Finished bench (lotsa pix)
Tony Sade (Charleston, WV)
>At long last, my first bench is finished (I hope). As you might be able to guess, it's based on the Lon Schleining bench in his book and the 2003 FWW "Tools & Shops Annual Issue", with some obvious modifications. This is the original version:
Here's a shot with the deadman installed (thanks Chris S. for the magazine issue). Quite frankly, I'm not sure I'll keep it, given the row of holes installed across the front apron which should be pretty useful with the LV adjustable holdfast. (Although, well waxed, it moves quite easily-a gentle one-fingered push and it slides all the way across the rails.)
Here's a shot of the top (sorry about the dust):
The box of drawers was finished just a couple of days before the recent FWW issue was released (really!) in which LS showed his drawer addition to the bench. The scale is different because I originally planned to add the deadman between the aprons, and thus needed to make the faceframes tall enough to ensure that the rails for the deadman wouldn't interfere with the drawers. (That turned out to have been a bad idea-too small to be useful, and too far back from the plane of the apron/front vise.) That planned placement of the deadman also necessitated the recessed pulls, which were a real PITA to install. I started with the pulls, but didn't have a forstner bit to fit so I had to use a router template set up and gradually sneak up on the size of the opening.
I also decided against the type of boxes LS shows because I wanted to enclose the entire space contained in each trestle end, to be used for storage-hanging measuring tools and the like, maybe even building some kind of door to keep out the dust.
Here are shots of the various drawers (no gloats intended )
(The barely visible tote on the right belongs to the LV BUS.)
Both chisel drawers have an extra box that slides across the top to allow for some additional storage. The drawers are all the same hard maple as the rest of the bench-leftovers. Same with the dividers, which are dry fit in place to allow for reconfiguration as necessary. Drawer fronts are some cherry left over from construction of a hand tool cabinet-which contains the balance of my "collection".
I used a Veritas Twin Screw on the end of course, and the face vise is a Woodcraft quick release, the same one LS mentions in his writeup.
I find both very useful. In fact, as a relative newcomer to the electron free side, I am daily astonished at how useful a tool this bench is. No more Rube Goldberg multi-clamp efforts to figure out how to hold something down firmly enough to work on it without screwing things up or hurting myself.
Construction is pretty straightforward-top is hard maple on edge just a hair under 2.5". Vise jaws were made to match the thumbnail detail on the trestle feet. I wish I could say that I flattened the top with planes, but I found a guy with a huge (bigger than my bathroom) Italian wide belt sander which made pretty quick precise work of the job. Drawer boxes are from some maple ply from the Borg.
I chickened out on dovetailing the end caps into the front apron as shown by LS, but I'm not that secure with my dovetails just yet and I had no extra piece to use in the event of a screwup and no easy way to get another.
The finish is about 3 coats of the blo/terps/beeswax blend mentioned in Chris' article in Woodworking Magazine. As he suggested (IIRC), it offers a nice mix of protection without being too slippery.
In hindsight, I think I wish I'd gone with round dog holes, primarily because I suspect they're just more versatile (holdfasts, battens, etc.) Nothing to stop me from drilling a few more round holes if I need to, I guess. (Gulp!)
My wife asked about using it for a new dining room table, but I think I'd die (literally) if I tried to move this thing up two flights of stairs. Thanks for looking, and Happy Holidays.
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Tony
