1.5 hours (slab prep and glue up*)

-0.5 hours (preliminary flattening of both slabs)

-0.5 hours (Final rough slab milling)

-0.5 hours (trimming end and bringing into flat & square)

-1 hour (cutting and finishing tenon)

-0.5 hours (milling and laminating end cap)

-2.5 hours (milling screw cavity support & routing screw cavity – includes markup/layout)

-0.5 hours (routing mortise in end cap)

-0.5 hours (fine tune end cap fit)

-2 hours (drilling and installing end cap – includes markup/layout)

-1 hour (milling rough stock for dog hole strip and laminate cap)

-2 hours (production of dog hole template & routing of dog holes)

-0.5 hours (glue up of dog hole strip and laminate cap)*

- 0.5 hour (glue up and alignment of dog hole strip to front slab)*

-0.5 hour (milling of front slab dovetail strip)

-1 hour (set up and layout of End Cap Dovetail)

-1.5 hours (milling and fine tuning of End Cap Dovetail)

-0.5 hour (front strip/dovetail glue up)

-3 hours (routing front slab & installing tail vise)

-22 hours (cleaning, coating, baking and cooling of Vise hardware)**

-1 hour (initial milling of legs)

-1 hour (leg glue up)*

-2 hours (milling base rails to final dimensions)

-1 hour (milling of legs to final dimensions)

-2 hours (setup and cutting leg tenons…includes Mr. Cock Up)

-2 hours (layout & cutting of mortises in legs, drilling dog hole access & hold fast holes)

-1 hour (cutting rail tenons)

-2.5 hours (fine tuning mortise & tenons & dry fitting base)

-1.5 hours (cutting and dimensioning bench dog stock)

-1 hour (routing bench dogs to profile)

-0.5 hour (fine tuning bench dogs to shape)

-1.5 hours (bench dog assembly & fit-n-finish)

-0.5 hour (dimensioning & laminating chop stock)*

-3 hours (dimensioning & carving parallel guide)

-1 hour (fit & finish of parallel guide)

-2.5 hours (design & shaping of chop)

-0.5 hour (drawboring parallel guide & chop)

-2 hours (shaping & finish of parallel guides)

-4 hours (installation of nut block, parallel guides, phenolic bushing & fine tuning vice operation)

-0.5 hour (marking drawbore locations & drilling them out)

-1.5 hours (making dowel plate and dowels)

-1 hour (assembling the base)

-2 hours (leveling the base & mortising slabs)

-1 hour (fine tuning slab placement & attaching slabs to the base)

-1 hour (milling router sled rails, positioning the rails & building the router sled)

-2 hours (flattening top with router)***

-1.5 hours (drilling out inclusions & filling with epoxy)

-0.5 hours (fine tuning top with RO disc sander)

-3 hours (milling, routing & fine tuning dead man)

-0.5 hour (milling dead man track)

-1.5 hours (milling & assembling gap stop)

-3 hours (finishing bench with tung oil)****

-3 hours (finishing gap stop & dogs with tung oil - completion date TBD)****

-100.5 hours total

*I haven’t included my clamp time in these figures if you want to add those figures in, each glue up sat for 24 hours

** I’m including the baking of my vise hardware into my build. If you don’t want to include this reduce the total by 22 hours

*** With a heavier duty router this process would have been about an hour

**** Drying time of tung oil not added into total. If you want to add it in you will need to add an additional 96 hours to the total.

Tags: Maple, Roubo, Split Top Roubo, Split Top, Work Bench, Bench, Tung Oil, Formsby, Bench Crafted, wagon vise, glide vise, leg vise, vise, Alder, Red Alder
Posted in Split-Top Roubo | 1 Responses to "This is the End, Beautiful Friend, This is the End..."

Brian says:

July 3, 2012 at 12:27:37 PM

Bender. Awesome.

The Flatter, The Better

By matthew

Jul 01, 2012

With the bench standing on it's own 4 legs a sense of overwhelming relief and satisfaction washed over me, but so did a wave of sadness. The bench is nearing the end of production and I have to admit that building it has been an absolute joy. Yes it's been a pain in the ass lugging the heftier pieces around, but it's been a challenge and if you don't get a rush out of accepting a challenge head on and staring it down than I don't believe you've ever lived. Now don't get me wrong...we're not talking about the "hey you lookin at my wife," kinda challenge, but the challenge of stepping out of your little box and attempting something you've never done before...If you haven't taken that chance while wood working, or in your everyday life I urge you to do so, because you never know where that untraveled road might lead, and who knows, it might be better than where you started out from.

