In addition to bending all the necessary parts for next August’s Build A Gragg Chair workshop John and I spent some time setting up the attic for the event as it is the only space in the barn large enough for the activity. I already had two eight-foot workbenches up there, but in order for all the participants to have their own bench we needed three more.
One of them was a simple problem to solve, at least conceptually. Just take one of the benches from the classroom space on the second floor and host it up with my vintage compound block-and-tackle. We did accomplish that but we are definitely not as young and probably not as strong as we once were. Plus John probably weighs about a buck fifty if you put bricks in his pockets. Even with a compound hoist, a 350-pound bench weighs 350 pounds.
But hoist it up there we did.
For the other two I made two more Nicholson benches after carrying the individual boards up the stairs one at a time, definitely an easier path to glory. At the moment they are sans vises and holdfast holes but that will be rectified soon enough.
Now my total workbench inventory for the barn is 19, an entirely appropriate number in my opinion. This is probably the end of the run for new Nicholsons or laminated Roubos as the recent prices for lumber have definitely scared me off. For example, I recently needed two ordinary (untreated) twelve-foot 2x8s, they were $23 apiece. The 24-foot 2x12s I’ve been buying for workbenches used to be $54, now they are $97. Fortunately I had just enough of my old inventory to build these two benches.
With the sliding-dovetail “legs” installed I trimmed the dovetail tenon flush with the side shoulder and underside of the slab. This allowed me to affix a simple edge-planing shelf.
Rather than punching through a square planing stop or two I opted for dovetailed end risers for my planing stops. I find these preferable in almost every way since they require very little effort or precision (I just set the angle on the table saw and cut everything in about five minutes) and screw one half of them into the end of the slab, spaced according to the tapered risers.
I gave every surface a slathering of some ancient Moser’s Polymerized Tung Oil Varnish whose entry into my inventory is lost in the distant mists of time. Each coat, thinned by about a quarter with naphtha, took three or four days to harden fully but I very much like the result. It really toughened up the cypress surface,
Thus this simple prototype is completed and ready for work. I found out immediately that it to too high of a work surface for actual planing, but when placed on my lower mini-Roubo the work height was perfect.
Now all I have to do is carve out some time to re-saw my walnut slab given to me by Tall Tom and make a pair of workbench accessories, a mini-bench and a planing board.
With the cypress slab glued up and the ends trimmed I gave it a light planing using the first Japanese plane I ever bought, maybe thirty years ago. I set the plane to take a beefy cut to get the work done in a hurry, the final planing was still a ways down the road.
For the feet I had a couple of 12/4 tulip polar off-cuts from my stock of Gragg chair materials. I decided to use this material with the grain running parallel to the cypress slab for the purposes of sympathetic moisture response.
These hunks were set into the underside of the slab with sliding dovetails. I cut the rough rebates on the feet with the ryoba saw and finished them off with my homemade dovetailing plane.
To make sure I cut the sliding dovetail slots with the same exact angle I made a sawing bevel from a piece of waste wood.
Again I used the ryoba saw to cut the shoulders of the slots, the bevel guide made it a piece of cake.
Most of the waste was removed with a chisel and mallet, followed by my dado plane. I would have used a router plane but for the life of me I cannot remember where I left any of the three I use regularly. I hope that fact comes to me in a dream or something.
With a few smart taps from my mallet the feet were seated into the slab.
In great part thanks to my friend WilliamD’s demonstration of his mini-workbench at an SAPFM Chapter meeting in Fredericksburg VA several years ago, and more recently Youtuber Adrian Preda’s video on making his bench top planing board, I’ve been motivation to build a bench-top mini-bench type accessory or three.
For decades I used a pair of Japanese-style mini-sawhorses and a small torsion box for the purpose of raising the working surface to be most amenable to my creaky 65-year-old back and failing eyes. Finally I was able to carve out a little time to work on a first version of this tool. This was a very simple planing board, I will make my version of WilliamD’s much more complex tool once I get this one done.
Preda’s approach to making his board was not one I chose, but the configuration and some of the features he integrated were absolutely inspiring to me in moving this project to the top of the pile.
Looking through my pile of wood scraps I settled on gluing up a two-piece top slab of cypress, dimensioned to a slightly full 8/4. I prepped the two pieces and glued them together with PVA into a 12-1/2″ x 2-1/8″ x 37″ slab and set it aside for a couple weeks until I could get back to it. A couple weeks turned into six months. Sigh. Even though I had interruptions by more urgent items I never stopped thinking about this mini-bench and how it could enhance my work.
… for my FORP Roubo bench to find its rightful home underneath the bank of northeast-facing windows.
