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Well attached is a sneak peek of things to come.
A friend of mine has just cleared his church of pews (to be replaced with chairs). In exchange for a donation to the church I was able to collect 12 pews. Each one was 12′ long and they are made from oak! The bases are a significant chunk of the wood, the backs are frames infilled with thin ply. The legs are really chunky. It’s an amazing amount of oak, now I need to do it justice! Can’t wait!
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You must be logged in to view attached files.A could of thoughts that I picked up from doing my workbench. Firstly I bought cheap construction grade timber, nominally 2 x 4, with rounded edges. These came from a local building supply firm. I wasn’t able to check these, in fact they were dumped on my drive whilst I was at work.
The quality wasn’t great, lots of them were bowed and/or twisted. I did get them in 3.6m (12′) lengths, so could pick and choose a bit. In the end though I spend less than £70 on the timber. Since this is laminated construction it’s not the end of the world if there’s a few knots in the sides.
One thing I did find though is that there was a vast amount of planing to get the stock to a usable state. Of the 45 hours I spent on my workbench I reckon I spent 20hours planing! So I suppose it’s a case of weighing up whether you have the time to prep poor quality timber or money to buy decent quality pre prepared timber.
Sorry for the long wait between updates, we seem to lead very busy lives. I’ve built the small retaining wall, levelled the base, but down damp proof membrane and then 24 slabs as pad for the log cabin.
Yesterday I had the day off, so my dad and I put the log cabin up. We got the main structure and the roof done, today I’ll do the flooring inside and felt the roof. I’m also off Monday, so unless my wife gives me stuff to do I might try and build some saw benches. I’ll also try and get another video up.
Thanks George, the cabin is currently neatly stacked up in the passage between the garage and the house! I had a slight hiccup when I found out from a neighbour that the bottom of our garden floods! The log cabin will be toward the top of the garden, but to be safe I want to build a short retaining wall to avoid the dirt base being washed away if it did flood all the way up the garden.
We were really lucky there were no serious splits or damage, a corner of one of the beam came off when I got over enthusiastic with a Mallet, but that should glue back on without any issues.
We’ve got a couple of busy weekends coming up, so I’m a bit stuck for time, at this rate it’ll be Christmas before its done!
The roof was just felt, which we just ripped off and chucked. I’ll recent it when we rebuild it and then may shingle over that if I can afford it.
Loving the cabin. I also have one from the same place (I think). It’s only 4m x 3m (with a section removed so the the door sits under a canopy in the 4×3 footprint), but it’s really nice. We’ve just got the keys to our new house, so the woodwork adventure begins in ernest in the next few weeks.
The biggest decision I currently have to make is, what do I use as my woodwork shop. We have a 7m x 2m garage and the log cabin (that we have to move). There is more floor space in the garage, but it’s not as light and its pretty narrow. The log cabin on the other hand won’t have quite as stable a base (compared to the concrete floor in the garage). I also need to consider the safe storage of 11 bikes, 2 kayaks, a large stack of camper gear and a number of power and mechanic tools. I was originally going to use the garage as a workshop, because it’s connected to the house, but now I’m wondering about using the log cabin, having seen how good George’s looks.
Hi all,
I’m new to this forum and new to woodwork. Got the buzz after my wife and I converted our van to a camper. We’re about to buy a new house and it needs furnishing, so why not build our own? Well that’s the dream. Definitely time to take a step back and start small.
We’ve decided to give it a go with hand tools, having watched Paul’s excellent videos on building a workbench and seeing as I don’t already have one, we though that would be a good start.
Attached is a PDF drawing of the planned bench (ignore the fun metric dimensions, they’re pretty much all sensible imperial conversions). Any thoughts would be appreciated. I haven’t included the face vice yet, as I’m still thinking about what root to go. The bench will be in a 7′ x 22′ workshop / garage, so will end up against a wall.
Anyway, we’re still a little way off exchanging contracts, so nothing will happen before then. I’m in the process of trying to build a good quality basic tool kit (Rip cut saw, cross cut saw, tenon saw, Planes (no.4 and 5) and some chisels so far), that should be enough to get us started and we’ll buy them as we need them. I know we need a whole bunch of clamps, as funds are very tight, we’ll probably get a bunch of cheap aluminium clamps (as Paul uses in his workbench videos) just to get us up and running.
Just for fun I’ve also attached a photo of our camper conversion.
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