One of the final steps to putting this behemoth to work was bringing both slabs into a coplanar state. And yes, this is far easier said than done. I had toyed with the thought of leveling the bench using hand planes, but as I progressed to this point, my inner neanderthal took a back seat to the more modern inner woodworker and I accepted that I would follow Marc's & Nick Offerman's tutelage and use a router and router sled.

In all honesty, I actually followed Marc's process damn near exactly...right down to the green coated 1/16" wire cabling to bring the router sled rails into parallel. But more on this in a moment.

After jointing and planing a couple of 2x6 fir boards I lightly clamped each one to the sides of the bench and strung my line in an X.

Leveling Rails Ready

Let's talk about this for a minute because this is one aspect that I think Marc didn't touch enough on in his demonstration of the process. I admit, that after watching his video a few times I was always left with this gnawing feeling that something was missing. I actually started the process with some heavy masons twine from my tool box when it dawned on me what that feeling was. The process that Marc was demonstrating, relied heavily on the use of a material that wouldn't compress underneath one of the lines. The reason behind this is that for this technique to give you the most accurate alignment, one line needs to be placed over the opposing line at the exact height/thickness of the line that you're using. So if you use a material that is compressible, you're going to wind up with a twist in the surface you're flattening as one corner will end up higher than the remaining 3 in order to allow the lines to pass each other. However if you're able to raise one line the exact thickness of the 2nd line, you'll be able bring them into that sweet spot of just kissing; resulting in a coplanar set of rails. Clear as mud? Yeah...I thought so...Over all, Marc did an awesome job documenting this process so don't think I'm bagging on him...I just think he needed to give a bit more information on the type of line to use and why.

So...with that in mind I happened across the same line that Marc had used while looking through the local giant big box hardware store...which honestly worked awesomely. From there it was a simple matter of building my router sled using some 3/4" Baltic Birch ply. The only issue that I ran into was a tendency for the sled to slide out of place side to side when in use. I remedied this by clamping a piece of scrap to the very edge of the sled, ultimately limiting the side to side travel.

Router Sled

Ultimately I found that the rear corner of one end of the front slab had twisted up by about 1/8", what this translated into is about 3/16" of the top being removed. I'm sure I don't need to say it, but this produced a fair amount of chips...it was like it was snowing maple flakes in the shop...

Maple chips pile up like snow

Even with the large flattening bit I used, the entire process took a bit of time to complete. I had to hit the top in 3 different sections in order to keep from burning out my router because of the strain the larger bit and the amount of heat the motor built up after a number of passes...

As I worked across the top everything went swimmingly...that was until I hit the spot...and by the spot I actually mean two bark inclusions, one of which held a cut nail. Thankfully as I crossed the inclusions the router bit cut through the old cut nail without issue. The router actually jumped more when it hit the first inclusion without the nail. You can see the router jump gouge just to the side of the inclusion to the left in the picture below and the head of cut nail shining merrily away in the right.

Mystery Bark Inclusions

Another issue I ran into was one of my router bit not creating a truly flat surface...it more dished out the surface rather than flatten. Thankfully the dishing issue wasn't deep enough for me to really fret about.

I also had to remove the cut nail or risk damaging work pieces as they slid across the head of the nail. It would also cause issues if I ever ran a plane blade or chisel into it...let alone the issue of ever having to re-flatten the top. The nail was embedded enough that I couldn't simply pull it and the steel was soft enough that I couldn't really get a grasp on the head in an effort to pull it with a variety of tools. So I turned to the thought of drilling it out. I remembered from my days working construction that I had seen a drill bit for plumbers and electricians that was made so it would sheer through any nails that it might hit, so off to the hardware store I went. The options were fairly limited, but I actually found what I was looking for, an Irwin demolition speedbore bit.

With bit in hand I turned back to the process of getting rid of that damn nail. When I started drilling it out, the nail essentially popped right out...or more to the point wrapped itself around the tip of the bit rather than getting chopped up into glorious little metal shavings. In retrospect I'm actually quite happy that it decided to put up a fight; it'll serve as an interesting bit of history to bench and I'll always wonder how this nail (and the one on the bottom of the slab, as I'm sure now that that's what it is) came to be embedded in this piece of maple.

