Building a workbench

[AJ_Engineer]

Well I've started in on a split-top Roubo. Not planning on making any major modifications from the standard Benchcrafted + Maple combination.

So here is a picture of my bags of sawdust. Good thing tomorrow is trash day I can fit three of the bags in my wheely bin.

Some of that sawdust started looking like this. I was able to get 12' boards so I could cut off 4' and use those for rails + legs. Sadly most of the widths available were not well suited for this project so I only picked up just shy of 100bd ft to start. That was last Monday and this past weekend I went to another place and got some more maple that should give me plenty to finish the project.

Two key things. First, clamping down the lunchbox planer makes things much less exciting. Second, protect the wife's car so one doesn't bang boards into it. While I have a three car garage to play with a decent amount of real estate is still needed.

[Brendon_t]

Yeah buddy.  strap in.  its gunna be a fun one.  current time to beat is held by Mr @Tom Cancelleri.15 working sessions start to finish.

[AJ_Engineer]

Some pictures in progress on the front slab. I skip planed the boards and put the curves opposite another. The even number and equal curves meant everything came out nice and square. Used a biscuit joiner for alignment. May buy a Domino for Christmas yet...

Used way too much glue and had a lot of squeeze out which is something I am still trying to get a feel for. I don't want to starve any joints.

 

Due to a split during resawing I had one board come out too thin in the 4" dimension so I scabbed on some scrap to make it bigger for my back slab. That was a bit of an adventure to mill up without a lot of waste. Didn't want to cut into my last 8/4 stock quite yet if I could avoid it. It's the board on the right with the front slab that fit on my 8" jointer (glad I went 8" on that).

And after noticing that my dust collector bin was over filled again this is where I left things tonight. Front slab along with dog hole strip and front laminate piece, along with the rough arrangement for the back slab. Should be gluing the back slab up tomorrow. I wasn't able to find anything decent for 12/4 for the end cap so I will likely just be laminating up some scraps for that.

Just now, Brendon_t said:

Yeah buddy.  strap in.  its gunna be a fun one.  current time to beat is held by Mr @Tom Cancelleri.15 working sessions start to finish.

Considering most of my working sessions are after I get the kid to bed and before I get myself to bed, I'm happy taking a few more days to finish it . Goal is to have it done before kid #2 gets here in January.

[pkinneb]

Congrats you are going to love the bench!

[Chestnut]

8 hours ago, AJ_Engineer said:

Goal is to have it done before kid #2 gets here in January.

Awesome this looks like fun. Excited to follow along. Don't worry that's not a bad timeline I'm hoping to have a bench by 2018 but i'm not very hopeful. I need to buy a bigger space to put it in first .

[AJ_Engineer]

Rear slab glued up. Still sitting a bit above 4" in thickness. The biscuits did allow for a touch of slip between the lams but nothing major. I did much better with the squeeze-out this time, picked up a 4" paint roller instead of spreading with a brayer.

[..Kev]

Awesome!

[pkinneb]

Nice!

[bushwacked]

Look forward to watching this!

[AJ_Engineer]

Bit of an update to this all rolled up.

Since I don't have a 12" jointer, took a bit of planing to get the slab flat to run through the planer.

With Thanksgiving here my dad was in town which was quite nice to help run both slabs through the planer and get them to 4". No pictures of that in progress since both hands were busy.

Then some time off to fry a turkey.

Also that day was laminating an end cap since I did not have 12/4 stock. My first one didn't make it through milling at 4" so a second one was made. Here it is after the first holes drilled for the tail vise. At least I have a little bit of interesting figure in the end. Many passes through the planer to keep it in the middle.

Due to a decent amount of frustration with my circular saw the tenon cut for in the end of the front slab was too thin. Thus the process of removing everything from my storage table/table saw and cutting some shims to add to the tenon. Some finessing with a block plane and shoulder plane and everything worked out.

Then drilling for the end cap barrel nuts. Good thing I already had a very long 3/8" drill bit for wiring installs. One I got in straight the other was at a slight angle.

Then hand drilling with the forstner bits for the barrel nuts themselves. I was expecting to have issues but was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. I took a scrap of oak on the drill press about 1" thick and drilled that out first, and used it as an alignment guide to start the hole in the slab. That seemed to work out quite well.

