The MkII Paul Sellers Workbench Build

[Phil Pascoe]

I did eleven years of nights, seven on seven off - it's a killer.

 

[NickN]

Managed a slightly earlier finish today so made a start on the aprons - four lengths of 145x45mm PAR/PSE needed to come down to 40mm depth so, having practiced my hand planing abilities on the bench top, thought this would be an ideal opportunity to try out the easier option, a planer thicknesser. Went very well, nice smooth and square finish, just a once over with a smoothing plane should finish the surface nicely.

Next job: laminating two and two of these apron boards to get two finished width boards of c. 290mm - then the legs and rails and the job I'm half dreading and half looking forward to, mortise and tenoning them (which will be my first ever proper attempt at this joint :shock: )

 

[NickN]

Quick progress report:

Planing, squaring and laminating the two boards for each apron.

The two c. 2 metre lengths of timber for the bench legs before starting work on them.

More planing and squaring up after cutting the legs to their final length of 875mm / 34 3/8 inches.

Next - mortising the legs by hand - debating whether to use the drill press to make the initial holes, or to do it completely by hand with a chisel.

I'm not rushing partly because of work but also the Workbench series of videos is only one every two weeks and Episode 4 of 9 is this coming Friday.

 

[El Barto]

Nice! The mortises aren’t so bad, you get into the rhythm of it quite quickly and you soon see improvements to your technique etc. I actually found cutting the tenons to be trickier as they’re so damn big.

 

[MikeG.]

........the Workbench series of videos is only one every two weeks and Episode 4 of 9 is this coming Friday.

Huh? How come I was able to flick through the whole lot to 8 of 9 last week, to see what people were talking about? I only didn't see the 9th because it was dinner time.

 

[NickN]

Nice! The mortises aren’t so bad, you get into the rhythm of it quite quickly and you soon see improvements to your technique etc. I actually found cutting the tenons to be trickier as they’re so damn big.

Encouraging to hear that - I'll probably make a start tomorrow!

........the Workbench series of videos is only one every two weeks and Episode 4 of 9 is this coming Friday.

Huh? How come I was able to flick through the whole lot to 8 of 9 last week, to see what people were talking about? I only didn't see the 9th because it was dinner time.

I think what you're referring to is the Mk1 or original series of nine episodes titled 'how to build a workbench'. The new series is titled 'how to make a workbench' and is a revised design, on Youtube there's only two episodes so far, Woodworking Masterclass site has three episodes published.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Good to know Mr. Sellers is the same as the rest of us and makes a better second bench.

 

[Tasky]

the new version is rounded 2 x 3 - quite why I don't know but can guess that it might be a combination of keeping weight reasonable, costs lower and possibly also with the new way of tongue and grooving the well board into the bench top the old version had too much depth.

Round-edged 3x2 is more commonly available to 'the average hobby woodworker' somewhere like B&Q, Homebase, etc. Paul even had a quick c amera-phone video up of him going into Homebase(?) and showing off some deals on wood they were stocking at the time, which would be ideal for his workbenches.
However, this wood he has here was actually picked up from the Oxford Wood Recycling centre, which is why some boards have scrapes and holes through them. Half of it was off the racks/shelves and half of it he picked up in a clearance batch of 50 lengths for £1 each... lucky lad. I went up there and they seemed very short on stock.

But yeah, Paul is basically opting for videos that better represent the average hobby woodworker, their available resources and their typical working space... based on surveys of his subscriber base.

This is why he ditched the professional Master Woodworker appearance with all those tool cabinets and a choice of 50 planes, and now has a pseudo-garage space with a fake brick backdrop, and everything is geared around smaller workshops and minimal tools. He has a couple of blogs about it.
Makes some sense, I suppose.

Huh? How come I was able to flick through the whole lot to 8 of 9 last week, to see what people were talking about? I only didn't see the 9th because it was dinner time.

If it's being done in his back garden, that's Bench mkI.
If it has a brick background, that's Bench mkII.

 

[NickN]

So, I thought it would be as well to get the rail boards sized and planed to final dimensions before cutting the mortises, in case of any unforeseen problems.

I've also disovered that this would be a good point for a modification to the design, but I'd welcome opinion too. The original design calls for 18mm thick tenons (on a 40m thick rail) into legs that are 95mm wide.

Seems (and looks) to me that the tenon is a bit thin into that size of leg, so my proposed change is to make the tenon 24mm thick (on a 42mm thick rail) into legs that, in my case are 92mm wide.