As I’ve mentioned previously the spatial arrangement in my studio has been undergoing reorganization, or as James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton calls it, “rearrangeritis.” In one sense I am living with the curse of too much space, thus I need not be particularly efficient with my shop layout nor unduly burdened by the necessity of tidiness. I am trying to improve on both counts.
After completing the construction and assembly of my 2013 FORP workbench last year I planted it on the north wall of the shop, thinking that would be a good place.
I was wrong. I back-filled the space around it with my favorite little two-sided workbench and some other stuff and before long the whole space was a chaotic mess.
Plus, that new space was so crowded it precluded me even installing the superb wooden screw leg vise that was part of the original design. In the original configuration the four inch round block plus the three inch moveable jaw would have made the whole thing stick out too far to even walk past easily. There simply was no room to use it even if it were installed so it remained on the sideline.
After much cogitation I decided to move it underneath the large bank of windows facing east. This was not done lightly — rasslin’ an 8-1/2-foot, almost 500 pound workbench by myself is not something to undertake on a whim. I set aside a day to move the bench and the other nine things that had to be moved first in order to accommodate the move around the corner, but it was absolutely worth it.
This should not have been a huge surprise to me as it was the location for my first Roubo workbench built from timbers left over from the barn re-erection. Truly, this was THE right location for the bench and I was an idiot for not recognizing this from the git-go.
I now have a sublime arrangement of my beloved first workbench sitting in the middle of the floor at that end of the shop with the Roubo a simple body-rotation away. The arrangement continues to make every day in the shop an unfettered joy.
In addition to the move itself I finally finished the installation of the Roubo’s leg vise after first reducing the thickness of the jaw from three to two inches and reducing the size of the bulbous block that was exactly at knee height and stuck way out into the work space.
To reduce the number of times I whacked it with said knee I tossed the vise screw in the lathe and cut down the outer terminus block by an inch in length, moving the wrought iron collar right up against the handle holes and shaping the end, yielding a result much more to my liking than the knee-cruncher originally made. In fact completing this feature was one of the motivating reasons behind the move.
Using an outrigger stand temporarily until I get the sliding deadman built the bench works just like it is supposed to.
The integration of the massive Roubo into the workspace has other meaningful implications as well, almost like the ripples radiating from a stone being tossed into the pond. Not the least of these effects is the rendering of the planing beam as redundant, clearing up that particular space in the not-too-distant future. I may use part of that space as home to the full-service standing tool cabinet I have always wanted. If so I will have to find a new home for the exquisite vintage mahogany I have stored underneath the beam. Some of the other re-arrangeritis is more subtle as I will build a small, low Roubo bench for the space where the giant Roubo bench used to be. This lower bench will allow me to work for long stretches while sitting. As I get older I find the Eastern tradition of working while sitting down is all the more attractive; I actually do not mind working while standing, it’s the bending up-and-down that wears me out.
All things considered I am thinking that these changes will result in higher shop production-ableness while reducing the total footprint of the space.
With a crew of stout-hearted folk we got the 10-foot bench onto a friend’s pickup just before the coming rain. I did not make the trip with it just then but went on Saturday to see it in its new habitat.
The gunsmithing shop is a newly re-erected late 18th century log cabin from the Lynchburg area, IIRC. The new old-style doors with locally fabricated blacksmith hardware get installed this weekend.
As I approached the shop I could see it already being put to work. The new owner was hard at work on a powder horn with the pile of shavings from the longhorn on the floor underneath one of the Moxon vises. He declared that the bench was exactly what he had always hoped for, and that its addition to the shop, “… Made my year!”
Here are a couple of the historic replica long rifles akin to what the new bench will be part of making.
(ascending soap box) The final tasks for the completion of the gunsmith’s partner bench have now been accomplished and the beast is awaiting delivery this weekend, provided the client can make it back from riot-duty in Richmond. I am hoping for his safe return and for the rioters to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Peaceful protests and redress of grievances are grand and glorious freedoms, rioting is barbarous nihilism, arson, and theft. Words have meanings, and “peaceful assembly” is not what we have been seeing these past several days. We have been witnessing the sowing of seeds of the wind, only time will tell if we reap the whirlwind. (descending from soap box)
My first task in this home stretch work was to replace any of the modern decking screws I had left visible in the bench when first putting it together months ago. These screws were removed and replaced with counter-sunk 3-inch #14 slotted flat head wood screws from Blacksmith Bolt. If I recall correctly this task involved only twelve screws I had used to fasten the end aprons to the legs, but the logistics were a challenge in the tight quarters.