And all ready for the next steps which included re-reading the tail vise instructions, dismantling the hand wheel on the shaft, adding the washer, and re-assembly. Whoops.

Of course, with the barrel nuts for the legs being 1/2" bolts I needed to take the trusty sidekick to Home Depot to pick up a new drill bit as well as a router template bit. Amazing the number of bits and things I've needed to buy for this project. I thought I was pretty well stocked but I've needed a lot of things (forstner bits, drill bits) in larger sizes. But it is also a joy to use new and fresh bits for things

Then I had issues with the dog strip which put me a few days behind. More to come on that.

[wtnhighlander]

Looks like you are bringing the 'side-kick' up right! Glad to see the bench moving along.

[..Kev]

Good to see you got someone to read the instructions

Very nice work!

[rodger.]

Nice work - I may be getting "roubo fever" in the distant future.

[vtxmanmike]

I'm gathering info and plans to build a workbench. I already have enough to do in December so maybe I can pickup the lumber in January! Thanks for sharing the process. It's really helping me.

[estesbubba]

Looking good! Did you get your maple from Intermoutain?

[Brendon_t]

I really like that bit of heartwood  in the end cap..

[pkinneb]

Looking good!

[AJ_Engineer]

2 hours ago, estesbubba said:

Looking good! Did you get your maple from Intermoutain?

Got the first batch from them about 100 bd ft. At a bit of a sticker shock above $5bd/ft I only got just enough to start putting the tops together. Then I went down a week or two later to Brian at Big Red Sawmill and picked up some more 8/4 and 4/4 at about half the price. It's a softer maple with a bit more color but that suits me just fine. I should have gone there at the beginning but the last time I was down there he didn't have any and didn't know of any on the way. Saw his new addition to his big building under way and a palleted 36" planer, will be quite nice when he is done. So silly me not emailing him first.

2 hours ago, vtxmanmike said:

I'm gathering info and plans to build a workbench. I already have enough to do in December so maybe I can pickup the lumber in January! Thanks for sharing the process. It's really helping me.

Yeah I bought Marc's plans/videos about two years ago. Just now starting. Luckily I've watched them enough times that now it seems to be just refreshers. I probably would have started it a few years ago but I wanted to get a fairly difficult professional licensing exam series out of the way first.

There are a few people on here who have done some excellent journals of their builds as well. They have been quite helpful.

[AJ_Engineer]

So on to the dog strip. When I started I bought a 4" long spiral up-cut bit from Whiteside with a 2" cutting length. The bit is amazing, having never used nice router bits like this before.

Making the template was quick and easy. I easily cut the 2deg angle on my bandsaw with the help of an Incra mitre gauge. I am liking the bandsaw more and more as I use it.

After mounting a jointed piece of scrap on the back I also glued on another scrap to act as a stop for my router to prevent myself from tearing through the backing piece. Made the process fairly fool-resistant (not fool-proof).

So my plan was to make the dog hole template, throw my spiral bit in my old router (Porter Cable 690) with a bushing and hog out most of the material. After that, run a pass with my template bit (1" cutting length) in my new router (Dewalt 618).
Well, did I mention the spiral bit I had was long? So long in fact I had way way too much router bit sticking out the base for the first pass. Router bit grabbing the wood and being unsafe to use. Not having the normal brass type bushing sets I had swapped the base on the Porter Cable router with a universal base and twist type bushing set I picked up from Menards. In that test cut on scrap, and thankfully in scrap, when I had all the issues I also had issues with the bushing. Due to the fact the fixed base and router motor didn't have a lot of overlap since I was trying to minimize the cut depth I chewed up the bushing. I guess that's why they make them out of a soft metal.

So that was Tuesday night. Queue up some late night Amazon shopping and I ordered a new spiral bit, this time in 3" flavor with a 1-1/4" cut length. And a centering cone. And a new proper bushing set. Having a Prime membership means they would get here on Friday. As usual, Amazon ships promptly but then put their trust in the United States Postal Service. So on Saturday when only the new router bit and centering cone had arrived I had the wife swing by the local woodworking store and pick up a bushing set for me so I could get started. Of course not 2 hours after she got home (and well after the regular mail run had already arrived) my Amazon sourced bushing set arrives...

