Finished my Workbench
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Well finally i was able to finish. It took about 2 months.
I had to go to HD about 3 times a week (right near my work) and sometimes I would spend as long as 30-45 minutes and pick through the 2×4s. One day i think i actually picked through an entire pallet they had just put out and found maybe 6 pieces that were usable. I finally found enough of them to build it.
Its 5 ft wide by 33 in deep and 38 in tall I do like the height of it. I was working on a 36 in work are that i had built along the wall of my building.
It was a great experience. Made some mistakes but you learn as you go. Just glad I finished my first all hand tool project. Look forward to other projects.
Forgot to add the picture. Ha
[attachment file=”20150710_223914.jpg”]
Wow. Very nice bench, mate. Very good edge jointing on the top and aprons, looks like a solid piece.
Thanks raze. I was pleasantly suprised at how fast I was able to plane them down to a level surface. The rounded corners on the American 2x4s make for a lot more work but not to bad. Like I said I was shocked.
As I said in my original post I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot from them.
One of the biggest mistakes I made was on the first bench top I laminated. I didn’t think to pay attention to grain direction. The bench top futhermost from the vise has 1 board that has opposing grain. Even though it was a mistake I couldn’t believe that I accidentally got 7 of the 8 boards going the same direction! Wow did i get lucky on that one. I noticed it before I laminated the second top. So for the next top I took a few shavings off the edge of each 2×4 to make sure that I read the grain properly.
After this I thought wow I’ll never make that mistake again. Well I was wrong. I didn’t make that same mistake on any of my lamination’s but when I went to glue the aprons to the tops you’ll never believe what I did?!? I glued my best bench top to the apron and everything was square and no gaps anywhere and I was pleased. After I clamped everything up and was getting ready to go in for the night I realized my next mistake…. I had glued my top on to where the planing direction was from left to right for a left handed person….haha you’ve got to be kidding me I thought. So needless to say the next day I climbed inside my workbench frame and planed from inside there. I’m hoping that when I need to resurface my top I will be a little more ambidextrous:)
Hey, the bench looks great JB. That’s interesting about the grain direction for laminations. I’ve thought about this, but sometimes when I want a certain pattern to the boards, the grain directions don’t work out. Not sure what to do about in that case – it’s trade-off of matching grain patterns versus ease of planing.
You’re off and running. Looking forward to your future projects.
Very nice job. I hope to start mine soon.
Best,Ed
Congrats! I don’t know about you, but I used a workmate before building my workbench. Boy what a difference that made.
lol I did too 25 years ago I only threw it out a few months ago when I by accident found it behind my shed.
Congrats! I was surprised how much my woodworking improved just by having a solid bench.
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