I'm no chicken! Top 'o the workbench to ya'!
David Hammond, in Powder Springs GA
>I've been planning on gluing up my bench top piece by piece for months now - almost a year. But I got a really wild hair Thursday afternoon: I started dry fitting my bench top together - I tried my 1 1/2 cylinders in the holes through the top that are for the twin screw, and I tried the clamps to see how they would pull the whole pile of lumber together. Everything seemed to be just right: the holes were lining up, the boards were pulling together, the sawhorses I was using to support the top were spot on level, and level to one another. So, I did everything I could possibly think of to get ready:
I waxed my 1 1/2 cylinders, the insides of all the holes and mortises in the top, set up my glue with a pan, and a 2" paint roller. I also threaded the ends of these cylinders and made four temporary nuts so I could fit the cylinders in the holes for alignment, and use them as clamps as well to pull the top together.
So like a maniac I started spreading glue - I hustled, running around back and forth like crazy for an hour, spreading a gallon of Titebond 2 on both sides of 20 2x6x12's... I threaded the cylinders through the holes, and started piling on the clamps - whew! Talk about being nervous... Later Thursday night I pulled the cylinders so they wouldn't get stuck, and this morning I walked out to check on the glue up job: success! Everything looks almost perfect:
I've started planing the top, and I've still a ways to go, but it's really pretty flat right now, I mostly need to get rid of some tear out. The only flaw I can find is a bit of a parallelogram (sp?) in my top. Even with two tight dowels for alignment, I'm almost a 1/4 of an inch out of square - not what I want, but I don't think it's really going to change anything, the dowels still fit.
So anyway, that's my crazy story, and though I might have avoided that bit of out of squareness, I'm glad I just went for the whole sack o' potatoes at once! I think I'm going to take a little time to set up my twin screw, planing stop, and maybe some holes for the holdfasts so I can build the base with my new bench top, but we'll see.
Thanks for taking a look!
David
The picture is right before I started spreading glue - the clamps are ready to go, but putting them right under the boards was a little less than brilliant - by the time I was spreading glue on the last board, the first ones were dripping a bit of glue all over the clamps... Now I know for next time!
