Tpt life Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 I'd find a design plan. Thin in the middle, slightly thicker either side, then full width as you work out from center. Too drastic a change in any one place will look like a mistake to many eyes. The obvious caveat is if you lam a curly showpiece on it a la Cosman. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 5, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 I'd find a design plan. Thin in the middle, slightly thicker either side, then full width as you work out from center. Too drastic a change in any one place will look like a mistake to many eyes. The obvious caveat is if you lam a curly showpiece on it a la Cosman. Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'm inclined to put it either in the middle, or against the gap. I still won't be gluing until next week at this rate. I did consider the contrasting walnut board in the middle, but that might just look cheesy. I can't decide. I did at least get all the wood off the floor. I think my bench top might need a bit of flattening, though 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drzaius Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 Hand plane will take care of that in a jiffy. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon_t Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 Do you have a band saw? I'd be trimming those down to within 3/8 before glue up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhighlander Posted October 6, 2016 Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Trim it! Don't plane away all that great cutting board material! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 6, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Do you have a band saw? I'd be trimming those down to within 3/8 before glue up No band saw, but this is why I made the edge jointing jig for the table saw. I trimmed one edge on all of the boards last night, and ripped a couple to width before I gave up for the night. I'm going 1/4 oversize for the moment, since there edges are nice and clean off the saw. I'm not going to bother putting them through the planer again before glue up. You can see the front board is now s4s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 6, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 So I had a minor mishap when cutting up the rough wood. In the piece that I ripped with the jigsaw, the blade wandered so badly into one side that I didn't quite have enough to get 4 1/4 when I ripped it. I used the table saw to nibble a notch, then glued in a patch from one of the offcuts after using a chisel for cleanup. It seemed to work pretty well. I will confess that i tried a smaller patch with the router plane first and it was a disaster. It'll be on the bottom of the back slab, so it didn't really matter, but I would have known. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drzaius Posted October 6, 2016 Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Hey, that's all part of the fun. Good recovery. Sometimes I get as much satisfaction out of fixing a screw-up as anything else to do with the project. Just curious as to why you'd rip with the jigsaw & then the tablesaw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
..Kev Posted October 6, 2016 Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 The art of recovery! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted October 6, 2016 Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Nice job! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mat60 Posted October 6, 2016 Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Great fix. Good to see your progress and the maple cleaned up well also. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 6, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2016 Hey, that's all part of the fun. Good recovery. Sometimes I get as much satisfaction out of fixing a screw-up as anything else to do with the project. Just curious as to why you'd rip with the jigsaw & then the tablesaw. The ripping with the jigsaw was before jointing, planing, etc. The table saw only came in after I had it at rough s2s, and the boards were also a lot smaller (and lighter) at that point. I only ripped one of the boards i needed to split in half with the jigsaw, since it worked so poorly. The others were done with a circular saw and straight edge. Basically I'm using the table saw in place of the jointer and planer for the edges, if you were following Marc's milling method. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 I think this will be my back slab after a couple of trips with some boards through the planer. It's about 3/8" over sized right now in the width. I still need to figure out what the ideal board arrangement is for cancelling out any bows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted October 7, 2016 Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 looking good! Brings back memories from my build. Its a ton of work but I can't believe I worked wood for 35 years without a proper workbench it gets used everyday i'm in the shop. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
..Kev Posted October 7, 2016 Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 Looking good! Those "bows" don't look bad at all! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 3 minutes ago, TIODS said: Looking good! Those "bows" don't look bad at all! The pieces for this slab are actually reasonably straight. I've got a couple of quick clamps on it in the picture, but no gaps worse than 1/8 or so anywhere without them. I only had one piece twist badly on me, but I think I'll be milling the pieces for the front slab smaller so I'm hoping I can take it out. The pieces in behind were supposed to be for the top, but I'm debating maybe using some of them for the legs, since they're more than wide enough. I found some cool heartwood running through a couple of them that might look good on the front of the bench. I was originally considering grabbing a piece of curly maple for the front lamination, but I think it might not really show up. I need to go by the lumberyard and see if I can grab one more narrow (and straight) stick for the top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon_t Posted October 7, 2016 Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 Yeah now bad at all. Some recommendations say to cherry pick your best boards and use those on the front which is what I did. Had I known then how I use my bench, I would have spread the love. Now