Musings

Benches for Handworks 1, 2, 3

That’s one guy, two workbenches, in three days.

With Handworks barreling down the calendar at breakneck speed I knew I needed to get at least one workbench out to Amana since the space I would be occupying was just an empty square of real estate in the Festhalle.  Plus I had lurking in the back of mind an observation and an unrelated goal.

The first was that the guys who came to the workbench-building workshop last fall found that the system for making the workbench allowed the legs to be installed after relocation home, and de-installed as needed.  Second, I did want to make a workbench to donate to the Library of Congress rare book conservation group.

The self-evident answer was to make a couple of laminated Roubo benches.  Simple, easy, and interruptible while in-progress.   I had to do all the work around the other things going on on the homestead and in the shop, and in the end it took me about 15 hours working alone.

On Day One I spent the morning ripping a stack of 8-foot 2×12 SYP lumber into the pieces I  needed for both the tops and legs.  Normally I do not miss my 3hp Unisaw sitting in the basement of the barn, not yet wired into the electrical system, but this certainly was one of those times.  My smallish 9-inch saw works for about 95% of my needs but this one was at the limit.

Since I now keep my rolling planer stand in the basement I loaded everything into the pickup and drove to the back side of the barn.  I spent most of the afternoon planing all four sides of the lumber to remove the ripples from the industrial sawmill and get the lumber ready for gluing.

I loaded everything back into the truck and hauled it back up to the second (main) floor and brought it in.

A second set of hands would have definitely cut the time for these tasks by at least 1/3, but it was just me.  On to the glue-up.