Re: various thoughts on the bench
TomD
"So far the plans are for final dimensions of 6'6" by 24" by 4 inch thick hard maple. Length and width reasonable. Unnecessarily thick, no need to use maple. A non grainy wood for the top has advantages but inexpensive oak or ash for the bottom is fine. This top will be unnecessarily expensive and hard to build if made 4" thick."
When I built mine about 1995, I did two pieces and left a big gap between them, just for fun. This meant two modules with breadboards at the ends. These were held on with hardware bonded 1/2" studs, so they are easy to assemble and disassemble, without any problems of alignment. I use the crack to hold chisels, but a 1/8" crack would be sensible. Most Roubos have bare ends, so you might not want breadboards, but there are ways to hold the top together even if you want it to look like a slab. Basically the original Roubos look like they were built as they were to deal with anchoring a slab as efficiently as possible. Once one starts with sticks, the whole thing is off in another direction anyway.
In am a big believer in at least an 8 foot bench if you can house it. First off it gives you enough real estate to actually handle real jobs in a world with 8 foot ceiling, but if you are making guns, meh. Second, the area to the right of the vice is at least as large as Tage Frid's whole bench, which means the placement of the vice, and it's interference is minimized.
"Leg vice Trendy in hobby shops. One has to ask why they disappeared from shops for decades if they are as functional as the current advocates claim. This vice arrangement suggests you are setting up to have fun doing hand tool work the way it was done way in the past. If that is the goal then the choices are determined. If you are going to make furniture for grandchildren a quick action Record vice is a better choice or maybe one on each end of the bench."
I do think that real vises are great, and the record set-up Michael Fortune used where the jaw is flush is reasonable enough. The Tucker vise on my bench is the most used tool in the shop, but it is not really clear to me that it belongs on the bench. I use it in 4 basic ways:
- Joint cutting. This is something where if you do enough of it, specialized work stations are a lot better;
- Staging work boards or jigs, and that does work pretty well with the bench, but it is used flat which is something very few vises do;
- Carving, like gun stocks or paddles, or small workpieces;
- Handling long boards, and this is a case where any of the traditional vises or hooks would be better.
If I had more space, I would have separate work stations for a lot of this stuff.
A lot of these new/old vices have greater functionality due to the vice wars, so that can't be entirely compared to earlier types.
I Totally agree with Bill that there are usually commercial options, and a bench will normally get you under their minimums. We had an aircraft carrier sized lumber store here in Toronto, all the lumber on the east coast might have gone through there at one time. They had a 500 dollar minimum 20 years ago (since moved). I could easily get service for 150. I paid cash (it was still on the books), knew what I wanted, took what I got. They had great quality. They just didn't want a lot of tire kickers and time wasters.
"I am aiming towards several glueups. 4 each of 3 boards. Then glue pairs of those together and then the final glue up. The first glueups are aimed at being 6 inches wide or less so I can flatten them on my 6 inch jointer. I have many Bessey k-body clamps and other clamps. reasonable strategy. Better alternative would be to convince a shop to run it through their 24" planer of belt sander."
I know that when I built my 8 footer, I had to build a scrub plane to knock the beams into shape for the planer. I had a Ryobii at the time, and I think I fed it to the board and moved the supports as it chugged down the board. Far too heavy when the leverage came into play to run on my planer.
Hand planing is one way to go, but you can also rig one of those Tage Frid deals they now give Nick Offerman credit for, where you have a router running inside a beam/sled that runs on edge mounted rails. Your bench or some material held to it with clamps could be the X axis, so you only need a sled the size of your benches width and a tad. Probably a miserable job, but it will be accurate.
If your jointer outfeed was 24 inches and your beam was 30 pounds and 7 feet long, it would exert an upforce of 75 pounds coming off the knives. I would probably use a jointer plane to tune the edge for glue-up but the power jointer can still chew off a lot of the excess, even should it occur that the tool will not produce the perfect joint for you.
[/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2eFvWQx]IMG_0767[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/158680038@N03/]Hank Knight[/url], on Flickr