YAWN - Yet Another Workbench Newbie

[MarkDennehy]

Well I cut the mortice in the top of the second leg last night (it's about as cack-handed as that post just above), and cut the tenon on the other side of the bottom stretcher between the two there this evening and it all fits together; looking at how it looks in relation to the benchtop though, I'm going to have to trim down the shoulders of that tenon to trim the overall length of the stretcher and get the back leg positioned correctly (so that the outside face of the tenon on the top of that leg is flush with the outside face of the back of the benchtop - which is a lot simpler of an arrangement to show than to describe, so I'll grab more photos in the morning).
In the meantime, the midges have drilled several mortices in my forearms and scalp, the little gits. One of the problems of woodworking in the back garden beside a large flowering bush that has more bees than a hive and even more smaller insects at this time of year...

 

[MarkDennehy]

Nice dry day this morning, so back to the bench I go. I managed to cut one mortice an evening during the week in the back leg, so this morning I started by cutting the matching tenons on the stretchers and then cutting the mortice in the benchtop for the leg tenon. A bit of fettling and everything was looking acceptable...

(it fits! properly! )

(this one not so much! But it'll do!)

("who cares, it's just a workbench")

I then assembled the leg frame, which came together well enough to tell me that the front leg and the back leg centerlines aren't even in the same ballpark, but it's stable enough to stand on its own and it fits the table...

So then I put a scrap piece of wood between one sawhorse and one side of the benchtop and let the other side freestand on the legs...

And it looked grand! Until I realised there were gaps everywhere, so there followed an hour of disassembling the whole thing, finding the one pair of surfaces that weren't mating right, planing the wrong one, reassembling everything and seeing one gap close and two open up, swearing and repeating the cycle until everything at least looked consistently loose, and then I slapped a clamp on the legs just under the table and as if by magic (but really by clamping pressure) all the gaps closed up at once and the whole thing fitted and stood stable and level.

I damn near pineapple'd myself at the sight of it. Then I had a little strut about the place (Look at me world, I have taken one of your trees, killed it and carved it into something that... well, kinda works! Take that universe!).

Then I remembered I had to do another leg frame and more stretchers and the aprons and fit the vices and the planing stop and the bench dog holes, and at that point I opted to take a small break for a cup of tea and a little cry.

Then back to action, and I started cutting the second bottom short stretcher to length, marked out the tenons but didn't saw them out, and marked up the mortices in the legs as well, got out the brace and drilled out the mortices on the front leg.

Knots are right pineapples. That mortice sucked to cut.

I'd say I was getting better at morticing, but...

Oh well. Repeat after me, "It's just a bench..."

Tomorrow I'll cut the mortices in the other leg, cut the stretcher tenons and the mortices in the benchtop and try to get the second leg frame fitted.

If I manage that, I might tackle the vice mounting and the planing stop on monday; a family holiday is coming up and I can't take the bench with me so I'd like to get it to a decent state before the hiatus.

 

[Bm101]

You're doing it that's the thing. I think I had a hiatus but the hospital removed that stuff with my tonsils back in the 70s. I'm pretty sure of that. I remember the doc saying summat about it.This patient can no longer contract tonsilitis or haitia. Fair play to the NHS. Ive never had one since. In fact I struggle to spell it.

 

[MarkDennehy]

No bm, that's halitosis you're thinking of. A hiatus is a group of badly spelled japanese poems.

 

[Setch]

No, you're thinking of a Narnia. Thats when a bit of your intestines pop out the back of your wardrobe and go on adventures with a talking faun.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Narnia? That's my wife's name ... face of a witch, hair of a lion and body of a wardrobe.

 

[No skills]

Why can't you take it on holiday?

 

[memzey]

Loving this thread

 

[Bm101]

Why can't you take it on holiday?

You're onto summat there Noskills.... Lay the legs out on top of the car, whack the worktop over them, some baling twine. Free roofrack.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Took nowhere near as many photos as normal today, because I kept getting ten-minute bursts in between rain showers to work in in the morning. But I got some work done - the stretcher tenons got cut, the mortices in the second leg got drilled out in the top mortice and half-drilled out in the bottom mortice, and then I spent twenty minutes cursing and swearing, chopping at an inch-thick knot right at the edge of the mortice, stropping the chisel every few minutes to try to keep it as sharp as possible.

Git of a thing.

I'm actually learning how to freehand strop and sharpen reasonably doing all this, but it's bloody rough - I wouldn't trust myself to freehand anything more than stropping and light touchups on the highest grit diamond plate. I did see an interesting jig idea for sharpening on CloseGrain - it's basically a guide block that lets you set the right angle at the start of the stroke, then you freehand through the stroke. Or, to explain better, look:

See, for someone like me who's both cack-handed and doesn't have anyone to look at what I'm doing and go "ah, there's your problem..." (because yes, a child can learn this in a half-hour if taught by someone who knows what they're doing -- but how many amateurs have that kind of resource to hand?), this kind of thing seems like a brilliant way to learn. On the to-do list for immediately after the bench.

Anyway, got through that PITA of a knot and assembled the leg frame. And then realised that the frame was a pronounced A-frame rather than rectangular, because the lower stretcher was over an inch too wide. So a bit of fettling to the shoulders and...

