YARB in Pennsylvania

[Bombarde16]

This will be a slow build.

I'm supposed to be finishing a bathroom remodel right now.  A bathroom that's easily three months behind schedule.  And here I am making sawdust on a project that isn't helping to finish the bathroom.  And blogging about it, too.  D@^!&#, Horton...But I had a chance to grab a pile of lumber for nothing.  Then I paired that pile with another pile of orphaned scrap from the bathroom itself.  Then another pile and another and soon I had a raggedy stack of sticks leaning in a corner.  I do indeed need a workbench.  But right now this stuff is taking up space and getting in the way.

So, I'm giving myself leave from remodeling to take this workbench build just far enough to get things under control and out of the way.  That means gluing a pile of sticks into two monster slabs.

The core of the top consists of a pile of slats from a demolished fence.  Grey, weathered, filthy, cracked, knotty...this stuff would be an insult to the burn pile.  Each got de-nailed and then a 45 second swipe with a belt sander to reveal some fresh wood.  Two slats pasted together face to face while clamped down to an old hollow core door.  This netted me twenty doubled-up slats which were a.) pretty close to flat and b.) no longer disintegrating of their own decrepitude.  All were straight enough to go into a cheap table saw (still don't even have dust collection installed for the new one...) so I ripped fresh edges on each.

Are there some gaps in those joints where the waney edges don't meet?  Yes.  Do I care?  No.  The ripped edges, are they dead straight, orthogonal to the face, and silky smooth off a jointer?  Not even close.  Next step is to paste a strip of construction lumber onto one edge.  These will ultimately be the bottom surface of the bench.

And now you all know the secret.  Our newfound fascination with constructing laminated workbench tops is actually an ingenious conspiracy started by the corporate masterminds at Franklin International.

The opposite edge received a strip of the cheapest, dirtiest, spalted red oak I could find.  These will become the top surface of the bench once all is assembled.  Once all this was done, my collection of over a hundred wonky pieces of garbage had become a set of twenty well-behaved staves, each 5" wide.  Into the planer to knock off the overhanging edges.

A day of milling later, and I have things dressed to 1 1/8" thick.  Still laying out cuts for the dog hole strip and the wagon vise cavity.  Should be set to glue later this week.

I'm doing all of this without a jointer and the edges (what will be the slab top and bottom surfaces) are quite ragged right now.  That'll all get buzzed with a router sled later.  But the one unrecoverable oops right now would be if these staves got glued up tilted, that is, with the planed faces of the staves off 90 degrees to the imaginary plane which approximates the surface of the finished slab.

I'm doing my glue-up on yet another old door.  That will be that imaginary plane and all of the faces of the staves need to be at 90 degrees to the door.  The fact that all of the edges aren't perfect?  (Hey, look!  Some of them even have gobs of old construction adhesive. )  Meh.  But those faces need to be clamped true, so I made a set of cauls that will not only distribute clamping pressure but will also persuade the whole stack that it wants to come together orthogonal to the door surface.

Hoping this should be into glue sometime this week.  And then these monsters can disappear somewhere out of the way to ponder the life choices they've made and I can get back to remodeling a bathroom.

[Bombarde16]

Worked today on dog holes and cutting a channel for the wagon vise lead screw.  I'm using a basic Yost vise screw, looks to be the same as plenty of other brands.  Square dog holes, just like the plans.

 

[Coop]

I can honestly say, I’ve never seen it done this way but am looking forward to seeing the outcome

[Brendon_t]

This is freaking awesome. I love the nuts in the wind mindset.

[Bombarde16]

15 minutes ago, Brendon_t said:

This is freaking awesome. I love the nuts in the wind mindset.

Wouldn't call it totally nuts to the wind.  I kind of obsessed over how I was going to get ten slats glued up with the joints dead-on orthogonal to a surface that doesn't yet exist.  Just seeing if I can take a more direct path to success in other areas.  i.e. Marc was very diligent in getting his laminates milled to a T before gluing up the slabs.  But since I'm going to buzz the whole thing with a router sled, there's really no need for the edges to be pretty at this stage.  Likewise, he was very diligent in building a router template for his dog holes.  I simply chopped the laminate apart at the correct angle, bandsawed the little notches in and glued the pieces onto the neighboring laminate.  Easy peasy.

First slab is in the clamps.

https://youtu.be/7yaX1juKQwc

[SawDustB]

I'm still amazed at the pace. You said it would be a slow build, but I was close to 2 months in by the time I had similar progress. It's a refreshing approach - I almost did something similar, then decided it would be too much work compared to buying new wood.

[Chestnut]

I don't get the title. Also this is making me feel better about my plan. I have a bunch of reclaimed 3x3s and i was going to laminate 2 boards tall to make the bench.

[Bombarde16]

50 minutes ago, SawDustB said:

I'm still amazed at the pace. You said it would be a slow build, but I was close to 2 months in by the time I had similar progress.

If not a "slow" build, then let's call it a tease.  I'm speeding these slabs right up to the point that I can put them aside and then the thread will go dark for a while.

51 minutes ago, SawDustB said:

I almost did something similar, then decided it would be too much work compared to buying new wood.

Make no mistake, it's vastly more work compared to buying new wood.  But this is Amish country, after all.  How do you make copper wire?  Put a penny between two Mennonites...

38 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

I don't get the title.

Y et

A nother

R oubo

B ench (or B uild)

[drzaius]

I thought I was crazy (still do) for building my bench top from 4/4 hard maple that was milled down to 3/4. So much milling, so much gluing. But the maple was only $1.90/BF, which around here is almost unheard of, and I am frightfully frugal at times. The top is super stable though.

[Brendon_t]

1 hour ago, drzaius said:

The top is super stable though.

Well I'd hope so, it's half glue at that point : )

[drzaius]

Just about.

 

[Bombarde16]

Into the clamps, out of the clamps, down into the basement to think about what they've done.  This thread will go dormant in 3...2...1...

[SawDustB]

3 hours ago, Bombarde16 said:

Into the clamps, out of the clamps, down into the basement to think about what they've done.  This thread will go dormant in 3...2...1...

That's too bad. This has been one of the fastest and most entertaining work bench builds. Come back soon!

[Brendon_t]

Tease

[Bombarde16]

On 4/28/2018 at 12:33 PM, SawDustB said:

That's too bad. This has been one of the fastest and most entertaining work bench builds. Come back soon!

OK, I'm back.

The legs and stretchers are made out of the ugliest white fir I have ever seen, so I painted them.

The slabs are still big, still heavy, and still in the way no matter where I seem to put them. So let's just build the fool thing and be done with it.  Just like Marc did, I made sure that one of the slabs ended up cocked up in the corner by a 1/4".

Aaaand, they're flat now.  That ratty, spalted red oak turned out to be some of the hardest, densest wood I have ever worked. My router now hates me. And, frankly, after pushing her back and forth for the umpty-bazillionth time, listening to her scream in protest, advancing a mere 3/8" per pass (down the length of a 72" bench) and watching sawdust fly every which way, the feeling is somewhat mutual.  I'm off to Florida for the new year, so it'll sit like this for a week before I can get back to cutting the ends and attaching the end caps.