CT's Most Excellent Workbench Adventure

[rarebear]

HD and Lowes sell 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 sheets of plywood but any wood would work as a spine, I would not bother with dowels ..

[Crooked Tail]

Slowly making some progress. I'm working on the front apron now. I goofed and cut one of the pieces too short, so I'm going to have to put an end cap on the tailvise end of the apron as well. So here's the beginning of the end cap. It's an 8/4 piece of purpleheart with a 1" piece laminated to it. I cut the slot in the 1" piece before gluing. After planing, it will be 2.5" thick, by 6" x 4.25". Man, this stuff is heavy and hard. This cap is like a brick.

The end cap will fit over a tennon, and the very front apron (the finishing piece) will fit into it with halfblind dovetails. It should be a mirror image of the end of the tailvise.


Working on the dog holes. They are starting to get a little tedious, but only 3 more to go. You'll notice there's no "shoulder" in the holes. I plan to cut some small 1/4" blocks and epoxy them 1.25" or so from the top to make the shoulder.

Some of the sides of the dados are not exactly square. Is this what you would use a side rabbet plane for?

[Crooked Tail]

OK, very, very slowly making progress, but progress nonethess. Here is the front apron all glued up and ready to be attached to the main slab of the bench. You'll notice my brain went out to lunch about the time I was spacing the dog holes. At least I realized I was about it put it over the front vise before I cut the second to last one. I wish I would have spaced them out evenly though.

Due to another cerebral vacation, I cut one of the slats too short and, so design change was necessary. Thus the dovetailed endcap, whch will butt against the tailvise and make up the extra 2" I cut off.

You can't see the figure in the maple very well, but to me it looks like a pretty nice sort of curly piece. I sure found out quick what all this talk was about planing curly stuff... no matter which way I planed, it seemed to be the wrong way, and no matter how much I sharpened, it wanted to tear out. I think I need a scraper plane...?

Workbench version 2

[mpphoto]

Crooked Tail said:

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OK, very, very slowly making progress, but progress nonethess.

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Your idea of slow is warp speed in my world
Looks great, it's coming along nicely. I'm always making "creative design changes" on my projects as I build them. It's part of the evolution of the piece

Michael

[John Clifford]

Those dovetails look awesome. Thanks for the ongoing posts. You'll be using it before long.


John.

[FordPrefect]

Very nice!
I like the dovetails too. I would start calling that a design feature, not a mistake, but that's just me

[Crooked Tail]

That's right, a design feature. I wish I would have done some of the other dovetails first, though. As you can see in the first pic, I had to do a little "patchwork" on these dovetails because they ended up with gaps in the top. Dovetails on this grand of a scale are a little different animal. And this will be the most visible part of the bench. Or at least it is will be the part I look at most often.

I went back and saw that I started this thread on May 17th. So I guess it hasn't been that long. Boy it sure seems like a lot longer, probably because I haven't had as much time to work on it as I would like. Or maybe because I've committed to "no new tools until the bench is done."

Unless, of course, the tool is necessary for building the bench....

[mstens]

It's coming along real nicely! Oh and nice design feature consideration

[T.J.]

Crooked Tail,

That purpleheart end piece with the maple dovetails... that is just beautiful. Your bench is coming together and I for one am proud to see that happen. Good for you.

Keep us updated!

[Cian]

That really is impressive. Thanks so much for sharing your progress with the forum.