I digress.

Not too many pictures of the process as I was racing naptime and my trusty helper isn't the best around multiple routers. Stepping down my PC router in 1/4" increments I hogged out most of the material with my shorter spiral bit and bushing set. A quick cleanup pass with my other router and a template bit and all was well in the world. Many thanks to those on the Facebook group that gave quick response to my question regarding cutting depth guidelines.

I had the dog hole covering strip milled to thickness but I kept it wider and longer than the dog hole strip. The way my stock was my dog hole strip was just long enough for the final one, so the traveling one was made separately which you see above. Gluing the covering strip on wider all around was a lot easier than one milled to exactly 4" width and getting it aligned, which I can never get to work. A quick two step process of removing the bulk of the material with a spiral bit + bushing and a final pass with a flush trim bit cleaned things up nicely.

After wrestling the biscuit (wood) container away from the dog, I was able to make some biscuit holes and glue up the dog strip. Then I was sad Jet did not have the 50% off this year, I need more clamps.

Then it was on to the front laminate which was not without issues but much simpler.

 

 

[..Kev]

Nice progress!  Looks like some valuable lessons learned there as well!

 

[Chet]

Nice work AJ.  Looks to be coming along nicely.

[AJ_Engineer]

Working on the front laminate went well. Started by cutting a 7deg shim out of plywood to help cut the tails on the bandsaw. Little wonky feeding it through with no miter slot to the left of the blade but I made it work. 

Cutting the tails out on the bandsaw was fairly straightforward and easy. Got a little over my line in chopping the waste out from the back side.

Transferred the position to the end cap, cut it, and then transferred the tail outline to cut the pins.

My marking knife was too short but a skew chisel worked great.

Used the procedure of establishing a line and using the router for the rest.

Not sure what went wrong, but I wound up cutting my end cap 1/16" too short once I had the gap for the traveling block set. Went back through and planed the inside face of the front laminate down by 1/16". Will have to keep this in mind when I do my layout for the tail vise components.

I did get my front laminate stuck in the end cap and had to resort to some hefty pounding to get the end cap back off. A little inspection and I was able to trim up a few offending spots and get it to fit better.

Following that, biscuits and glue got everything together.

And now this is caught up to real life. Hopefully tonight I will flip the slab and start installing tail vise hardware.

[Ronn W]

Great job on a fun project.  You will love it forever

[estesbubba]

Looking good and I had also had fun with the dog holes...

 

[AJ_Engineer]

Slab flipped, layout lines run and a bit of testing the dog block plate back and forth. Then it was on to routing.

Got the rails set in and everything was still looking good.

A bit of a test fit with the block and it was too tight. A combination of plane work on the block and a sanding block down the slot with just a few (less than 5) passes to knock down the high spots and things were going well.

Then, disaster. Snapped the drill bit I was using off in the hole when I was going to full depth. I was using a slightly under-sized bit for the Spax screws so I would have plenty of holding power. First I tried drilling a relief hole on each side to get at it with pliers. No luck. I thought to myself "I need a plug cutter but I don't have one". Well I do have a combination drill/countersink set. So using the leftover broken shaft that was still in the drill and the countersink cutter alone I attached those together and wound up with something similar to a plug cutter.

Drilling down on top of the stuck bit I was able to widen out the hole enough to grab at it with pliers and yank it out.

I'm not worried about the hole, just set the rail back over it and attached them. Had the rails move ever so slightly inwards when torqued down fully which was annoying but no impact that I can see. Maybe I should have not drilled any holes for the screws and let the fastener holes in the rail just guide the screws. With the dog block installed I needed to trim up the plate side of the dog block just a bit with a plane, and sanded down a few more high spots and got it all together.

I have free movement and no binding, but the block does like to shake and make quite a bit of noise when it travels. Will see how it goes after using it may grease it. Tolerances seem acceptable in all dimensions with nothing binding up as far as I can see.

Next up: starting work on the base by rough milling and laminating for legs and rails.