I’m past that now.

This isn’t fine furniture; it’s a big rustic wooden table. Once I realized that, I was able to relax. Instead of saying to myself, “I’m building a Roubo-Moxon workbench,” I’m saying, “I’m gluing this board to that board.” And without me even really noticing, I’ve got long stretchers and two of my legs are halfway completed.

But let me back up a bit. Here’s my order of tasks for the build:

1. Long stretchers: Done. These are four 1x4s glued together. The inner two are longer and will tenon through the legs.
2. Legs: These will be eight 1x6s glued together, alternating two short with two long. The long ones will tenon through the top (with the outer tenons being dovetails).
3. Benchtop: I’ll glue up the 1x4s from the inside of the benchtop to the outside. Once I reach the through tenons on the legs I’ll know exactly how long my short stretchers need to be. The mortises in the benchtop will be created by leaving voids in my glueup. The dovetail mortises are the only ones I’m really worried about.
4. Short stretchers: I’ll already have cut the mortises in the legs so this should be pretty straightforward.
5. Accessories: Leg vise, crochet, double-screw vise (Moxon).

I don’t have any pics of my long stretchers. Not very interesting. So then it was time to figure out the layout of my 32 boards for the 4 legs. Here’s what I was looking at, trying to sort it all out (the long boards are two pieces each):

Some boards are super light, I’m talking balsa light. Why? Dunno. But I have those boards as the load-bearing pieces, always paired with a normal board. I have a few sapwood boards, which will be the interior through tenons – those will be my “anvils” on the benchtop. And the prettiest boards were moved to be the outermost “show” pieces. The colors of my show pieces – the long stretcher, the legs, the benchtop – may not match, but I don’t care. They’ll look nice.

So here are the 32 pieces, in the general shape of my legs:

I’m gluing them up from inside to outside. And while most people say that there are two ways to create a mortise – chopping and boring – I am going to see about a third way: sawing. I’m going to test it on scrap but here’s the plan: Once I have the innermost four boards glued up (3″), I will drill a hole in the midpoint of each edge of the mortise, so that the outside of the hole is the outside of the mortise. Then I’ll slide a hacksaw blade in there and saw from the hole to one corner of the mortise. Repeat until you’ve reached all the corners, and bang, instant mortise! I may clamp some metal rulers on each side to guide the saw, not sure yet. This technique would only work because of the way I’m gluing up my legs. Anyway, I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.

So for now, I’m gluing up the innermost four boards of all four legs. Then I’ll get to work on the mortises for the short stretchers, and the mortise for the nut to the leg vise. Then I can glue the rest of the leg pieces together, leaving voids for the long stretcher tenons along the way.

It is all crystal clear in my mind. What about in yours?

So now that I’m mostly done, I have mixed feelings. But first, the pics. Here’s the “before” picture:

and now the “after” picture:

So it’s a great improvement over a rotting screw head; anyone would admit that. There are many things about this thing that I don’t like. First off, the shape is all wrong. I wanted a hexagon but a beefier hexagon. I cut it to size with my ryoba, which is a fantastic saw but ill-suited for cutting thick stuff – the blade is too flexible. So while the top of the head looked like a nice hexagon, the bottom was an indescribable shape full of unevenness. I made twice as many cuts as anticipated because I kept trying to fix my mistakes. I have to say, though, that my sawing improved as I went along, and I think if I had to do it all over again I might do quite a bit better. Funny how practice is.

Another thing I don’t like is that my pegs are uneven – they are centered on one side of the head but not the other (because of the unevenness – I fixed it mostly, but it’s still off). And lastly, the head seems the slightest bit crooked in relation to the shaft of the screw. You can kind of see it in the picture above.

So here’s the test, to determine what kind of woodworker I am. Will I leave it as is, and continue on with the bench? I do not doubt that once this screw is assembled to the bench it will function perfectly. Or will I keep tinkering, maybe even chopping this head off and start over, so that my screw head reflects the excellent craftsmanship that I hope will be characteristic of all my pieces?

I’m leaving it. I don’t like the look of it, and I don’t like that it will be one of the focal points of my workbench. But it’s a stinkin’ workbench, for crying out loud! If it works, I’m leaving it. It will also remind me of lessons learned along the way. If at some point I find myself with a nice block of wood that is a regular cylinder or cube, I may try again with a new screw head. But knowing how I am with “good enough”, my guess is that this will be my screw for a long, long time.

P.S. I’ve yet to finish this off with my plane, to get the pegs flush and to remove saw marks (I thought a flush cut saw wasn’t supposed to leave saw marks?), and after that I need to finish it. Just in case you were wondering.

