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Monster Bench...(Part III)
Friday, March 26th, 2010
The next phase of construction on
my new woodworking bench, fabricating the Oak top,
is now complete. For years I had been saving quite
an inventory of custom-sawed ¾", 1" & 1¼" Oak for the top
and I finally got the
opportunity to use it. I decided to make the top
approximately 3" thick and, for this bench, without
any vises of bench dogs. I say "this bench" because
in the future I will be building an even larger
bench with 2 end vises, a shoulder vise and rows of
bench dog along each side. Needless to say, I still
wanted to incorporate the traditional tool tray
along one side.
I started by ripping numerous
boards to 3¼" wide and squaring one end on the
radial arm saw. I didn't worry about jointing either
edge because I'd be flattening the top later in the
process. To simplify the process, and since my
heavy-duty thickness planer only has a 13" width
capacity, I started by glue-laminating 4 individual
sections ranging from 8" - 10" wide. Glue was
applied with a 3" wide roller and each section
clamped and allowed to dry overnight. Each section
was then planed to a uniform thickness and the 4
segments were then glued together to form the whole
top.
Once the top was in rough form I
tried to use a traditional approach to flatten
it; namely get out my Bailey #8 jointer hand plane
and plane it flat, checking periodically with
winding sticks. However, it immediately became
apparent that the Oak was tearing no matter which
direction I planed. Instead, I elected to use
a router technique to flatten the top. I screwed 2
perfectly straight pieces of wood to the sides of
the top and made a sled for my router. The sled
would slide up and down the length of the bench and
the router would slide within the sled. With a
straight router bit the top would be flattened as I
moved the router side-to-side. Figures 1-4
below illustrate the jig I used to flatten the top
and various stages of completion.
Figure 1 Figure
2 Figure
3
Figure 4
Once the top was flattened it was flipped over and
the sled rails were re-positioned to ensure
parallelism between the top and bottom. The other
side was then flattened using the same procedure.
Next were the ends and rather then use a
straight-edge and circular saw I again turned to my
router. I made several passes with the router,
lowering the bit approximately ¼" with each pass
until the edge was clean and trimmed square. Figures
5-7 below illustrate this process.
Figure 5
Figure 6 Figure
7
With both surfaces, sides and ends flat, parallel
and square to each other it was time to concentrate
on the tool tray. The construction is simple
and consists of a ¾" thick bottom made from 2 pieces
of edge-glued Oak, 2 sides (the inside piece is 5/4"
Oak and the outside piece is 6/4" Oak) and 2 end
pieces made of 5/4" Oak. The pieces were glued and
screwed together and the assembly was attached to
one side of the bench top using large lag screws.
Figures 8-10 below illustrate the tool tray.
Figure 8
Figure 9 Figure
10
The top was positioned on the base frame and after
precise positioning was secured using 3" lag screws
through the angle brackets. Although a purist would
not approve, I eased the top edges of the bench
slightly with a 45° chamfering bit to prevent
splintering. The top was brought to a fine finish
using a hand scraper and a lot of elbow grease.
Figures 11-13 below illustrate the bottom of the
bench and the finished bench top.
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure
13
If you have any
questions or comments about this blog entry please
do not hesitate to
send me an e-mail. Thanks and be
safe when working with tools!!!
Burgie
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Robert Burgoyne, also known as "Burgie",
has been doing woodworking for nearly 30
years. He started learning at an early
age in his grandfather's garage and
continued while working with his father
in construction. The hobby has now
become a business with Creative
Landscape Accents. Burgie builds
high quality woodworking projects for
the outdoors and also enjoys making
decorative accent pieces for inside the
house. While not working in his shop
doing woodworking Burgie enjoys
computers, restoring his old
1964
Chevy C60 2-ton dump truck and
riding his Harley-Davidson Road King
throughout beautiful Colorado.
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