Or in other words, the tenons will be slightly over half of the rail thickness and about quarter of the leg thickness, seems like about the best compromise, and matches my chisel size.

Cutting the rails to length.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If you are to make the tenon half the thickness of the rail you could save some work by making it with single shoulder.You just need to take a little more care when cramping up.

 

[DBT85]

Thicker tenons seems fine to me.

Might be a bit more effort with a 24mm mortice instead of the 18mm.

 

[Just4Fun]

my proposed change is to make the tenon 24mm thick ...
... seems like about the best compromise, and matches my chisel size.

You have a 24mm chisel? That seems an odd size. What is the story behind that? What sort of chisel is it? (A mortise chisel or something else?)

 

[DBT85]

my proposed change is to make the tenon 24mm thick ...
... seems like about the best compromise, and matches my chisel size.

You have a 24mm chisel? That seems an odd size. What is the story behind that? What sort of chisel is it? (A mortise chisel or something else?)

I also have a 24mm chisel. Quite a few metric sets include one that size, including the Aldi/Lidl ones.

 

[Just4Fun]

That's interesting. I have never seen a 24mm chisel. All the sets I have seen have a 25mm chisel, not 24mm. I did have a look in a store when I was browsing yesterday, to check if I was simply out of date, but the sets I saw had 25mm chisels, and even the individual tools on offer didn't include a 24mm.
I can't think of anything I have ever done that would make a 24mm better or worse than a 25mm, so I do wonder why some sets have changed in the UK and apparently not here. What am I missing?

 

[NickN]

I'm guessing that 24mm must be used at least in Germany too, as that's where my chisel set came from, but yes, it is a strange choice by the manufacturer, rather than 25mm. Be that as it may, it's what I have so am using it. :mrgreen:

Made some further progress today, finished the planing and squaring of the rails and started on marking the legs for mortise cutting. I've decided to do the first leg completely by hand with chisel only, and see how long it takes.
A further modification to the tenons too - the original design uses full width lower rail tenons of around 6 inches / 150mm, which even with my substantially bulked up thickness of 24mm is still proportionally a bit wide, plus it has no edge shoulders. So I've revised my design to a 5 inch / 125mm width tenon on the bottom rail (rail is around 6 1/2 inches, so it leaves a 3/4 inch or 18mm shoulder each side) and a 4 inch tenon on the top rail plus a 1 inch haunch (which again is missing from the latest design video on Paul Sellers' website, but is shown as optional in the plans).

 

[Tasky]

so I do wonder why some sets have changed in the UK and apparently not here. What am I missing?

It's metric, innit.... 3mm = roughly 1/8", so 6mm, 12mm, 24mm.
I notice Euro and Japanese chisel sets seem to do that, which then matches up to the milimetre measurements of various motice locks, hinges, swivel plates and so on, these days.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

That makes no sense - 25mm is closer to an inch than 24mm is and 13mm is closer to half an inch than 12mm is.

 

[NickN]

But 19mm is almost exactly 3/4 inch and yet all sets have an 18mm chisel...

I can see the logic, kind of, as it would be rather odd to go by what is closest and have 6mm -- 13mm -- 19mm -- 25mm, the spacing is inconsistent, and a '1/2 inch' chisel would be more than double the '1/4 inch' chisel.

So I guess Powerfix thought, well if a '1/2 inch' chisel is 12mm then let's double it...

I'm cursed to be old enough to have been influenced heavily by imperial but young enough to have been taught metric at school, and it does my head in, I end up using both most of the time as I cannot VISUALISE anything in metric, but I struggle to CALCULATE anything in imperial... Grrr.. (hammer)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yeah - I forgot the 18mm.

I can quite honestly say I've never thought about the actual dimensions of a chisel - I just pick up something the right size.

 

[Tasky]

That makes no sense - 25mm is closer to an inch than 24mm is and 13mm is closer to half an inch than 12mm is.

But starting from roughly 1/8" at 3mm and going up in multiples of 3mm increments, like the Japanese chisels do: "The set of 10 includes 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 24, 30, 36 and 42mm chisels"

A single scale of numbers is easier and more straightforward for most people, than counting fractions of an inch and comparing halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and thirty-seconds.
I actually have a little chart showing 1-8 eighths, with the milimetre on one side and the quarter inch equivalents on the other for my chisels.

I tend to visualise things in imperial, but measure in metric... and get really thrown out when wood shopping for an easy round number of 3x2" (because I measured in feet), but have to buy what they call 75x50mm, which is actually more like 62x37mm anyway... I'm easy to spot - I'm the one in the corner counting on my fingers!