Cut Nail Drilled Out of the Rear Slab

Now that the nail was out of the way I was left with 2 holes that needed filling. Thankfully I had a tube of 5 minute Gorilla Glue Epoxy on hand and used it to fill each hole. After letting it set for an hour it was cured enough to scrape flush to the top and I was ready to move on.

5 Minute Gorilla Glue Epoxy

With the slabs now coplanar and the voids filled with epoxy I turned my attention to evening out the slight dishing of each pass of the router bit. I opted to give this job to my random orbital disc sander with 100 grit pads. I was worried that the 100 grit would produce a surface that would be far too smooth for the top of a work bench, but it actually produced a nice finish. It evened out the finger nail edges and dishing left by the router bit and actually gave the top some nice bite.

Now that the top is flat and coplanar the only thing left to do was to reinstall the leg vise and start thinking about the finishing touches...

Up next: This Is The End, Beautiful Friend, This Is The End!

Total Build Time:

- 1.5 hours (lumber selection, transport & stacking)

-4 hours (Top Slab milling)

- 1.5 hours (slab prep and glue up*)

-0.5 hours (preliminary flattening of both slabs)

-0.5 hours (Final rough slab milling)

-0.5 hours (trimming end and bringing into flat & square)

-1 hour (cutting and finishing tenon)

-0.5 hours (milling and laminating end cap)

-2.5 hours (milling screw cavity support & routing screw cavity – includes markup/layout)

-0.5 hours (routing mortise in end cap)

-0.5 hours (fine tune end cap fit)

-2 hours (drilling and installing end cap – includes markup/layout)

-1 hour (milling rough stock for dog hole strip and laminate cap)

-2 hours (production of dog hole template & routing of dog holes)

-0.5 hours (glue up of dog hole strip and laminate cap)*

- 0.5 hour (glue up and alignment of dog hole strip to front slab)*

-0.5 hour (milling of front slab dovetail strip)

-1 hour (set up and layout of End Cap Dovetail)

-1.5 hours (milling and fine tuning of End Cap Dovetail)

-0.5 hour (front strip/dovetail glue up)

-3 hours (routing front slab & installing tail vise)

-22 hours (cleaning, coating, baking and cooling of Vise hardware)**

-1 hour (initial milling of legs)

-1 hour (leg glue up)*

-2 hours (milling base rails to final dimensions)

-1 hour (milling of legs to final dimensions)

-2 hours (setup and cutting leg tenons…includes Mr. Cock Up)

-2 hours (layout & cutting of mortises in legs, drilling dog hole access & hold fast holes)

-1 hour (cutting rail tenons)

-2.5 hours (fine tuning mortise & tenons & dry fitting base)

-1.5 hours (cutting and dimensioning bench dog stock)

-1 hour (routing bench dogs to profile)

-0.5 hour (fine tuning bench dogs to shape)

-1.5 hours (bench dog assembly & fit-n-finish)

-0.5 hour (dimensioning & laminating chop stock)*

-3 hours (dimensioning & carving parallel guide)

-1 hour (fit & finish of parallel guide)

-2.5 hours (design & shaping of chop)

-0.5 hour (drawboring parallel guide & chop)

-2 hours (shaping & finish of parallel guides)

-4 hours (installation of nut block, parallel guides, phenolic bushing & fine tuning vice operation)

-0.5 hour (marking drawbore locations & drilling them out)

-1.5 hours (making dowel plate and dowels)

-1 hour (assembling the base)

-2 hours (leveling the base & mortising slabs)

-1 hour (fine tuning slab placement & attaching slabs to the base)

-1 hour (milling router sled rails, positioning the rails & building the router sled)

-2 hours (flattening top with router)***

-1.5 hours (drilling out inclusions & filling with epoxy)

-0.5 hours (fine tuning top with RO disc sander)

-89.5 hours total

*I haven’t included my clamp time in these figures if you want to add those figures in, each glue up sat for 24 hours

** I’m including the baking of my vise hardware into my build. If you don’t want to include this reduce the total by 22 hours

*** With a heavier duty router this process would have been about an hour

Tags: Maple, Roubo, Split Top Roubo, Split Top, Work Bench, Bench, Bench Crafted, wagon vise, glide vise, leg vise, vise, Alder, Red Alder, Router, Flat, Flatten, Flattening
Posted in Split-Top Roubo | 0 Responses to "The Flatter, The Better"

It Lives...IT LIIIIIIVES!!!

