The actual assembly of Tim’s gunsmithing partner bench was pretty meat-and-potatoes, differing from other Nicholson benches I’ve built only in the size (10-feet long), the mandated use of countersunk slotted head wood screws (from Blacksmith Bolt and Rivet) and the fact that both aprons needed doubling up for holdfasts due to this being a bench used by two people at the same time, one on each side.
Soon enough the beast began to take shape in short order; it will weigh almost a quarter-ton when finished. Once the bench was on its feet Tim came by to take a look and made requests for some additional features I will talk about next time.
One of the issues I needed to address, and began doing so almost immediately, was the fact that these magnificent SYP boards came through the mill on a very bad planing day and were beset with the worst planing chatter I hade ever seen. I needed to gently plane them out in order to leave a good base for the final surface treatment with a toothing plane. I’ve begun the hand planing on the left board, you can really see the difference.
Up next – the peculiar configuration for the leg vise.
As Tim and were discussing his new bench he expressed a strong interest in a bench that was both oversized (10-feet long) and would serve as a “partner’s bench, in other words both faces would be front faces set up fully for use. Since the bench was two-faced I needed to make sure that both aprons were double thickness to accommodate holdfasts. Normally I only double one face for a Nicholson bench.
In addition, since the bench is going into a shop modeled on a late 18th C working space my usual method of tossing one together with decking screws was not an option. Instead I ordered several lengths of #14 flat head slotted wood screws from my reliable supplier, Blacksmith Bolt.
I still used decking screws when assembling the pieces, but only to tack things together until I was ready to drive home the #14s. I almost always start with the legs and did so again here. I will admit to using PVA glue since the environment for the bench might be a bit dicey at times. I slathered on the glue and clamped the two pieces together with decking screws and fender washers It is a system that is fat and works perfectly, allowing me to maneuver the clamping pieces easily.
I wanted the edges of the boards to be nice and clean so I planed them once the glue was dry and the decking screws were removed.
I also planed the faces to get rid of the planer chatter from the original mill. If the pre-hand-planed surface is any indication it must’ve been a rough day for the machine.
The apron bottoms needed to have crisp corners too. The corners were really rounded, so I tossed them onto the apron of an eight-foot Nicholson and got them cleaned up.
Before long I was assembling the front and back sides of the bench in preparation for attaching the inner aprons, the end aprons, and the ribs. I predrilled and countersunk all the holes then sank in the flat head screws.
In the years since escaping Mordor for the idyllic solitude of Shangri-La (heck, “social isolation” is the normal practice for every day ending in “Y” out here) one of the valued local friendships is that of Tim, an all around cool dude and a primitive skills enthusiast. One of those “primitive skills” is Appalachian long rifle-making and connoisseurship and he has been an invaluable aid in my work on the David Cooley rifle.
In recent months Tim has been engaged in salvaging a couple of mid-18th century log buildings from south central Virginia, re-erecting them on his place a few miles from here to serve as his workshop for making rifles and other tasks relative to 18thC frontier living. Once I learned of this project I proposed building the tool to fulfill his need for a proper period-appropriate gunsmithing work bench. Tim’s rifle-smithing is in the later-18th century English style, so his bench will be a Nicholson.
We picked up the superb southern yellow pine from Virginia Frame and Lumber in Fishersville and over the next few Wednesdays I will be chronicling the project to outfit him in the manner he and his new shop deserve.
Stay tuned. I think you will find this an interesting trip.
Usually I find that hindsight is somewhere in the range of 20/20. When I moved my FORP bench into the studio I though I had the perfect location for it. It sure looked great there, at least until the space got put back together.
After almost two years of using it there I have become less enamored with the situation.
For starters I rely more on my original small torsion box bench more than anything else, in great part because of the vises already up and running on it. The spatial relationship between my favorite bench and the FORP bench has precluded my finishing and installing the leg vise on the FORP, knowing that if I did install the leg vise the tight quarters would result in me cracking my knee on a regular occasion, resulting in improper verbal outbursts.
After cogitating on the issue for several months I recalled how much I enjoyed having my first Roubo bench in front of the eastern windows before I moved it to the finishing station twenty feet away.
On my favorite workbench, a 35-year-old torsion box top with an Emmert, a wagonwheel, and a 48″ twin screw vise, due to mucking about with the twin screw fittings in the distant past and very heavy use for all those years, the iron collars had become loose and no longer were tighten-able enough for the vise to work. Given that the torsion box top is about 90% hollow this made the repair a nuisance albeit a simple one to address.
I removed the vise, the screws are held to the jaw by split collars, and set it aside. The screw collars on the bench came off easily as the screws holding them to the bench were all loose, hence the need for the repair.
With the receiving collars off I fitted some pieces of 1/2″ Baltic birch plywood to the back sides of the bench apron, a tricky task made problematics only because my fingers were almost the same size as the opening. Using white PVA I simply glued them in place.
The next morning I fitted them to the round opening with a rasp, then re-inserted the retaining collars and drilled out the extant screw holes with a smaller pilot hole. Instead of using the previous screws I switched to some 2″ #12 slotted screws I had in my mini-hardware store, screws I bought from Blacksmith Bolt and Rivet.
I carefully installed the new screws, making sure to not strip out anything, and installed the 48″ jaw.
It is now better than it ever was. Another checkmark on the list.
One of my favorite jokes of all time is the old one about the heroic three-legged pig, with the punch line being, “A pig that good, you just don’t eat him all at once.”
This past week I was able to spend the evening visiting with my long time woodworking pal Tom in his shop. If you recall, Tom and spent Wednesday evenings for many years working in his shop and it was such a delight to reprise those evenings. Anyhow, to tie the joke to this post I tell you that Tom was clearing some space in his shop. Translation: he was making me take a bunch of my stuff with me so he could get some more space.