Today I glued up the block that will eventually be the new head of my old screw. Just for fun, I decided to laminate a piece of pine in the middle of two pieces of kapur. I don’t know what this might do as far as wood movement, as far as laminating softwood in between hardwood – I have no idea but I don’t care! It’s fun to try and like I said earlier, if something goes horribly wrong then I’ll just make a new screw with my new threading kit.

Then I trimmed the ends. The next step is to drill the hole in one end to receive the shaft of the screw. This actually scares me, because this wood (the kapur, that is) feels incredibly hard and dense. I really don’t think that I’ll be able to bore a 3″ to 4″ hole in this end grain with my bit brace and expansive bit. So I’m thinking about going to the hardware store to try to find a 2″ bit and borrow our office’s electric drill to take care of business. You can’t use an expansive bit in an electric drill, can you?

With my threading kit coming soon, and knowing I’ll have to do this several more times in the future, maybe I ought to pick up a 1 1/2″ bit at the same time…

The manager of the yard had apparently been looking here and there for the boards I needed (I told him the dimensions of everything, but said that I would be happy to cut it to length myself). Some of it has been cut to approximate length (with a little extra), while others are still long, ready to be cut into two or three boards. All the boards were well-marked, and the guy told me it’s all been kiln-dried. So I suppose that means it’s all ready to go once I get it home, huh?

I was worried that the wood would be garbage. I knew that if it was, I would probably still accept it because to not do so would be quite rude to my church friend (who arranged for it all to be given to me for free) and to the manager who went through the trouble to get it for me.

As it turned out, though, the wood in general looks quite nice, as far as I was able to tell. I could see a little cracking here and there, and a rough spot or two on some of the boards. But overall, the boards appear to be in good shape and I think will work well for my bench. The manager even gave me several extra boards of various lengths, so even if some of the boards are unusable, I may be okay with the extras. Worst case scenario I have to go to a different lumberyard to buy a board or two as replacements.

Next step: Early next week the manager and I will take the lumber to a different place for planing (apparently he doesn’t prep the wood at all – merely sells it). What do you think – I’d only need to have the faces planed, right? Or should I get it S4S? I’ll have to pay for the planing, but what a small price to pay. Click on the pic for a larger view; that’s my soon-to-be benchtop there in the foreground!

Pretty rough stuff there. So the first thing to do was to trim the head down to the diameter of the main shaft. I sharpened my newly-acquired hatchet and took to it.

Whip out the trusty drawknife, and with some creative planing stopping I manage to produce something roughly cylindrical and close to the right diameter.

Now I’m not sure if I need to cut any of the top of the head off. I think the shaft will be tenoned and pinned into the new head, but I’m not sure yet about dimensions. But I thought that that hole would be a liability; I don’t think I want to use the current hole as is, even if there is a little bit of new wood around it. So I decided I will put the new hole in perpendicular to the old one. But first, to fill that hole. So I got some of the wood I recently found in our neighborhood, and with hatchet and drawknife got an okay-dimensioned peg to fill that hole. I put the grain perpendicular to the direction of the new hole; seemed better that way.

After the glue dried, I trimmed the peg and it looks like a decent enough fit! Next I’ll laminate the block for the new head. I have no idea what I’m doing but I’m having fun!

This friend of mine is having her warehouse guy look for all the lumber I need from rejected timber. Now I’m not sure what causes something to be rejected. I suppose export-grade stuff would have to be pretty good, so maybe rejected wood is still okay. As long as the wood is straight and not rotten, it should work for a bench, right? Even pinholes would be okay for me, as long as the bugs have moved along. So we’ll see. The foreman or whatever he’s called is going to give me a buzz when he has it together, so I’ll get to inspect it first.

Oh…and did I mention that she’s going to give me all this wood FOR FREE??? She also told me that this guy could hook me up with all kinds of scrap wood – cutoffs, rejected wood, whatever. She said they normally just burn it.

Hello, my name is Eric, allow me to be of service to you.

I needed a saw for doing simple cuts on my soon-to-be workbench, like cutting the ends of the benchtop even, or cutting the bottoms of the legs post-glueup. My ryoba is the best saw in the universe but is not really beefy enough to do larger jobs. I’m seriously considering getting one of those big lumberjacky pull saws. But in the meantime, a cheap hardware store saw will do.