By matthew

Jun 26, 2012

It's time that this build started to look like a bench and not just a couple of butcher blocks on saw horses. It's time to assemble the base and introduce the slabs to it for some base on slab lovin...

With the legs and rails ready to assemble the only missing piece was to lay out the holes for the drawboring and to make some pegs. The layout for the drawbore holes was a quick and easy process of simply dry fitting the rails into the matched leg and marking the center of the hole that was already drilled into the leg with a matched brad point bit.

Drawbore holes marked

With each tenon marked it was a simple task to offset the holes in the tenon by about 1/16" towards the end of the tenon. The end result being as the peg is driven into the leg and tenon it will suck/draw the rail & tenon nice an tight against the leg.

With the rails and legs ready to assemble I turned my attention to making some pegs. I had initially intended to use some walnut dowel stock that I had left over from a previous project but forgot that the stock was actually 1/2"; not the 3/8" that I needed. Rather than place an order for some new pieces or head to the big box store for some oak dowels I opted to re-size the 1/2" stock I had on hand.

The easiest way to do this would have been to use a dowel plate to down size each peg. The problem? Well...I don't own a dowel plate. I had often thought about getting one for a top secret piece that I make (I may release it to the public one day...but till then all you need to know is that you don't need to know about it...you heard me!) but never got around to buying one. That's when I remembered something I read about another guild member just using some steel plate to make his own dowel plate (sorry but I can't remember who to credit for this...if it's you, let me know and I'll give credit where it's due).

Among woodworking another of my passions is Jeeping...and with that comes a serious amount of metal working...and with that metal working comes a stock of cut off/random pieces of box/bar/plate. As I dug through my scrap bin I happened across some 3/8" thick steep plate that I could make my own dowel plate out of. The best part is that it already had a 7/16" hole in it so all I had to do was drill another 3/8" hole and I was in business. I also took a few minutes to grind down each hole so that the edges were a nice and clean...and sharp 90*

Ghetto Dowel Plate

For those of you in the know you'll no doubt recognize my ghetto fab dowel plate was actually a leaf spring shackle in its prior incarnation...look at me...I'm recycling...

Where I have never attempted a process like this before I was kind of running blind. I had the process that Marc laid out the guild build video but still had a few questions that in all honesty were best answered by simply jumping in and doing it.

I cut my dowels to about an inch longer than I needed and started with the process of downsizing them. My first attempt was...well...a disaster. I took a utility knife and trimmed one end down so that it would fit into the 7/16" hole and started whacking it with a hammer...yeah...not the best idea. I did achieve the end goal of shaving the dowel down to 7/16" but it also crushed the fibers and looked like a rabid walrus gnawed on it for a few hours. There was no way that it was going to put up with another round of whacking it through the 3/8" hole in one piece. There had to be another way.

That's when I turned back to Marc's example and tried shaving the over sized stock down a bit with my block plane...what an eye opener. A few passes of the block plane was enough to allow the stock to be hammered through the plate without compressing the wood fibers and gave me a consistently sized peg.

Shaving the original dowels down

Oh yeah...it also gave me a chance to use the tail vise again...and how sweet it was...

Driving Dowels

Now that I had the pegs, it was time to assemble the base...hooooray!

Even though I opted to drawbore the entire base I also used a fair amount of glue in each mortise and on each tenon. I started by assembling each end of the base first to keep the pieces manageable until the very end. With each rail in place and the clamps on just tight enough so that I could make adjustments I double checked all measurements and made sure that the distance from the bottom of each leg to the bottom rail was the same across the entire base. With everything matching and in square I tightened up the clamps to a comfortable level and then slathered some glue into the drawbore holes and onto the pegs before driving them home. I was a tad skeptical about the whole drawbore process but am now a convert. After each peg was driven home the rails sucked up nice and tight against each leg without having to apply a huge amount of clamp pressure.

Base Ends Cooking

With the ends cooking nicely I turned my attention to the long rails. These were going to take a little more finagling than the ends. Rather than fight the entire base assembly I decided that the drawbore supplied enough clamping pressure that I could work on the piece end by end and then put the entire piece into the clamps, but I was still going to have to work fast.

