Bench Top (Ulmia-ish Pt. 2)

The bench-top involved many "strips" to be glued together in order to make up the big, flat surface that is the goal.  This isn't simply because my lumber wasn't wide enough to get it out of one piece.  With the top being made out of roughly 2" wide pieces, glued together with the growth rings alternating, it is a much more stable piece of wood.  If you simply took a big wide plank and flattened it into a bench top, in time it could cup and you'd find yourself re-flattening it often.  What this meant was much laminating and much blistered and sore hands.  A wiser man would have worn gloves...

I believe this is the thick section being laminated.

This template, together with a plunge router and guide bushing made the dogholes in the front-most strip before it was glued on,

These are them...

One improvement might have been to make sure that the cleat that seated my template was as thick as my routing was deep.  This would have prevented the jagged bits you can see in the bottom right corner.

The big final glue-up of the top.  I had most recenty jointed and thicknessed these parts when they were in thirds of what you see here.  This left a lot less flattening to do at the end.  Not sure what the plane was there for...just hanging out I guess.

The bread-board ends are slotted with and edge guided router.

The end of the bench is made to match and then a plywood spline is inserted to hold them flush to each other.

This joint is left unglued as the bench top must be allowed to come and go with the seasons.  As such, a big bolt holds the two snugly together.  It is not a lag bolt but I didn't take a photo of the mortise in the underside of the bench that houses the nut.  The end is finger jointed to the back of the tool tray.

Both bread-boards done and the tool tray back glued in place.  It is really beginning to look like a bench.  The tool tray bottom is plywood and it is screwed on in case it ever requires replacement.

The tail vise is also finger jointed together but this sucker was a beast.  Those pieces were basically 6x6s.  Some careful cutting on the bandsaw and, chopping by hand and some fine tuning and they eventually went together.  Likely the biggest joint I'll ever do.

This is the tail-vise installed.  I did not unfortunately take any pictures of the process.  I'm sorry because it really was quite interesting.  The hardware was the veritas tail vise from lee valley.  It differed from the one that the guy had in the plans so in the end I had to alter the elbow part of the tail-vise.  As you can see it is now thinner because my screw was shorter than his was.  No need for fancy handles...a piece of dowel rod and hockey tape is far more Canadian and is quite comfortable too. 

The dawgs, also a fun process, also unphotodocumented.  I promise to be better in future.

I put several coats of oil on the top and sides, letting it soak in, mostly to avoid stains from spilled coffee that I know will occur sooner or later.

The front vise hardware was also from lee valley, their "large" veritas one.  Why do those dogs look so long?   I put a special bit of spalting on the front just because. No drawer because it always annoyed me that it interfered with the dogs and vise-versa.  I can have a drawer elsewhere. 

Done and done, at home with his friends the tool and plane racks and sharpening station as well as a few homages to IP and reminders of how I want to work.

Assembly table out of 2x4s and MDF.  Holds all of the F-clamps, bar clamps and glue-up supplies.  Also rolls over to act as an outfeed table on the table-saw.

Sharpening station.  I bought the motor at a garage sale and combined it with the right sized pulleys so that it goes more slowly.  It's faster still than a hand-grinder but I like having two hands free to guide the blades over the stone.  Not running to the machine room to grind is also nice, I tend to do it more often because it's right there.

So that's it, the bench is done and the shop is really 99% where I want it to be.  The next step is doing some work!!  I have an exciting project in the initial stages and I will share more about that in the next entry as this one is already a monster...

Happy woodworking!!!