Reloading Bench Build

[JohnnyEgo]

So I pretty much spent every spare weekend in September and October riding bikes with my son for Bicycle merit badge. On the 50 milers, I was pretty sure some of them were about to earn Lifesaving merit badge as well, but I somehow managed to go from logging no bike miles to logging 300 miles in the span of two months, and then spent the next two months allowing my buttocks to recover. After the long pause, I started chipping away at the smaller details that could be done in an hour here and 20 minutes there.

I debated a lot about the exposed ends of the workbench. They weren't exactly even or pretty, but they didn't bug me much, either. I decided to dress them up with some sort of apron or skirt. I had grand visions of doing the aprons as half-blind dovetails, but in the interest of time and ease, I decided to go with dowels. Being a glue laminate top, I doubt it is going to expand or shrink very much, but I still needed the ability to split the bench for transport and allow for some degree of expansion, so dowels it was. The hard decisions out of the way, there was nothing left to it, but to do it.

First, gluing the face rails to the long ends of the slab. To leverage the relatively limited number of clamps I had that would span the full width of the slab, I used cauls, which are pieces of wood with a mild curve built into one side. As you clamp the ends of the cauls, pulling the curved ends flat causes the raised part in the center to apply more pressure to the wood between the clamps:



I applied a lot of glue, and got plenty of squeeze-out, and did a half-arsed job wiping it off before it set. Consequently, I had to do a fair amount of work with a sanding block and flush-plane to clean it off, and then finish with a 150grit disk on my circular sander. Could have saved myself a half hour of work with five minutes of patience and clean-up after I got it in the clamps, but such is life.



Before I moved on to the ends of the apron, figured now would be a good time to mill out some space for the t-track and bench mounts.


Milled the track with my Festool router on a rail clamped to either end of the bench. Squared off the channel with a chisel. Fit like a glove.



Then it came time to mount the long track, and my inherent laziness bit me in the ass again. I had a long rail which I could have busted out and clamped to either end of the bench. But I felt like that was too much work, and the rails have some high-friction material on the bottom to keep them from sliding around. Figured I'd be fine without clamps if I was just careful. I was wrong.


So I took a break to get the correct rail I should have used the first time, clamp it in place, and route the front facing edge of the channel straight. Then I cut a blank off a spare piece of 2x4 and glued it in place. Flushed it out, and routed the correct channel, this time with both ends of the long rail clamped.

[JohnnyEgo]

The plug cleaned up reasonably nicely:




All the tracks in place:



Also decided to flush-mount the Inline Fabrication plate, which was a little more complicated. First, the receiver plate requires a fairly deep relief for the tail end of the press plate. Once that was routed, I had to route to the depth of the receiver-plate to inset it. The bottom of the plate has feet at the corners. I could have just routed everything to the foot depth, but I wanted as much contact with the bench as possible, so I tediously chopped where I needed to chop, and then glued in plugs where I messed up, until I got it reasonably flush-mounted:





Dragged my Co-Ax upstairs to test the plate. I have a Co-Ax, an SDB, and a 750 that I plan on mounting to the bench in an assortment of Inline Fabrication mounts.

[JohnnyEgo]

On to the apron ends. I wanted these to fit tight to the ends of the bench, but I won't be applying glue to them so I can separate the slab when I move it. So I decided to use the same principal of the cauls described above to keep the middle of the end pieces tight against the end grain.

Started by dividing the board into five sections. Then ran it through the jointer set to 1/32nd passes. First pass took the first two sections on the ends of each board, last pass took the outer sections a second time.





Cleaned up the transitions with a hand plane:


Here you can see it up against the end grain. The left side is flush, showing how gentle the curve is to the right side.


With both ends clamped flush, pressure is put on the middle to hold it tight to the ends of the slab.


Cut some walnut dowel pegs and rounded the edges off with sand-paper. Also hit them with some wax to keep them from seizing.


Then marked my ends and clamped a drill guide to ensure my peg holes were straight and true:



This is about as good as I could reasonably expect for a tight fit, and I am happy with it:

[JohnnyEgo]

On to the back side of the bench to relieve some space for the through-bolts and nuts that will secure the track all the way through the bench. Most consistent way was with a plunge router on a rail.


A little light clean-up on the ugly side of the bench.


Also, needed to mill some relief into the t-tracks so I could insert bolts into the end. Did this on the router table with a 1/4 inch spiral bit, and then colored the raw aluminum with a SuperBlack pen.

[JohnnyEgo]

Time to switch focus to the bench legs. I am pegging all of the mortises using 1/2 hard maple dowel rods. I use the technique called draw-boring. It is where you drill your hole through your mortise slightly off-set from your tenon, so that when you drive in the dowel it pulls the two pieces closer together. The resultant joint is going to be as tight as it gets for the long-haul, whatever abuse I dish out on the bench.