Finished Base

With everything cooking nicely in the clamps all that was left to do was give it enough time to cure. In order to keep from wasting time I used the next 24 hours to clean out the bench's new home behind the table saw and next to the lumber rack. It's a good thing that I let everything sit for 24 hours, because I needed every minute available to clean that space out.

By the time the clamps were ready to come off, the bench's new home was clean, clear and ready for it to arrive. But before I put the base in its final home I took a few minutes to chamfer the bottom of the legs and give the entire base a good sanding. It also gave me the chance to prop up the slabs so that I could mark the mating mortises before positioning everything one last time.

Marking Mortises in the Slabs

Once I had the mortises marked in the top all that was left to do was to clean them out and get the bench into use.

Slab Mortises Cleaned Out

After hogging out the mortises with a router I cleaned everything up with a chisel, making each one nice and square. Along with cleaning out the mortises in the slab I also cut the groove for the dead man in the front slab. With those tasks down it was just a matter of flipping the entire thing over and mating the base to the slabs. Although it really didn't matter, I took a few minutes to level the base prior to setting the slabs in place. Nothing bugs me more than having a tool or something else roll off a work surface because it's not level...so for me, it was more of a matter of satisfying my inner crazy than anything.

With the base leveled and ready it was time to flop the slabs into place and make things permanent. Thankfully I sized the mortises perfectly and the slabs dropped right into place...what a satisfying thud it was when they dropped home.

Slab & Base Are One!

Up next: The Flatter the Better!

Total Build Time:

- 1.5 hours (lumber selection, transport & stacking)

-4 hours (Top Slab milling)

- 1.5 hours (slab prep and glue up*)

-0.5 hours (preliminary flattening of both slabs)

-0.5 hours (Final rough slab milling)

-0.5 hours (trimming end and bringing into flat & square)

-1 hour (cutting and finishing tenon)

-0.5 hours (milling and laminating end cap)

-2.5 hours (milling screw cavity support & routing screw cavity – includes markup/layout)

-0.5 hours (routing mortise in end cap)

-0.5 hours (fine tune end cap fit)

-2 hours (drilling and installing end cap – includes markup/layout)

-1 hour (milling rough stock for dog hole strip and laminate cap)

-2 hours (production of dog hole template & routing of dog holes)

-0.5 hours (glue up of dog hole strip and laminate cap)*

- 0.5 hour (glue up and alignment of dog hole strip to front slab)*

-0.5 hour (milling of front slab dovetail strip)

-1 hour (set up and layout of End Cap Dovetail)

-1.5 hours (milling and fine tuning of End Cap Dovetail)

-0.5 hour (front strip/dovetail glue up)

-3 hours (routing front slab & installing tail vise)

-22 hours (cleaning, coating, baking and cooling of Vise hardware)**

-1 hour (initial milling of legs)

-1 hour (leg glue up)*

-2 hours (milling base rails to final dimensions)

-1 hour (milling of legs to final dimensions)

-2 hours (setup and cutting leg tenons…includes Mr. Cock Up)

-2 hours (layout & cutting of mortises in legs, drilling dog hole access & hold fast holes)

-1 hour (cutting rail tenons)

-2.5 hours (fine tuning mortise & tenons & dry fitting base)

-1.5 hours (cutting and dimensioning bench dog stock)

-1 hour (routing bench dogs to profile)

-0.5 hour (fine tuning bench dogs to shape)

-1.5 hours (bench dog assembly & fit-n-finish)

-0.5 hour (dimensioning & laminating chop stock)*

-3 hours (dimensioning & carving parallel guide)

-1 hour (fit & finish of parallel guide)

-2.5 hours (design & shaping of chop)

-0.5 hour (drawboring parallel guide & chop)

-2 hours (shaping & finish of parallel guides)

-4 hours (installation of nut block, parallel guides, phenolic bushing & fine tuning vice operation)

-0.5 hour (marking drawbore locations & drilling them out)

-1.5 hours (making dowel plate and dowels)

-1 hour (assembling the base)

-2 hours (leveling the base & mortising slabs)

-1 hour (fine tuning slab placement & attaching slabs to the base)

-84.5 hours total

*I haven’t included my clamp time in these figures if you want to add those figures in, each glue up sat for 24 hours

** I’m including the baking of my vise hardware into my build. If you don’t want to include this reduce the total by 22 hours

Tags: Wood, Woodworking, Maple, Roubo, Split Top Roubo, Split Top, Work Bench, Bench, Bench Crafted, wagon vise, glide vise, leg vise, vise, Alder, Red Alder
Posted in Split-Top Roubo | 0 Responses to "It Lives...IT LIIIIIIVES!!!"

