Woodsmith workbench, part 1

It's time for a new workbench in the shop. I'm not interested at this time in building a Roubo or other traditional style bench but I do want something that is sizable, heavy and sturdy. After looking around I found those things in the "Heavy-duty workbench" from woodsmith magazine.

you can get the plan free off of the Woodsmith shop TV website: plans

I decided to make a few adjustments to the dimensions of mine, first, I like the length, I increased the height by one inch to 37 inches and I reduced the width by 5 inches to 27 inches

A stack of douglas fir ready for the build. Spend the extra money of douglas fir over SYP or other pine blends, the fir is much more dense and will make for a heavier bench that feels solid. I had to go to my lumber supplier here in Houston because the box stores do not carry it here.

I start buy cutting the leg pieces to length.

Leg pieces cut to width and jointed.

Form an L out of the leg pieces and glue together. The joint will face the long end of the bench and be covered by a filler piece later.

After the glue dries I run them over the jointer to insure the joint is flush.

Next, I cut the panels for the end assemblies to size. The plan calls for these to go all the way to the ground, I stopped mine a half inch shy to make leveling the bench easier.

Then, I pre-drill and counter sink for the screws.

Glue and screw the panels to the leg assemblies, being careful of the leg orientation and that they are flush with the top of your leg assemblies.

Here you can see how the end assemblies will make up the base.

Next, the top stretchers and the bottom shelf stretchers get cut to length and width. I also joint them to insure a flat top assembly. Here you can see the first stretcher installed, I clamp it in place drill for the holes and install the bolts.

It is important to get these flush with your leg assembly to insure a flat top assembly, being square to the leg is important as well but a slightly out of square leg to get these flush is acceptable, I think, or you can spend some time flushing this up via a hand plane later.

Here, all of the stretchers have been installed.

To finish the base off filler pieces are cut and glued in place to fit between the stretchers as well as the bottom. This gives the bench a better look but also adds weight.

Completed base, well, almost. The base needs to have all of the edges eased with a bevel bit in the router, a shelf installed on the bottom and then cleats along the top stretchers for securing the top.

Walnut Office Shelves

Like many home offices mine does not have a closet and is limited on floor space. I still need a place to put all of my stuff though, having 10 foot ceilings I decided to build up and save the floor space.

First I used shelf standards that you can find at your local home improvement store.

The shelves are made out of walnut plywood and solid walnut edging. I start by ripping a couple of sheets into 4 shelves. If your shelves are going up high like mine remember that people will see the bottom of the shelves rather than the tops and the good face of the plywood will need to face down.

Before continuing I test fit the shelves and make sure I’ve left enough room for edging.

Edging is cut from solid walnut. I made it a fairly substantial edge both to add strength but also to cover up some of the shelf bracket.

Next, a rabbit is cut along the edge of all the pieces. I spent quite a bit of time deciding what face I wanted facing out, there is no turning back once this cut is made.

Determine the correct length, gang them together and make one cut, it’s the most efficient way.

Glue and brads hold the edging on. Once the glue is dry I use a block plane to bring the edge even with the shelf.

Using a router I put a bevel on the top edge of the shelf; this adds a nice shadow line and also blends the edging into the plywood.

Using the block plane again I put a smaller bevel on the bottom edge. No guiding lines or fences used just hold the plane at what you think is an acceptable angle.

I had more sap wood than I wanted initially in the edging and thought I might end up dyeing the wood to blend the sap wood in and I decided against it. I used a home mixed oil varnish (1/3 BLO, 1/3 mineral spirits, 1/3 polyurethane) and gave it a light tint with Transtint’s light brown dye. After it dried several coats of spray on lacquer were applied. The light tent of the sap wood adds quite a bit of character I think.

The shelves are nearly 100% full and serve their purpose well.

Here you can see I still have all the floor space.

This section of books should probably move out to the workshop and free up space in the office…

Southern Quilt Racks - The Making

Here is a build progress video of two quilt racks I built for Christmas 2012. I will have an article up soon on how to make them. They are built off of plans and templates provide by Charles Neil; he has a full set of videos on his site on how to build these as well.

Music: Time to Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro) by: Emile Pandolfi

Shop Tour, Oct 2012

A brief tour of the new shop (Oct 2012)

Kids Kitchen Stool

My daughter, now two, is as curious as any two year old and any time that my wife or I are in the kitchen she must be able to see what is going on and of course she is not tall enough yet to see over the counter top. So, this is what I came up with; the top of the stool comes up to the counters height and is wide enough for two kids to stand on at the same time (anticipating the fighting).

A single sheet of ¾” plywood is all that is needed; I choose birch because I plan to paint the project.

The steps are glued into dados on the side; the smaller step is in a stopped dado. I cut both using the router and an “exact width” dado jig. You can find the details of the Jig here Woodsmith Plans - Adjustable Dado Jig. There is a cross beam that runs under each step pocket screwed to the side for weight support.

The trickiest part of the whole stool was the hand holes on either side; these where done by first creating a template out of ¼” MDF with a jig saw then rough cutting with the jig saw on each side and using a flush trim bit along with the template to clean it up.

Finally, all of the plywood edges are left exposed and have a round over treatment and then sanded smooth, these will be painted with the project as well.

If there is any interest in the plans I have a set of SketchUp plans that I created initially. I deviated from them a bit, but I would be happy to clean them up and post them.