This is a bit of a retrospective as in I built this workbench in 2011 but I thought I’d share here since folks seem to like bench builds and for sure for me this was an interesting project and not without its lairy moments – so good fun along the way!
To set the scene, 5y previously I’d been through a messy divorce, found in 1997 a property to buy, moved in and set about building a workshop near the end of a long ~50m rear garden.
I had no set idea to follow any established bench design, Roubo or whatever, all I knew was I wanted a bench with a tail vice so that I could plane a surface edge-to-edge without having to move/re-clamp it so a bench-top with a tail-vice was the target.
So just fitted the workshop glazing and not even sealed the glazing beads but had guestimated how much timber I needed for my bench -this is American Maple -
I had seen in the distant past a bench built by a guy who posted under the name of Lord Kitchener and I had at the time looked at pictures of his workshop and had ‘clocked’ the salient design features, so with no drawings and only a photo of the bench to work from….
So with shed unfinished I thought I'd progress far quicker if I had a proper bench to work from.....
Moved the sawn American Maple slabs inside and here you can see I was well equipped with a tiny Kity BestCombi/s and a Kity 613 bandsaw/s to process these maple slabs… - honest guys these are quite capable machines…!
Ran the slabs through the bandsaw and planed/thicknessed them to trial lay them out on the floor to get a feel for shape and size. To put things into perspective the main bench pieces are ~43mm square and the front apron 43mm wide but 105mm deep and 172mm wide to give some meat around the bench dogs.
I glued them up in sets of 3 as I didn’t at the time have a biscuit jointer to stop the strips from creeping under the pressure of the clamps and thought more than 3 at a time was going to be difficult to handle – the pieces are ~2m long.
I didn’t capture making a template however I realized I needed one so as to make repeated deep cuts for the dogs, -I needed to make repeated 23mm deep cuts – the width of the pop-up dogs and cater for the depth of the template too.
I previously had only cut small stuff with a ¼ inch Elu POF96 router so invested in a half inch router – a Festool EBQ1400 to cut the bench dogs. I also needed a long reach cutter to cut these slots through a template so bought for me, a massive cutter – a Wealden Cutters TXL1416M – 65mm depth cut @ 5/8in dia.
With the template in place and snap in guide on the router base there was some serious TCT stick-out and I’ll admit I was more than a little nervous as I made the 1st cut down the center of the template. I then made further passes bearing on the template edge as a finishing pass and I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly it all went and how clean a cut I achieved. I think for me the more scary bit was taking a rest between cuts, almost forgetting to retract the cutter when putting the heavy-for-me router down, but I managed to complete it without drama or mishaps!
In the background you can see all the offcuts from the Sapele window frames I made for the shed…
It was around this time that I realized I needed to get some proper extraction so bought one of these which I nick-named Mr Blobby
Finally glued the apron+dogholes to the rest of the benchtop –
I then put the top right side up upon my workmate and a couple of Record roller stands, it was getting quite heavy to maneuver on my own but I seemed to manage it without any dramas…
At this point I had to decide how to flatten the top surface, I’ve never done this before and the thought of attempting to do this by hand was daunting so I decided to cheat and make a router sled and use a couple of levels clamped to the front and rear use a large bottom trim cutter to shave off a mil or two .
I fabbed a sled out of 6mm ply and added some webs for rigidity and some blocks to get it to the right height off the table and to enable smooth lateral traversals whilst inching the sled along the length of the table.
Given I had a step in the table where the tail vice would go I knew I’d need to do that bit separately and that it would take some skill and fettling to ensure that second pass was coplanar to the main one but hey! we all like a challenge!!
I bought again a massive for me 35mm dia bottom trim cutter from Wealdens – a T2148.5 and this is what the surface looked like after the main pass –
To be continued..... - can't post more than 10 photos...
To set the scene, 5y previously I’d been through a messy divorce, found in 1997 a property to buy, moved in and set about building a workshop near the end of a long ~50m rear garden.
I had no set idea to follow any established bench design, Roubo or whatever, all I knew was I wanted a bench with a tail vice so that I could plane a surface edge-to-edge without having to move/re-clamp it so a bench-top with a tail-vice was the target.
So just fitted the workshop glazing and not even sealed the glazing beads but had guestimated how much timber I needed for my bench -this is American Maple -
I had seen in the distant past a bench built by a guy who posted under the name of Lord Kitchener and I had at the time looked at pictures of his workshop and had ‘clocked’ the salient design features, so with no drawings and only a photo of the bench to work from….
So with shed unfinished I thought I'd progress far quicker if I had a proper bench to work from.....
Moved the sawn American Maple slabs inside and here you can see I was well equipped with a tiny Kity BestCombi/s and a Kity 613 bandsaw/s to process these maple slabs… - honest guys these are quite capable machines…!
Ran the slabs through the bandsaw and planed/thicknessed them to trial lay them out on the floor to get a feel for shape and size. To put things into perspective the main bench pieces are ~43mm square and the front apron 43mm wide but 105mm deep and 172mm wide to give some meat around the bench dogs.
I glued them up in sets of 3 as I didn’t at the time have a biscuit jointer to stop the strips from creeping under the pressure of the clamps and thought more than 3 at a time was going to be difficult to handle – the pieces are ~2m long.
I didn’t capture making a template however I realized I needed one so as to make repeated deep cuts for the dogs, -I needed to make repeated 23mm deep cuts – the width of the pop-up dogs and cater for the depth of the template too.
I previously had only cut small stuff with a ¼ inch Elu POF96 router so invested in a half inch router – a Festool EBQ1400 to cut the bench dogs. I also needed a long reach cutter to cut these slots through a template so bought for me, a massive cutter – a Wealden Cutters TXL1416M – 65mm depth cut @ 5/8in dia.
With the template in place and snap in guide on the router base there was some serious TCT stick-out and I’ll admit I was more than a little nervous as I made the 1st cut down the center of the template. I then made further passes bearing on the template edge as a finishing pass and I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly it all went and how clean a cut I achieved. I think for me the more scary bit was taking a rest between cuts, almost forgetting to retract the cutter when putting the heavy-for-me router down, but I managed to complete it without drama or mishaps!
In the background you can see all the offcuts from the Sapele window frames I made for the shed…
It was around this time that I realized I needed to get some proper extraction so bought one of these which I nick-named Mr Blobby
Finally glued the apron+dogholes to the rest of the benchtop –
I then put the top right side up upon my workmate and a couple of Record roller stands, it was getting quite heavy to maneuver on my own but I seemed to manage it without any dramas…
At this point I had to decide how to flatten the top surface, I’ve never done this before and the thought of attempting to do this by hand was daunting so I decided to cheat and make a router sled and use a couple of levels clamped to the front and rear use a large bottom trim cutter to shave off a mil or two .
I fabbed a sled out of 6mm ply and added some webs for rigidity and some blocks to get it to the right height off the table and to enable smooth lateral traversals whilst inching the sled along the length of the table.
Given I had a step in the table where the tail vice would go I knew I’d need to do that bit separately and that it would take some skill and fettling to ensure that second pass was coplanar to the main one but hey! we all like a challenge!!
I bought again a massive for me 35mm dia bottom trim cutter from Wealdens – a T2148.5 and this is what the surface looked like after the main pass –
To be continued..... - can't post more than 10 photos...
