A Roubo from beams?


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12 hours ago, Brendon_t said:

Seriously? 

Because it is the working surface, you should have a surface, not a bunch of holes and knots.  You ever try to draw on a park bench? Your on a critical line and oops, your paper is stabbed instead of drawn on. You don't want voids that will gather chips, sawdust, hardware and generally have no purpose on the work surface, on you worth surface.

And epoxy filled normal voids add difficulty how? That sounds crazy. I've done it a bunch of times to by machine or hand. How are you doing it?

You draw on your workbench what kind of Luddite are you? :P 

46 minutes ago, Byrdie said:

Well, you've definitely schooled me!

Either this is wood with some serious defects, in which case it's not suitable for the purpose, or it has a few voids which, after being surfaced properly, are probably insignificant and not much different from the dents and dings that will be caused by normal use on a *workbench.  I don't draw on my bench or if I do, I find a flat surface to put under it.

When it comes to my bench, I typically surface by hand, with a plane.  I've found epoxy fills to be hard on the blade, hard on the arms and stubborn to surface.  The few times I've felt the need to use them in a finished piece I've worked them by machine.

And just sayin', this tends to be a friendly place.  Perhaps you could use a different tone in your reply.

I had huge voids where knots broke out on my pine bench it was far better to fill them than to leave them as voids. Nice sharp plane iron does face a bit more resistance on those than the pine adjacent but i had no issues  on the dollar bill size fills i had to do, i'm not using cheap epoxy either (the cheap stuff might actually be harder?). It's a workbench there is no unsuitable lumber that falls in the cheap price range except maybe so rotten it doesn't support it's self, or green treated. I don't like pine but it's what i have and it works just fine.

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I'm gonna epoxy it, 100%.  The front slab doesn't have any knots or voids, but the rear, I believe, does have a couple.  Its plenty solid enough, and the defects are more cosmetic than anything.  I'm also well aware that the work bench top shouldn't be glass smooth, but I do want it to be mostly smooth.

I'm going to do the epoxy work before final flattening, and I'm going to use the router method.  The router bit isnt going to care much about a little bit of epoxy.

I cut the dog strip to final length, clamped it up and marked for dominos this morning.  The front slab looks pretty decent and should look just fine in the end.

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21 minutes ago, pkinneb said:

Looks pretty primo to me! You are going to love having a nice bench like this I can't believe I went 25 years without a good bench :) 

I limped along for 3 years on a harbor freight bench and piece of mdf on the table saw. A proper bench being the Roubo or many others is a game changer for sure 

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2 hours ago, bleedinblue said:

Time to make some dogs, trim the slabs to length then move on to the base.  Looks like a 2" gap stop will put me right at 24" wide.  I can live with that.

It sounds like I will be off work for another week or longer.   Maybe I can get this thing done before I go back.  Probably not, but MAYBE.

20190322_102645.jpg

Since you ain't got the base locked in yet, clamp in 2" spacer blocks between your slabs and fiddle with getting your clamp heads through..

Mine were way too tight. 

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Keep in mind that the gap also shrinks as the humidity goes up. It may not matter where the shop is in your house, but I lose about 1/8" in the summer and the clamps barely fit. Practically, it doesn't really matter since I just switched to using my f clamps through the gap for the occasional time it's necessary.

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17 hours ago, SawDustB said:

Keep in mind that the gap also shrinks as the humidity goes up. It may not matter where the shop is in your house, but I lose about 1/8" in the summer and the clamps barely fit. Practically, it doesn't really matter since I just switched to using my f clamps through the gap for the occasional time it's necessary.

I don't move as much, but still have gotten so tight that I had to wax the head to get it through. Not so fun.

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Back to work either tomorrow or Saturday, I didn't get it done.   Close though.  The leg mortises are all cut and the holes drilled in the right front leg.  The chop is glued up. Tonight I got the side rails milled and cut to length but needs tenons cut.  After the rail tenons are done itll be on to the leg vise install :blink:

 

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I spent all afternoon installing the leg vise.  What a colossal pain.  I read somewhere on here someone praising the "detailed and clear" instructions.  I guess my brain doesn't work that way.  Reading those directions feels like reading the technical directions for a stereo system. 

The channels are routed out, the holes are drilled and I'll be trying to get it in working order tomorrow morning.  A fifteen minute test for the criss cross arms didn't go so well...the holes for the steel rods are apparently too low/deep as the rods didn't line up with the criss cross.  I suppose that means deepening the channels some, or maybe just removing some material at the top of the channels. 

 

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3 hours ago, bleedinblue said:

I spent all afternoon installing the leg vise.  What a colossal pain.  I read somewhere on here someone praising the "detailed and clear" instructions.  I guess my brain doesn't work that way.  Reading those directions feels like reading the technical directions for a stereo system. 

The channels are routed out, the holes are drilled and I'll be trying to get it in working order tomorrow morning.  A fifteen minute test for the criss cross arms didn't go so well...the holes for the steel rods are apparently too low/deep as the rods didn't line up with the criss cross.  I suppose that means deepening the channels some, or maybe just removing some material at the top of the channels. 

 

I hear you...

I found the instructions made it much more complicated than it needed to be.  They need someone to go through it and simplify it.  I found that if I just sat back just and pictured what is going on in my mind,  it became much easier to understand.

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