12-30-2007, 11:53 AM
Eric: Perhaps you could put some drawers above and below the stretcher? Probably not optimal, but would be better than nothing I think. The workbench books say you should have the stretcher in the middle, for stability. On the first base for this bench I ignored this advise and put the stretchers way low to have room for the cabinets. The base was not nearly stout enough, so I had to do it over, with four stretchers. 
Well, here's another of my trials. You'll notice a slight... err anomaly:
I was just telling myself in the last post to measure these things carefully. Well, I got lazy and didn't measure the mortises from both sides, which really is critical to this joint. As a result, you see that I didn't lay them out far enough from the edge, and I ended up putting a mortise right through the pegboard groove in the back. Since it is on the bottom of the cabinet, it will show terribly when you open the doors.
So I decided to patch it with false tenons as best I could, to make it look like I meant to do that.
Then I cut the corresponding tenons on the central divider. I trimmed them down as necessary and had to plane the divider quite a bit to fit it in the dado. You can see I had a little blowout when I was smoothing the bottom of the dado, so I'll have to patch it a little some how, or plane a bit off that edge.
Here's the fit from the other side. I trimmed one of the tenons too narrow. I'll have to patch that too. When it comes to assembly time, I'll cut the kerfs and wedges so they will look like the finished patches when it's assembled.
Today my plan is to fit the tenons on the top, just like I did with these. I also want to get the sides cut to length and square up the endgrain. Then the next step will be to do the dovetails which will hold all of this together. But before I do that, I'm going to review my Crosman dovetail DVD and practice a bit on some scrap.
As always, thank you guys for your kind comments.
On a side note, I've decided that heat and air conditioning are two major necessities if I ever get to set up a dedicated shop. It never gets this cold in Las Vegas (what most people associate with Nevada). But I live about 20 minutes from Lake Tahoe, 450 miles north of LV, at about 5000' above sea level. Winter day time highs often linger around freezing, and summer highs are in the 90s usually. Northeastern Nevada is considerably colder. It's only the lower 1/3 or so of the state that is actually hot. I'm very happy I don't live there!
Well, here's another of my trials. You'll notice a slight... err anomaly:
I was just telling myself in the last post to measure these things carefully. Well, I got lazy and didn't measure the mortises from both sides, which really is critical to this joint. As a result, you see that I didn't lay them out far enough from the edge, and I ended up putting a mortise right through the pegboard groove in the back. Since it is on the bottom of the cabinet, it will show terribly when you open the doors.
So I decided to patch it with false tenons as best I could, to make it look like I meant to do that.
Then I cut the corresponding tenons on the central divider. I trimmed them down as necessary and had to plane the divider quite a bit to fit it in the dado. You can see I had a little blowout when I was smoothing the bottom of the dado, so I'll have to patch it a little some how, or plane a bit off that edge.
Here's the fit from the other side. I trimmed one of the tenons too narrow. I'll have to patch that too. When it comes to assembly time, I'll cut the kerfs and wedges so they will look like the finished patches when it's assembled.
Today my plan is to fit the tenons on the top, just like I did with these. I also want to get the sides cut to length and square up the endgrain. Then the next step will be to do the dovetails which will hold all of this together. But before I do that, I'm going to review my Crosman dovetail DVD and practice a bit on some scrap.
As always, thank you guys for your kind comments.
On a side note, I've decided that heat and air conditioning are two major necessities if I ever get to set up a dedicated shop. It never gets this cold in Las Vegas (what most people associate with Nevada). But I live about 20 minutes from Lake Tahoe, 450 miles north of LV, at about 5000' above sea level. Winter day time highs often linger around freezing, and summer highs are in the 90s usually. Northeastern Nevada is considerably colder. It's only the lower 1/3 or so of the state that is actually hot. I'm very happy I don't live there!
Turning impaired.
#95? Yes, indeedy, I forgot all about my groove when I was laying out the tails, and by the time I realized what I did, all the tails were already cut. 
So I will have to patch that gaping hole, and a couple little gaps come glue-up time. 