One of the treats he threw into the mix as I was loading up the car was this exquisite slab of birds-eye(!) walnut, measuring 36″ x 16″ x 4-1/2″. Now that is a spectacular pig and I do not want to eat it all at once.
I have some ideas about what to do with this treasure and the current front runner is this lovely accessory for the bench top.
Before It do that, however, I want to make a prototype from my stash of old growth, premium cypress staves from a c. 1840 water tank I bought during the mezozoic era. Once I get that done I can turn my attention to the walnut one.
In fact, the walnut slab is so thick I can re-saw it and make two of them.
Friday was a combination of several benches going together, others being palletized for shipping home, and the completed ones going into vehicles for transport home.
Early in the day the push was on to get together as many criss-cross leg vises as possible.
Once that was done it was time to merge the legs and the top. One group used hot hide glue as a lubricant and adhesive for the joints, even though the latter utility was/is superfluous.
But for most, it was a simple process of placing the top over the leg tenons and rocking the entire unit up and down, switching from end to end. Slamming the entire mass down eventually drove the top mortises onto the leg tenons soundly.
There then began a round of slamming tops followed by proud portraits of the makers and their new benches.
And out the door they went, some on to trucks, others into trailers, and some on to pallets for shipping home.
By 2PM the place was pretty much emptied and the tidying began. Then all of a sudden another FORP was finished.
Day 4 of FORP III was another one of feverish work as the participants were striving to start putting their benches together. Which meant, of course, the final fitting of all the joinery.
One image that was prevalent during the day was sharpening tools to get the joints as crisp as possible; numerous sharpening stations sprouted around the room.
Another snapshot that amused me was this tray of analgesics that was emptied at some point in the day. This was hard physical work, the kind few of us were used to at this level of intensity.
The buzz of activity was the air that we breathed throughout the day.
One of the benches I followed ws the one being built by this father-and-son team, whose tool kit had not arrived for reasons I never quite knew. Nevertheless, I was pleased to make my own kit available to them and they put it to good and successful use.
Meanwhile around the room twenty tales were unfolding and moving towards completion.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the week, with Will providing some useful ballast to Horace’s bench.
Jameel and Jeff provided the real-time, real-space tutorial on installing the Benchcrafted criss-cross leg vise that was part of the package of every bench.
Tim the mechanic was the first guy across the finish line, and hearty congratulations abounded.
John and Phil were next to finish, and I think this will be a treasured family memory for generations yet to come. The excitement was rising for another half-dozen benches ready to assemble Friday morning.
That evening was the open house with a cajun stew for supper, and my Gragg chair on display or anyone who wanted to give it a try.
Day 3 of FORP is pretty much an extended schizophrenic moment as the participants are settling into the routine of work and fellowship, knowing what and why they are doing what they are doing. The morning generally starts out smoothly with restrained purposefulness but as the day goes on there is a palpable edge to the atmosphere as the sentiment, “Oh crap, I’ve only got two more days to get this done,” wafts into the shop.
Wednesday was Mortise Day and the intensity was thick. At the beginning of the day everyone was first wrapping up their base assemblies so they would know where to put the mortises.
There was a fair bit of tenon trimming also, especially for the dovetailed tenon cheeks.
Oh, and lots of checking to make sure “square” was really square.
Around mid-morning Chris gave the sermon on executing the double tenons. There were two major steps and some folks did one first (sawing the outer dovetailed tenon) and other went the other way (drilling out the waste for the inner tenons).
There was a lot of deep breathing as this was the start of irreversible steps. For the most part everyone had on their game faces for sawing the dovetail shoulders. Except for Brian #4 who was never more than a moment away from a hearty laugh. I think the class had something like five Brians, four Andrews, and three Tims.
Once the angled cheeks were cut the waste was kerfed to facilitate removal.
For the inner mortises the waste was drilled out and for many the edges of the joint were established with a saber saw, a technique I have never employed.
Then the chopping began in earnest.
Somewhere along the line Schwarz encountered this beast of a hand-held bandsaw, using it to trim the ends of the slabs and kerf the outer mortises.
I included this picture just because the wood was so remarkable.
Tuesday morning saw me working with Jeff Miller in the lower shop building because the Tannewitz band saw there was better suited for finishing up the tenon cheeks and the dovetailed shoulders on the front tenons. Though there are no pictures of us doing that I did get a pretty neat pic of Bo’s crew distressing some sweet oak box beams for a custom interior someplace.
Jeff had an appointment elsewhere for a few hours so I was working with Jameel to get all the tenon cuts finished, and we did.
I got back up to the main work room just before lunch and there was a flurry of activity and the bench parts began to come together. Lots of tenon valley cleaning out,
edges being trued to make sure the layouts of the mortises were correct, (the long curls were ankle deep that afternoon),
the dovetail cheeks were cross-cut and trued
and a whole lotta stretcher mortises were matched with their mortises.
Before long there was a collection of upside-down bench bases on display.
Around mid-afternoon The Schwarz gave a demo on laying out the base to the top and marking and cutting the mortises into the latter.
So that’s what was happening all over the place for the rest of the day.
The day was capped by another walk through the yard full of antiquities, with Chris being captivated by this sculpted sandstone bank faced detail of a bee hive.
I still used decking screws when assembling the pieces, but only to tack things together until I was ready to drive home the #14s. I almost always start with the legs and did so again here. I will admit to using PVA glue since the environment for the bench might be a bit dicey at times. I slathered on the glue and clamped the two pieces together with decking screws and fender washers It is a system that is fat and works perfectly, allowing me to maneuver the clamping pieces easily.
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