Give'm Tha Clamps!

By matthew

Jun 26, 2012

Before I get too far ahead in the build I needed to take some time to focus on the leg vise assembly. Honestly I could wait on putting this together until the entire base is assembled, but the thought of working on 1 leg and being able to move it easily as needed is a far better thought than having to work around the entire base.

I was lucky to have had 1 board from the lumber yard that was wide enough to meet my needs for the vise chop, but it was only 8/4 thick. What this meant is that I was going to need to laminate two pieces together to achieve my 12/4 needs. The board also had some interesting figure at one end that I opted to use as a focal point in the face of the chop.

Glue up of the chop

Chop Face Figure

The next piece to this puzzle is the design of the chop and in all honesty is one of two pieces that I have been dreading. Well dreading is a strong word...more like contemplating ever since the start of the build. The reason I've been in such turmoil over this piece is that it's such a key piece and can be such a reflection on the builder. And have we met? I'm a bubbling cauldron of design indecision...hence the weeks and weeks of fretting over the design. Over the weeks I've come up with several different prospects but could never pull the trigger. Designs ranging from Greene & Greene, Stickley, Molesworth, Western, Southwestern, basic arts & crafts etc...but none blew my skirt up...

So here I am...standing in front of a slab of hard maple, pencil in hand and wrought with indecision. That's when it hit me. The beauty of the Split-Top is its simplicity and what's more simple, yet striking than the art deco movement. So in a flurry of measuring and marking I had my lay out...a simple sun ray radiating from a tapered bottom with the rays stepping consecutively down the sides. But I deviated a tad from basic art deco design. I opted to make each ray slightly wider or narrow and deeper or shallow than the last. The last thing I wanted was the piece to feel machined or mass produced, which many art deco pieces fail at.

Before I started cutting into the slab I needed to layout the rest of the chop to accommodate the vise hardware and parallel guide.

Speaking of the parallel guide I then turned my attention to it in an effort to cement the art deco design in my mind. I was lucky enough to have a piece of quarter-sawn hard maple in my lumber rack that was just larger than what I needed. After cutting it to dimension I started laying out the bazillion and one holes that would ultimately be drilled in it. I also started thinking hard about any embellishments that I wanted to add to the tip of it...This is where I was going to make my mark and truly make this bench my own. I honestly had no idea what I was going to do. After a few minutes I had the piece marked up and ready to start making some saw dust, but hadn't really come up with any great ideas...oh well...I could stall a bit longer by taking a few pictures of the layout process... This is when it hit me. I picked up my phone and as it woke up, I noticed the wall paper I had on it and that's when I knew I had it. Need a hint? take a gander at the picture below of my phone's screen.

Inspiration

That's right...my parallel guide is going to be graced by a robot...and what a better fitting to an art deco piece than the addition of an art deco robot. The profile of Bender fit perfectly as the end to the parallel guide...it was meant to be...my all time favorite animation with the bench of a lifetime.

I decided to take the easy route and printed out a black and white template that I sized down to fit the exact height of the parallel guide and then used that as my hard reference. With the design penciled in I turned to the bandsaw and cut the end profile to my liking and then pulled my old art supply carving tools out of the drawer and started in on defining the rest of Bender.

Bender in the Rough

After a few more minutes of carving I was fairly satisfied Benders shape and turned my attention to the back side. I was a little torn between carving his face on the back side as well or making it...well, his back side. The thought of carving him facing in one direction was hilarious to me, but ultimately I decided to carve his face on the other side as well.

Finished Parallel Guide

With the carving done I turned my attention to drilling the bazillion and one holes for the guide pin and cut then cut the tenon in preparation of mating it with the chop.