that my bench is away from the wall, I find that I use both slabs a lot. I try to do my pounding on the far back end but the rest is used about evenly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 Some recommendations say to cherry pick your best boards and use those on the front which is what I did. Had I known then how I use my bench, I would have spread the love. Now that my bench is away from the wall, I find that I use both slabs a lot. I try to do my pounding on the far back end but the rest is used about evenly Good to know. I figure my bench will normally live against the wall more or less where I've got my saw horses set up now. If I'm mid project I can see having it in the middle of the garage. I'm trying to make the front look good, but I want to make the back side match as much as I can. I picked up a couple more boards for the top since i had the SUV and was of work early. I should have almost all my 8/4 stock now for the whole thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon_t Posted October 7, 2016 Report Share Posted October 7, 2016 I used my bench against the wall for 9 months. Once I moved it out, it was like getting a new bench all over again because the ways I could use it expanded Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2016 Not a lot of progress this week. I did try using the bench slabs for planing and it was so much easier than my other setup. Even like this, this bench is a giant step up. Hopefully I might get to slab gluing this weekend. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2016 I'm considering my slab glue up at the moment. The rear slab seems easy; once I looked at my milled boards, it seems I need to remove around 1/16 from each one to put me at perfect thickness. Pretty much ideal. They also all fit together well. For the front slab, I'm struggling a bit more. Some of the boards have twist in them, so I'm debating even using them. As it stands, I'm just shy of being able to use 4 boards instead of 5 (by around 1/16). I see three options: 1. Use 5 boards and mill over 3/8 off each one. The advantage here is I could maybe straighten a couple of the troublemakers out. This is the safest route, but I need to go buy more lumber. 2. Make the front laminate board 1 3/4 instead of 1 1/2. As far as I can tell, this would have almost no impact on anything, except the exact placement of the dog access hole. It obviously moves in my tail vise by 1/4", but that might be a good thing since I'm not using bench crafted and it allows more thickness for my install. I don't think there's any major problems by moving the dog strip back by 1/4 inch. 3. Add a 4/4 board, either another maple board or my contrasting wood (thinking cherry). I'm just worried about how this might look, and I'm concerned that putting cherry in the middle of the hard maple will make planing the bench top more challenging. On the other hand, it might look cool... Not sure. Anyone have any advice to throw out there? I'm really not sure which way to go. If anyone's wondering why I'm designating certain boards for the rear slab, it's because they have no checking and I can get a full 6 feet from them. The front slab, it only needs an inch or two less. Not a big difference, but I'd like to stretch the bench to as close to 6 feet as possible. I have considered an end cap on both slabs to help with this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon_t Posted October 14, 2016 Report Share Posted October 14, 2016 If your front slab is 1/16" thin, glue it up.. that will open the gap stop a bit which it actually needs as some parallel clamp heads are tight in there. Seriously, you will never miss that and no other changes will need made to the design. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2016 If your front slab is 1/16" thin, glue it up.. that will open the gap stop a bit which it actually needs as some parallel clamp heads are tight in there. Seriously, you will never miss that and no other changes will need made to the design. Good to know. The gap seems to be intended to be 1 7/8... Any idea how big you'd need to avoid trouble? I'll at least go measure the Besseys I just bought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon_t Posted October 14, 2016 Report Share Posted October 14, 2016 I don't remember what the plan called for and I'm not near my bench to measure but the thesis stays the same. You have specific boards you choose for the back for varying reason. If the options are to add more wood which means also having to remove more wood or move forward with a 16th of an inch difference between the plans and the front slab; I wouldn't hesitate a bit. If the bit of twist you have in a board is transferring to your entire what will become front slab,then that changes the variables a little bit but with the known information I feel like it would be masochistic to start nitpicking such a small discrepancy on something but I can't think of a situation where you would miss that sixteenth of an inch of it was absorbed into the gap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted October 15, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2016 I don't remember what the plan called for and I'm not near my bench to measure but the thesis stays the same. You have specific boards you choose for the back for varying reason. If the options are to add more wood which means also having to remove more wood or move forward with a 16th of an inch difference between the plans and the front slab; I wouldn't hesitate a bit. If the bit of twist you have in a board is transferring to your entire what will become front slab,then that changes the variables a little bit but with the known information I feel like it would be masochistic to start nitpicking such a small discrepancy on something but I can't think of a situation where you would miss that sixteenth of an inch of it was absorbed into the gap OK, I see what you mean. I was asking more if I should make the gap even bigger. As it turns out, it may not matter anyway since I'm only at 7 1/2 when I put in straighter boards (1 7/8 each). That's a full 5/16 shy, which is too much. I could get that down to maybe 1/8 if I traded boards with the back slab. I'm thinking I may just add the piece of 4/4 and be done with it, but go with maple rather than contrasting. Maybe it's irrational, but I'm concerned about having a strip of softer wood in the middle and what that might do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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