The one I got (for $10) is Japanese, apparently, but is a push saw. It’s got a fine classic look to it, but I blog about it here because I just get a kick out of English [mis]translations. Here is what is etched (or printed) on the blade:

Japanese Tradition: High Quality Steel. This fine ground bendean is a good example of the craftmantap anel can Rexcut puts into their quality tools. It continues function effaxney with the traditional boiusy of an aget proven had tool moild.

I dunno. I cut a big hunk of fallen tree with it the other day and it cut just fine. I should probably not use it too much so that it can still function effaxney when I need it to on my workbench.

So here’s the bench mostly as I see it. My apologies for the faintness, but I think you get the idea. I forgot to put the crochet on there, so that would naturally be on the front left of the benchtop.

You’ll also notice that I have no vises on the bench. I’m not entirely convinced that the bench needs them, although I do plan on making a removable twin-screw vise à la Moxon (not pictured). I had planned on installing a wagon vise, and have the hardware already, but when I included it into the sketch it just looked wrong. It rubbed me the wrong way, I can’t say why – maybe all those dogholes? If I regret it, I’ll retrofit it like The Schwarz did. I’m still up in the air about the leg vise. I can retrofit that too, although it’s a bit harder perhaps.

I also ditched the sliding deadman. Sure, I might need something to support long boards for planing, etc. But I have no [easy] way to make grooves, so installing the sliding deadman would actually be one of the most complex parts of making the bench. And I just don’t feel like doing it. If I need something like that later on, I’ll hammer two pieces of wood together, with holes drilled in the vertical piece, and bam! – bench slave.

So essentially I’ve taken most of the design of the Roubo, discarded the Schwarzifications of it (although the leg vise is also Roubo), and added a dash of Moxon.

Tell me what you think!

So tomorrow morning I’m going out with her to the lumberyard to check out the wood and to get an estimate. Could it be that I’ll walk out of there with a few hundred pounds of tropical hardwood? Or maybe I’ll put it in the back of a truck and drive it out. Easier on the back.

I was hoping to tinker with Chris Schwarz’s Roubo on Sketchup tonight to see if there’s anything I’m not thinking of, but my Sketchup skills stink! I would probably do better “building” a bench from scratch on there. In the meantime, I’ll work with pencil and paper. I have made a few modifications even since last week’s post, likely influenced by my “discovery” of Gary Roberts, Stephen Shepherd, Peter Follansbee and Jennie Alexander. It’s a slippery slope down into the 17th century.

Hope to have good news – and pics – soon.

I’ve also been following with great interest the thickening plot regarding Schwarz’s Moxonization of his Roubo. It started with him piercing his crochet (ouch!). Where will it end?

As I’ve surfed the web trying to see where Chris is going with this, since it may influence my own plans, I’ve stumbled across a couple of others who are already there. Stephen Shepherd shows Moxon’s twin-screw vise and its excellent potential for dovetailing. Others have chimed in on this discussion; Gary Roberts has provided some linkage so you can follow who’s saying what. In short, this vise appears to be a bench accessory rather than an integral part of the bench. You can have it mounted to the front of the bench (but no one seems to know how that was done); alternatively, you can remove the whole assembly, clamp the rear jaw to the bench top and work a bit higher.

Since I enjoy dovetailing and plan to do a lot of it, I had already been thinking of making some sort of benchtop dovetail station. Moxon’s arrangement seems to meet my requirements: something higher than the 33″ benchtop; excellent clamping surface; easily removable. I might even tap the front of the workbench itself so I would have the option of screwing the front jaw directly onto the workbench. I suppose that would help for planing long boards on edge; I wouldn’t even really need to have the vise exert much pressure on the board as it would be simply sitting on the screws.

I’m not sure where I’d mount the vise at this point (if I tapped holes in the front of the bench), or how wide the jaws should be. In the engravings and drawings, the vise is located on the right front of the bench, but that could get in the way of my wagon vise. I’m considering centering it on my bench. And as to width, what’s the widest you would need for dovetailing – 24″?

Of course, all this talk of proper size of the vise is only necessary if you’re mounting it on the front of the bench. If you are merely clamping it to the benchtop, you can have a vise of any width. If the current one is too big or too small, you can just tap a couple of new holes in a new piece of wood, drill a couple of holes in what would be the front jaw, and you’re in business! If I end up doing this, I think I will also insert dowels into the base of the rear jaw which would tenon into the dog holes to support the vise, perhaps even rendering a clamp or holdfast unnecessary.

My apologies for the abundance of text with the absence of graphics. I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s copyright by showing Moxon’s stuff here, and I can’t run Sketchup on my computer (Linux) so I just have to hope that my descriptions work well with the pictures shown on the links above!