Workbench Build aka Paul Sellers style

[thetyreman]

I planed the two to the same width now, exhausted lol it took a while but it will be worth it

 

[Phil Pascoe]

In theory the middle stave should be reversed ... but hey ho ...

 

[Brian18741]

Great build thread, looking forward to seeing more!

 

[thetyreman]

so I've been pretty busy this week! cut the 4 housing dado joints, added the bearers and also planed every piece of wood as flat as possible with a 5 1/2 stanley, I have just got an old record no7 as well.

The main issue I'm having is for some reason there's a twist in the bearers when I test fitted it, the problem is the garage floor is very uneven so I might have to take it out for the glue up stage, this means when you put the worktop on, there's a gap of around 1/4-3/16ths of an inch when square.... but just on one end, not the other.

I'm not sure what to do yet with this, I thought I'd ask here first, what do you think?

I've taken some more pics to show you, including the gap, and the winding sticks are showing a twist. I also know it's not the worktop because I planed all twist out of it, top and bottom, same thing with both aprons.

my body is aching a bit, hope to finish this off by weekend! it's taken a lot longer than expected.

 

[MrTeroo]

I ended up with a twist in one of my leg frames.

I thought it would have to be done again but I went on Paul Sellers' 2 day introduction to woodworking course a couple of weeks ago and I asked him what I should do about that.

He told me not to worry because the locking wedges that secure the leg frames would correct the twist.

When I glued mine up and put the wedges in it was fine.

 

[thetyreman]

I ended up with a twist in one of my leg frames.

I thought it would have to be done again but I went on Paul Sellers' 2 day introduction to woodworking course a couple of weeks ago and I asked him what I should do about that.

He told me not to worry because the locking wedges that secure the leg frames would correct the twist.

When I glued mine up and put the wedges in it was fine.

interesting, although mine doesn't use wedges, it's going to be glued and screwed in place, so once it's glued to the aprons, there won't be much time to make adjustments, thanks for the input though.

 

[MrTeroo]

It's not too late to incorporate wedges?

 

[MarkDennehy]

I'm not sure what to do yet with this, I thought I'd ask here first, what do you think?

Richard Maguire's english bench video covered that exact point; he recommended shimming under the legs to straighten the frame before putting the top on because the top would hold the frame in whatever state it was in, twisted or not. Once you have the frame straight and the bench assembled, you can either shim under the leg to compensate for the floor or cut the legs to length (though that seems a bit extreme to me).

 

[thetyreman]

It's not too late to incorporate wedges?

underneath the workbench yes, but I thought you meant wedges inside the apron/legs sorry if I misunderstood you, there's time yet before I glue and screw it together, which I will most likely do tonight/this evening.

 

[MrTeroo]

I did mean between theleg fframe/ apron

 

[thetyreman]

mmmh I'm going to try the legs on a flat surface and hopefully I'll see what is wrong, got to get this part of it right after all this work.

 

[MrTeroo]

These are the wedges I was referring to:

 

[custard]

mmmh I'm going to try the legs on a flat surface and hopefully I'll see what is wrong, got to get this part of it right after all this work.

Very few woodworkers have access to a floor or indeed any surface that's sufficiently flat to act as a datum for their furniture builds. That's why glue ups and test assemblies are usually carried out on a pair of saw horses. The trick is to sight across the saw horses as if they were giant winding sticks, and use shims or wedges to bring them into alignment. Actually they don't need to be flat, they could happily be on the side of a hill, they just need to show no twist, in other words to be completely out of wind.

If you don't have a pair of saw horses you can improvise with planks and piles of books, anything that jacks up the surfaces by 300mm or so in order that you can get your eye line down to that surface and check that they're parallel to each other and out of wind. Rest the four legs of the bench on this improvised but accurate datum surface and it'll tell you all you need to know.

Good luck!

 

[custard]

These are the wedges I was referring to:

That's an excellent way of building a Nicholson style bench, wedges like that were a common device on the Nicholson benches I worked on thirty or more years ago before they dropped out of style. But how will you repeatedly hammer the wedges home to take up shrinkage play, especially when the top is on? There doesn't seem to be any room to get in there with a hammer.

Shouldn't there be some sort of horn attached to the wedges to act as an accessible striking surface?

 

[MrTeroo]

Well according to Paul Sellers the wedge will just drop and tighten as the bench movement occurs.

Here is the blog post of his that covers this:

https://paulsellers.com/2012/06/making-the-workbench-11/

And the equivalent video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyDjZWo3b3U&index=9&list=PLD39949332C7FB168

Start ten minutes in for his wedge explanation.

 

[custard]

Well according to Paul Sellers the wedge will just drop and tighten as the bench movement occurs.

I guess you're going to find out! And if it doesn't work all by itself then no problems, attaching a horn to the wedge later on is just a moment's work.

The weakness of the Nicholson bench design is racking. Not immediately, but after a few years, and there are three clear reasons this will inevitably happen,

-The housing joints in the apron have an end grain surface bearing against the long grain of the leg, the leg will shrink more in width than the housing joint will so the fit will always end up a bit loose. Furthermore, the end grain of the apron will also crush the long grain fibres of the leg, so that'll add to the looseness.

-If the leg is secured with screws or bolts then these metal fastenings will wear away the timber, creating progressively ovaled holes which will allow the racking to get worse and worse.

-The glue joint between the leg and the apron is doomed to fail as the direction of grain on these two components is at 90 degrees to each other.

Consequently a wedge like you have is the perfect solution, and I remember regularly tapping the wedges a bit tighter due to seasonal timber movement. I'm sceptical about the "just drop and tighten" idea, but hey maybe I'm wrong and in any event it's no big deal to remedy the problem after the build.

Good luck!

 

[thetyreman]

thanks for the excellent advice custard! I actually got it flat by using wedges on the floor in the end, which has seemed to work very well. It's good to know that it's not just me with an uneven floor.

I now need to surface plane the side of the benchtop it's quite a way out to make it fit, will show some pics soon.

 

[thetyreman]

another note, that bench that MrTeroo is refering to is a different design by sellers, in the youtube video series, mr sellers says it was designed to be taken apart and put back together again, because he planned to use it for shows and travelling, so that may explain it custard.

The design I am using is from his book and DVD, and it IS slightly different, no leg wedges and a thinner wellboard, designed to be permanent.

 

[MrTeroo]

another note, that bench that MrTeroo is refering to is a different design by sellers, in the youtube video series, mr sellers says it was designed to be taken apart and put back together again, because he planned to use it for shows and travelling, so that may explain it custard.

The design I am using is from his book and DVD, and it IS slightly different, no leg wedges and a thinner wellboard, designed to be permanent.

Sorry :? Didn't know that.

 

[thetyreman]

another note, that bench that MrTeroo is refering to is a different design by sellers, in the youtube video series, mr sellers says it was designed to be taken apart and put back together again, because he planned to use it for shows and travelling, so that may explain it custard.

The design I am using is from his book and DVD, and it IS slightly different, no leg wedges and a thinner wellboard, designed to be permanent.

Sorry :? Didn't know that.

no problem, I just say this so people are aware, it's not personal.