I added additional screws at the edge of the top, tying those boards into the apron more securely. With that corner secured I could complete the planing of the edges of the top boards to be flush with the apron face. I almost always construct Nicholson benches with the top boards projecting over the apron by at least 1/16″ after initial assembly to allow me to plane the edges flush as with this one. I also hand planed the entire apron as there were some excessive chatter marks from the mill.
Having established the crisp corner of the top and apron, the leg vise was finally finished with the rear block installed with vintage square-head lag bolts, protruding above the bench top thus turning it into something kin to a carver’s vise. Which in fact it will be as the primary activity will be the shaping and fabricating of replica frontier long-rifles. I had already chopped the through-mortise for the parallel guide through the leg based on the mortise already present in the re-used vise jaw. It is unlikely that the jaw will ever be opened more than 4″ but it is ready if the need for a full opening presents itself. I suspect the faces of the vise will be leather lined at some point, but that is for the user to decide.
Diagonal to the leg vise I installed the twin screw face vise. Given the “partner’s bench” design of the workbench this will allow two gunsmiths to work at the same time.
A few holes for holdfasts, especially for the clamping of the portable Moxon vises, and the bench was finished.
It will be grand to have that space freed up, as this was the largest thing I have built there since making the giant arched window frame many years ago.
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.
When Tim came over a while back to check the progress of his bench he asked for a special arrangement for the leg vise — could it be configured to rise above the bench top several inches to better accommodate carving his gun stocks and similar gunsmithing tasks? I had already given him a vintage vise screw and nut, so I had to check out what was possible with them. I also had a jaw from some other project that could be integrated with whatever I could arrange for the vise.
My first task was to see if/how the nut could fit into the underside of the Nicholson bench. I took a little trimming of one edge of the nut block but it fit darned near perfect. I would love to claim credit for this design feature genius-ness, but it was just a lucky happenstance.
Fitting the jaw to the screw took a minute or two on the spindle sander, but the screw hole through the apron was another matter. I wanted a snug fit and the closest hole saw I had was 1/16″ underside, so I would up pending two hours rasping the hole by hand.
The arrangement of the jaw to the nut/hole allowed the jaw to protrude about five inches above the bench top, to serve in essence as an integral carving vise a la one of the bench top accessories from Benchcrafted.
A rear jaw sculpted to fit, to be bolted to the top with some vintage square head bolts, and that particular feature was finished.
PS sometimes Photoshop and WordPress do not play well together, sorry about the photo orientation but I cannot seem to solve it this time. If I get it figured out I will repost with the pictures corrected.
This post is not exactly a “Workbench Wednesday” episode, but since it was an issue and solution that cropped up while building Tim’s Mondo Partner Nicholson Workbench I thought I would put it here.
Normally when I am building a Nicholson bench I slam it together with decking or sheetrock screws and a portable drill. I can usually get one built on a day that way. But with Tim’s bench, because of the setting for the final location of the bench, a restored 18th century log barn outfitted to be an 18th century workshop appropriate to the long-rifle making that Tim does, he wanted the presentation of the bench to reflect the 1780 Virginia frontier. Hence, no decking screws.
Instead I fell back on my old reliable supplier, Blacksmith Bolt and Rivet, who still provides excellent steel screws of the slotted-head woodscrew variety. The quality of these screws versus the usually crappy modern plated screws from the hardware stores makes them worth the effort to obtain and use. For starters, I generally find that about 1 in 25 of the modern hardware store screws actually rings off when I lean on them too much, and the metal is so soft that the heads get boogered up even more often during installation.
Using high quality slotted screws is not without drawbacks either. For starters the screwdriver tip has to fit the slot precisely in both width and length in order to get full efficiency in the driving. Plus, driving large screws by hand is a lot of work and in the case of Tim’s bench I was driving in over a hundred 2″ #14 screws.
The screwdriver tips I had to fit into my brace were not a perfect fit to the slots of the screws I was using so I took fifteen minutes to make a new one that fit the #14 heads precisely.
I started with the oldest, raggediest 1/2″ wood bit in my collection, 1/2″ being the width of the #14 head. With my handy dandy Dremel-type tool (Craftsman, circa 1975 and still going strong) I took off the central tip of the bit.
Using a grinding wheel followed by a coarse diamond plate I made the tip perfectly flat and the thickness of the bit to fit the slot exactly, so precise that it literally could be inserted into the slot by hand but still was snug enough to stay there.
With this new precision wood screw bit I was able to drive the dozens of screws easily into the pre-drilled holes. All made possible by the fact that I did not throw away a decrepit drill bit.
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