I sat the parallel guide aside and turned my focus back to the chop...the best part of all of this was that my decision to run with the rising sun ray art deco design was still standing firm in my mind. With that finalized it came time to start cutting the chop down to size. Because of the thickness I was dealing with and the fact that it was also hard maple I decided to cut the taper at the bandsaw and then cleaned up the cut with an equal number of passes on each edge across the jointer; giving me a glass smooth finish. I then propped the chop up on end and gave it a long look. Were the sun rays still in the correct position? Were they distinct enough, deep enough, wide enough etc... Once I was happy with the design I started in on cutting the rays with a router.

Roughed out Sun Rays

Chop Sun Rays

With the rays finished up I turned my attention to shaping the top of the chop with a simple bevel and routing the mortise for the parallel guide.

Chop is Beveled

After drilling 2, 3/8" holes in the side of the chop I installed the parallel guide. I ran into a problem here...specifically the pegs I made to drawbore the guide to to the chop were a tad oversize. Not really a huge deal except they were being driven into hard maple which had no forgiveness for me. The end result is that the peg split and crumpled under the hammering before it even reached the parallel guide. Super awesome...I know...so in a rush I wiped out all the glue from the mortise and off the tenon and then turned my attention back to the broken pegs. Thankfully they broke in a place that was deep enough in the chop that I could drill out the peg without damaging the holes in the chop. After a few tense minutes I was back to square one and ready to try it again. This time I took an extra few minutes in sizing the pegs and had them to a snug but not tight fit...so with that I gave it another go and this time it worked beautifully. The drawbore pulled the parallel guide nice and tight to the chop and everything was nice and square.

Chop & Parallel Guide Drawbore

Up next was the need to transfer the center line of the vise screw clearance hole on the leg to the chop. In order to do so I had to introduce the chop to the leg for the first time. Amazingly I haven't screwed anything up yet and was able to transfer that line across without issue. With that done all that was left to do on the chop was to drill the vise screw clearance hole on the chop and install the vise.

With the vise screw installed in the chop it was time to locate the nut block on the back side of the leg. I opted to inlay the nut block into the leg rather than simply face mounting it. The problem with this is that I needed a way to accurately remove the stock in the leg. I could free hand the router around the lay out and then clean it up with a chisel, but why do that when I have a template bit that could easily accomplish this without issue, but alas I had no template...or did I.

I traced the nut block onto a piece of 3/4" MDF and then marked up the center of the area to be cut out. Because the nut block is round it actually made this process that much easier because I also have an adjustable circle cutter at my disposal. After over-sizing the hole by about 1/16" I cut the template.

Leg Vise Nut Block Template

With that done I could clamp it to the leg and clean out the material using a template bit. The fit was actually far better than I had expected...the template worked beautifully. I was then able to drill and tap the mounting holes for the nut block and install the vise in prep for the parallel guide blocks.

Nut Block Installed

I did run into a few problems while drilling and tapping the holes for the nut block. Because I don't have a brad point bit small enough I had to use a standard twist bit...the problem with this is that rather track strait in the wood it pushed off course due to the grain patters in the leg. What resulted was that the nut block shifted just enough that it caused some binding. I ultimately had to spin the nut block a few degrees and re-drill/tap new holes. These went much better and cleared up the binding issue I was experiencing.

With everything going rather swimmingly to this point it was time to turn my attention to building the parallel guide blocks. I decided to continue the art deco theme into these pieces too. I laid out several step cuts to the tops of each, each a different depth and thickness than the others and cut them out on the bandsaw. After cleaning the pieces up and installing the guide wheels it was time to bring all the pieces together as a complete vise.

Parallel Guide Blocks

When I installed the vise screw into the chop I initially noticed some binding, but it wasn't enough, nor regular enough that I gave it much thought...I actually chalked it up to the vise binding under gravity etc. Even after I installed the vise into the leg and tried to fine tune its operation with the guide blocks I was still randomly experiencing binding. Ultimately the binding continued to get worse and worse the more I operated the vise.

