Musings

Workbench Wednesday – Basically, Cow Tipping

I am on the home stretch, expecting to have Tim’s gunsmithing partner workbench ready for delivery by the end of next week, so now I am just wrapping up some of the details.  Yesterday I laid it over to proceed with some of those tasks, and someone asked how I flip over a 10-foot almost 400 pound bench.  Well, for starters in this instance I did not flip it all the way over, although I could have done so easily, I simply had to roll it 90 degrees so I could plane the apron and the edge of the top board to align perfectly with the apron.  I’d already planed the legs before assembly.

 

This is how I lay over a Nicholson bench.  I start with a pair of small horses/stools I made from a pile of scraps many years ago.  I cannot remember the project now, but I had a whole stack of off-cuts and from them fabricated ten pairs of these unbelievably handy units.  Placing them correctly I can just barely lean the the bench over such that the apron bottoms rest on the tops the two stools.

At that point the center of gravity is almost neutral, so flipping it the rest of the way is simply a matter of grabbing one of the feet and lifting easily.  Once on its back I can kick the stools to support the apron and the leg at the same time.

Now that the bench is on its back I’m ready to clean the apron with a foreplane, it is supposed to fit into rude frontier workshop after all, and chop the mortise for the parallel guide on the leg vise.  Since I am re-using an extant leg vise all I need to do is put the jaw in the right place, mark with the chisel, and start wailing away.  I have to mount the twin-screw face vise on the opposite leg, drill some holdfast holes, and it will be ready to go.