My workbench (yes, it's a Roubo)

[SawDustB]

2 hours ago, Majones32004 said:

The bench looks nice! I plan to accent mine in a similar fashion but I'm still waiting for the hardware.  Do you have a rough estimate on how much lumber was needed for the leg vise, dead man and end cap accents? as well the middle piece (tool holder/stop) of the bench top?  I plan to purchase 8/4 Walnut but not sure if 12/4 is more appropriate...

Thanks! For the accents on my bench (really for the leg vise chop and the end cap), I had bought a piece of 8/4 sapele that was about 10 board feet (about 12" wide and 5' long). I didn't do the gap stop in sapele, but that for me came out of a single 8' long 10" wide piece of 4/4, so call it another 7 board feet. I ended up deciding to make the dead man entirely from maple, but it's basically another 2' long piece of 8/4 at about 8" wide (around 3 board feet). One thing to note, if you look at mine I laminated a piece of hard maple to the sapele to make up the thickness for the leg vise chop, so you'd have to buy a piece of 4/4 for that if you want it all from your accent wood.

I was very picky about trying to use all of the sapele from the first board I bought, because anything else from my supplier would have meant buying much larger boards, as that was all they had in stock.

[SawDustB]

All the finish is on, and is mostly dry. I expect it'll keep curing over the next week or two. I put the vises back on, and grabbed a few pictures. I'm really happy about how it came out. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but the finish really brought out the color and figure in the maple.

 

Of course, after I did this and took pictures I found out my hand wheels should arrive Monday. Now I just have to figure out how to drill them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pkinneb]

That turned out really nice! Really pops the accent wood.

 

 

[Majones32004]

Very nice! and thanks for the quick reply.

[SawDustB]

So I've let the last details on the bench slip for a while now. I bought a couple of hand wheels to go on the vises, and in now working on installing them. I removed the existing fitting for the bar and drilled out and fitted the wheels, which was easy but took a while. Next I needed clearance for a thrust washer and bearing on the inside of the flange. I made a jig so I could use a forstner bit.

I also had to do this on the end cap. It attaches using the holes for the screws. You can see the new stepped hole.

I test fit the new wheel on the leg vise. I like it, but I'm going to paint the green flange black. I need to add the crank handle - more on that later.

[SawDustB]

So as I mentioned in the last post, the last details are the crank handle on the hand wheels and touching up the paint, along with final assembly. The issue I ran into is that this style of hand wheel is intended to be used with a straight crank handle that comes out a few inches (as on a table saw), but I bought the more compact style usually used with the rounded solid cast iron wheels. One type of crank has a stud (the ones I bought) and the other style accept a bolt from underneath, and these wheels even had a counter sink for that. My solution was to take a T nut and remove the spikes, then drill through for the diameter of the T nut (3/8"). This allowed me to keep the handle stationary on the top, and use the T nut to tighten it.

It works fine, although I'll grind the sides flat to take a standard wrench size to make it easier to tighten. I also don't want sharp burrs where I might put my hand. The result looks pretty good in the mock up though. I should mention, this is an 8" Grizzly cast iron wheel (to fit on my 9" chop width). The crank handles have the 5/16" stud for mounting. You can still see that rather industrial green peeking through on the flange - now that I'm happy with my mounting details, that's getting painted black. There were a few scratches with getting these drilled out, too.

I've got a similar wheel for the end vise, although I opted for the solid body (5") to get a little more momentum.

[Chet]

Nice solution for the handles, ought to work well.

[Alan G]

You could also use a hex nut with a nylon insert. Sometimes referred to as a nylock nut. They make std and thin versions. 

 

[SawDustB]

2 hours ago, Alan G said:

You could also use a hex nut with a nylon insert. Sometimes referred to as a nylock nut. They make std and thin versions. 

 

Thanks, that was my first thought, before I had them in my hands. Unfortunately, there isn't enough of the stud coming through to catch more than about 1 thread with a standard or lock nut. The T nut helps because it goes into the thickness of the wheel. It's not as bad on the big wheel, but the small one is 5/16 thick and there's only 3/8 of thread.

[Alan G]

Gotch yah. I didn't think of the extended thread of the tnut. Along the same thought what about using the female side of a connector bolt. Then you can tighten with an Allen wrench. 

 

[SawDustB]

7 hours ago, Alan G said:

Gotch yah. I didn't think of the extended thread of the tnut. Along the same thought what about using the female side of a connector bolt. Then you can tighten with an Allen wrench. 

 

Yes, that's what I really wanted to use. It seems like almost all of that hardware is 1/4-20, but the threads on the handle are 5/16-18. I could only find them at a couple of places in the US with minimum orders and expensive shipping, so they would have ended up being $20-$30 for each nut. And I would have had to wait for them, so I figured I'd try modifying the t nuts first.

Here's what I ended up with after 10 minutes at the disc sander. I can put a wrench on it now.

I'm assuming I can just scuff up the existing finish and then spray on a couple of coats of spray paint. What kind of lube do people normally use on this kind of thing? I figure I should do all the parts while I'm putting it back together. I'm thinking something that dries so it won't attract too much dust.

[SawDustB]

I finished installing the hand wheels and the vises last night. I'm pretty happy with the final result. For painting, I just used a wire wheel to abrade the existing paint a bit and used semi gloss black spray paint. The leg vise is so much nicer with the wheel. It doesn't go more than a revolution or two if you spin it, but that's OK. I wasn't expecting it to be Bench crafted quality.

The end vise was a little trickier. I went to install it after putting on the wheel and realized that the solid wheel prevented me from installing the screws. I had to take it off again and put the screws through first. I needed to use a screwdriver bit held in a pair of vise grips to tighten it, but it did the job.

And it works really well now. I'm very happy with the action on this one (especially after moving it for months without any kind of crank).

At some point soon, I'll clean the bench off and take a couple of pictures, but this build is pretty much done.