All squared up and level on the spirit level (and they're level the other way up when standing on the ground too). I marked out for the inner mortices for the leg tenons and then shut down for the night. In the morning I'll cut the inner mortices (the ones that go right through the benchtop) and that'll let me mark out the outer mortices (the ones that just go down a half-inch or so to seat the legs) and the connecting dado to accept the top of the top stretcher. Then I might finally get to see the bench free-standing, which would be neat. It'll still need the long stretchers, the aprons, the vice and planing stop hardware and the mounts and mortices for all that (and I need to go buy lag bolts at some point for the face vice) but I reckon if it freestands reasonably level tomorrow I might just owe myself a beer.

 

[MarkDennehy]

What idiot ordered this weather?
/mope

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yup. Right down the bottom end of Cornwall, I've just lit the stove.

 

[MarkDennehy]

It's not even heavy rain here, it's just that we're inside the cloud (we're on a hillside) and the wind is driving the water everywhere. I've gotten the inner mortices cut this morning (oh, and there's a tale of woe) but now I'm staring at wet moving fog and a bench taunting me from under a tarp

 

[MarkDennehy]

So got an hour in in the morning before the moving cloud arrived. Started with the marked-out inner mortices for the second leg frame, sawed out the parts that could be sawn out and then started chopping away at the waste...

And then with one tap, half the mortice fell out on the front leg mortice, in one chunk, which looked suspicious so I checked and sure enough, it had split back past the intended knifewall (which I'd tapped with the chisel to deepen but that didn't help) and there's a quarter-inch wedge missing. I recovered the wedge and I'll glue it in at the end, but why did...

Oh, I see. Hit the portion below that knot line, split along it and took a chunk from behind the glue line as well. Brilliant. Pineapple-ing knots...

As to the rest of the day, total loss. Forecast looks okayish for tomorrow, we'll see...

 

[MarkDennehy]

After yesterday's tour of the inside of a cloud, today started with mild drizzle but dried out to good working weather around noon and since I'm on holiday at the moment, some progress got made...

Hooray! It stands up and it's level in both directions! Rather pleased with that

There then followed a period of confusion with what step came next and some checking of notes, and then some testing to see if the aprons still fitted...

Well, poop, the front apron's bowed out away from the bench by up to 5mm in the middle of the bench. Yeesh. Out came sid, and a half-hour of hogging off wood later, the 5mm was down to just over 1mm. I didn't push it any further because I'm worried about the leg tenons pushing the apron out until I get the stretchers and frames drawbored.

Also, when I went to cut the aprons to length, I figured I'd use the bench to see what it was like in terms of height (and it's pretty sweet), but that meant I needed a way to hold the board in place, so...

And it grips nicely Though holy carp, the noise when you belt the holdfast with a metal hammer is painful and that's out in the open - I think the rubber mallet's going to have to be the holdfast hammer especially in the shed or I'll go deaf.

And I marked out the dados for the back board as well...

...and then I cursed a bit and re-marked for the dados on the correct face of the board. Sheesh.

And then some fettling and fitting for the vice.

There'll have to be a 15mm-ish spacer between the bottom of the bench and the vice, and a mortice needs to come out of the apron as well (that face is going behind the apron), and I still have to go find those lag bolts.
But still.
It stands up! Without tilt!

 

[Grawschbags]

Good job mate. Great to see how you're progressing.

I've started mine in anger too. Laminated the two bench tops. Really need to make me a scrub plane for hogging off material... On to the aprons and legs laminations next.

Look forward to the next update!

 

[MarkDennehy]

Not progressed much at all in the last two days - some marking up and such, but mostly I've been doing family stuff (it's a family holiday) and I'm probably not going to get much done until next week either because of that. I also need to pay a visit to a local timber yard here and source some walnut and poplar (and maybe some maple) for a few projects I have on the to-do list for when the bench is done; if I get those in nowish, they'll be acclimatised by the time I'm ready to start.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Still in holiday mode, but I've picked up the lag bolts and hardware I needed to mount the vice, and I managed to get to the builder's merchants to get some OSB to line the shed the bench is going into as well as some plywood to make bench hooks and the like, and then I got to the local timber yard and picked up some walnut, poplar and ash (and a few slats of cedar for a drawer lining) so that's the next few projects all sorted once the bench is finished

Yet another place I can't bring the credit card

 

[MarkDennehy]

Oh, and suffering cats. For fun I planed a small piece of the walnut to see what it was like. I've only used pine and whitewood before.

Does the church know about walnut? Because I'm sure they'd want it banned, it's too much fun for a catholic...

 

[Bm101]

Does the church know about walnut? Because I'm sure they'd want it banned, it's too much fun for a catholic...

Strange you say that, I have a beautiful antique walnut veneered phone I use purely for speaking to old girlfriends. (It's in my shed and the Mrs doesn't know it exists). I bought it from a local house clearance sale of a catholic priest. It was about two quid. Beautiful thing and an absolute bargain. Or it would be. For some reason it won't work as a general phone, it only works when I phone old girlfriends. No idea why. Shame really.

On the plus side, I have to say, its great for excommunication.