As I dug through the installation I couldn't really locate a reason for the binding...even after I uninstalled and reinstalled the vise screw several times and adjusted the position of the nut block...nothing seemed to matter. So I gave it 24 hours to sit and think about how it was misbehaving. It just didn't make sense...the only piece to the puzzle that I had was that if I tightened the screw mounting flange all the way I would have binding...but if I backed the mounting bolt off as little as 1/8 of a turn from full tight the binding would go away...I was stumped. As I let things sit I shot an email off to Bench Crafted in hopes of a miracle solution. Jameel was awesome in his response time and suggestions...He was even willing to have me ship the vise back to him (even after I baked it in flax oil) for a replacement. As I thought about his suggestions and the issues I was seeing directly, I decided to pull the screw out of the chop one last time. It was then that I noticed a black smudge on one edge of the washer clearance hole in the screw clearance through hole...after a closer look I found the binding was due to the flange mounting bolt holes slipping a fraction of an inch out of alignment when I initially drilled them (and by a fraction of an inch I mean it was so small that you couldn't see it by eye). After giving a little extra clearance to the washer, any binding that I was experiencing was gone.

This whole experience spoke volumes of the Bench Crafted vise. Their support was top notch and the fact that the hardware is so precise that a bolt being out of alignment less than a fraction of an inch was enough to keep the piece from working optimally is absolutely amazing for a piece of woodworking equipment.

With all of this behind me I was able to get the vise working like greased lighting and could turn my attention towards the final piece to the puzzle and inlay the phenolic bushing into the front of the leg.

Bushing Inlaid & Ready for Installation

With the bushing in place I was able to finally button up the leg vise.

Leg Vise is Finished

Now that I have both vises installed I can honestly say that I am absolutely tickled pink with the Bench Crafted pieces. I know I said it earlier but there really is no better descriptor than to say that they both work like greased lightning. They are an absolute treat to use.

Up next: It Lives! IT LIIIIVES!

Total Build Time:

- 1.5 hours (lumber selection, transport & stacking)

-4 hours (Top Slab milling)

- 1.5 hours (slab prep and glue up*)

-0.5 hours (preliminary flattening of both slabs)

-0.5 hours (Final rough slab milling)

-0.5 hours (trimming end and bringing into flat & square)

-1 hour (cutting and finishing tenon)

-0.5 hours (milling and laminating end cap)

-2.5 hours (milling screw cavity support & routing screw cavity – includes markup/layout)

-0.5 hours (routing mortise in end cap)

-0.5 hours (fine tune end cap fit)

-2 hours (drilling and installing end cap – includes markup/layout)

-1 hour (milling rough stock for dog hole strip and laminate cap)

-2 hours (production of dog hole template & routing of dog holes)

-0.5 hours (glue up of dog hole strip and laminate cap)*

- 0.5 hour (glue up and alignment of dog hole strip to front slab)*

-0.5 hour (milling of front slab dovetail strip)

-1 hour (set up and layout of End Cap Dovetail)

-1.5 hours (milling and fine tuning of End Cap Dovetail)

-0.5 hour (front strip/dovetail glue up)

-3 hours (routing front slab & installing tail vise)

-22 hours (cleaning, coating, baking and cooling of Vise hardware)**

-1 hour (initial milling of legs)

-1 hour (leg glue up)*

-2 hours (milling base rails to final dimensions)

-1 hour (milling of legs to final dimensions)

-2 hours (setup and cutting leg tenons…includes Mr. Cock Up)

-2 hours (layout & cutting of mortises in legs, drilling dog hole access & hold fast holes)

-1 hour (cutting rail tenons)

-2.5 hours (fine tuning mortise & tenons & dry fitting base)

-1.5 hours (cutting and dimensioning bench dog stock)

-1 hour (routing bench dogs to profile)

-0.5 hour (fine tuning bench dogs to shape)

-1.5 hours (bench dog assembly & fit-n-finish)

-0.5 hour (dimensioning & laminating chop stock)*

-3 hours (dimensioning & carving parallel guide)

-1 hour (fit & finish of parallel guide)

-2.5 hours (design & shaping of chop)

-0.5 hour (drawboring parallel guide & chop)

-2 hours (shaping & finish of parallel guides)

-4 hours (installation of nut block, parallel guides, phenolic bushing & fine tuning vice operation)

-78.5 hours total

*I haven’t included my clamp time in these figures if you want to add those figures in, each glue up sat for 24 hours

** I’m including the baking of my vise hardware into my build. If you don’t want to include this reduce the total by 22 hours

Tags: Woodworking, Maple, Roubo, Split Top Roubo, Split Top, Work Bench, Bench, Bench Crafted, wagon vise, glide vise, leg vise, vise, Alder, Red Alder, Clamp, Parallel Clamp, Bessy
Posted in Split-Top Roubo | 0 Responses to "Give'm Tha Clamps!"

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