I have a flush-cutting hand saw that works well and fast for a few dowels, but I had 16 to flush-cut, so I reached for my Milwaukee oscillating tool to do the bulk work. Followed up by my flush-plane, and then a little super glue and sawdust to fill any gaps.




Now to fix the assorted screw-ups that came along the way. First off, plugged the random Domino mortise I cut in the wrong place:



Then cleaned out assorted glue squeeze-out in the routed groves with a chisel.

[JohnnyEgo]

Had a big old knot that blew out my decorative routing in an area not easily hidden or ignored:


First thing to do was chisel out the damaged section of beading, as well as stabilize the knot with super glue.


Then I cut off a chunk of beading on one of my test mortise pieces that looked like a reasonable grain match.


A little fitting, a little sanding, and some glue later:


Good enough at eyeball distance:


If nothing else, this project has been a master-class in fixing my mistakes.

[JohnnyEgo]

Been a while since I did an update, but the work continues as I find the time.

One thing I put off for a while was cutting the locking wedges for my rails. Mostly because I have never done this style of jointery before, and you really only get one chance at each rail to mess it up. But I figured if things went bad enough, I could always cut the tenons flush and permanently dowell them into place.

First, I needed to cut some wedges. There was some internet debate as to the optimal angle for a wedge to lock in and pull tension without slipping out easily. I saw folks who swore anything more than 5 degrees wouldn't hold, and others that said you could go as wide as 15 degrees and be fine. I settled on about 7 degrees.

Cut a 7 degree angle in the end of a piece of scrap on my compound miter, and then clamped it as a guide for the narrow wedges, which I cut on my table saw sled:


With the wedges cut, I ball-parked where I'd want them to be when driven in place. Then marked off the wedge width with my marking gauge and traced out all the cut lines.



I chose my wedge width based on whichever of the three mortise chisels I own was closest to 1/3 the width of my tenon. Then I clamped it up with plenty of support on either side of the tenon to keep me from blowing it out. Finally, cut another little piece of scrap with a 7 degree angle to serve as a guide. Started on the bottom end, working towards the middle of the tenon.




You'll notice that my back wall is a little further back than my line. The way this joint works is to pull tension from the top and bottom of the wedge. If I was right at the line, there would be no way to pull more tension into the joint.



Test wedge, which is half the thickness of the actual wedge, fit exactly where I wanted it. Then I could trim the real wedges to the exact width of the mortise with my #4 plane.

[JohnnyEgo]

The wedged tenons worked surprisingly well. They pull a lot of tension, and have shown no signs of movement in several weeks. The bench base is locked in and rigid as hell, but can still be quickly disassembled with a couple taps of a hammer.



Next up, split a couple of 2x4s for the shelf supports.


Clamped them in place and attached with the first screws I've used in this bench.


The last time I was at Lowes, they had a badly warped piece of 16' tongue & groove flooring in the clearance bin for $15. Wasn't going to do much better than that, so I snapped it up and it down into the least warped chunks I could manage.


The flooring looked nice, but it definitely was not interested in laying flat. I wet it slightly and clamped it flat with a couple of caws and left it to sit in the garage all week in the clamps. Came out better, though there is still significant warp.


Now was a good time to start thinking about how I planned to attach the top to the base. Needed to be quick and knock-down capable, and I didn't really want to use bench bolts or hardware. I decided to use bullets, which are just pegs with rounded bottoms. The hard part is drilling a large diameter hole in the middle of a large slab, without the drill press or any support. The best idea I could come up with was to make a starter strip that would at least keep me reasonably perpendicular for the first inch or two of the hole.


Then a deep-boring bit in my Milwaukee drill, and a whole lot of waste removal.

[JohnnyEgo]

I am missing a couple pictures in the series, but I basically rounded up every piece of scrap Baltic Birch ply I could find and put together three drawer bases for the top shelf.


Had to trim and adjust the upper shelf supports to make sure the drawer bases were level.


Once everything was sitting flush or level as appropriate, I started attaching the trim pieces. The three drawers together are about 1/8 inch short of the total width, to allow them to be fit in easily. I take up the slack with some felt, which I am hoping will keep the unit wedged into place without marring the finish.



Getting places.

[JohnnyEgo]

So what happened next is called scope creep. The more I started thinking about the bench, the grander and less necessary my plans got. I could have slapped together some quick, simple drawer boxes out of ply and called it a day. But no, I decided I wanted them to look a certain way, which lead to quite the diversion.

First, skinned and planed a whole bunch of walnut and padauk scraps:






Then had a glue party:




When the glue dried, I flattened it all out and cleaned up the trim:






Made some test measurements, and cut some dados: