Drawbored mortise/tenon joints - good for the ego!

Re: Drawbored mortise/tenon joints - good for the

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Cool, Wilbur, welcome to the world of spice approval. Drawboring is great fun, too.

Pam

Wilbur your post is sooooo...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Boring! No wonder I was drawn to it...

Glad to see your Ego got a good boost and you impressed the wife too!

You Big Stud you......

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>Sounds like you had a good time, and learned something new, and something new not to do. Hope the blown out legs where salvageable.

Pics when your finished?

T.O

Pictures of drawbore blowouts

wilbur

>Well, if I wait until I'm completely done at the rate that I am going, it'll be a few weeks before I get pics posted. (In my defense, I have 4 year old and 8 month old boys at home, and the 4 year old always wants to "help".) So here's the work in progress.

On on side, you'll see the drawbore pin. I haven't flush cut this one yet.

On the other side, you can see cracking where the blowout occurred, thanks to me pounding too hard. The angle of the picture is a little weird, but the peg you see is the same one as in the last picture, and it's causing the crack.

That wasn't the real impressive one. I should be able to fix this with a glue injection. On another leg I pounded the peg so hard it poked out the other side a good 1/2". I didn't take a picture of that blowout, but here's how I fixed it with some clamps and a scrap piece of wood.

And here's the base as it stands.

This is my first attempt at building a workbench. I'm actually quite surprised as to how square it came out, as I thought I was going to do a much worse job. I put together the short sides first, and one of them was really twisted when I was done. I think that two of the mortise holes didn't line up well. But when I put the long stretchers in, it squared right up, and I didn't even use clamps. I'm even more surprised as to how solid this thing is.

Now to go build a top.

Looking good Wilbur...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>I would have repaired the blow out the same way. I don't think it will cause any harm. Did you haunch your mortises? Kinda looks like it to me.

Just curious, why you didn't mount the bottom stretchers flush like the top ones?

I think you have a fine bench in the making there.

Drawbore

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Nothing like a good tight drawbore, no clamps, sweet. Here are a couple of ideas to reduce the blow out on the back side. Because the backside is not seen, countersink the hole, the blowout usually occurs near the end of the hole. Also put a taper on your pegs, you can even use a pencil sharpener. The tapered wedge end helps pull up the m&t and at the same time doesn't catch the other side of the hole, causing the blow out.

A little glue and clamp will repair the split and unless then whole back side is busted out the repair should be good.

I have made up some drift pins which allow me to dry fit the drawpinned joints, tapered dowels that I use to temporarily assemble the joint in question. When all looks good I put in new split pegs with tapered ends. Sometimes I cut them off other times I let them show to show off.

Stephen

Mounting stretchers flush - another screw up

wilbur

>I wish I had a brilliant reason for the stretcher layout. But it was really me recovering from a mistake in my planned layout.

What happened was I laid out the mortises for the long stretchers first, centering them on the legs. I had planned to make the top stretchers haunched, partly because I thought that would be better since they were flush with the top, but mainly just to see if I could do it. Then I cut those mortises out.

Then I went to lay out the mortises for the short stretchers, also planning to center them. The lower ones were easy, since they were not at the same level as the long ones. But when I went to mark out the upper stretchers, that's when I realized that the upper stretcher tenons would run into each other if I centered the short stretchers. So I moved the short side top stretchers so that they were flush with the outsides of the legs.

No brilliance here. :@)

Re: Mounting stretchers flush - another screw up

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>You could have mitered the tenons so they'd kiss and make up.

Pam

Re: Mounting stretchers flush - another screw up

wilbur

>Actually, I thought of trying that, but as this was my first "real" project, I was hoping to just be able to get the basic mortise and tenon joint down before trying fancy things like mitering the tenons to fit. That's why I located the lower stretchers at different levels, to avoid this issue.

Also, given that I was drawboring the joint, I was nervous about not providing enough clearance for the tenons since I wasn't sure how deeply the tenon would be drawn into the joint. Conversely, I was also nervous about cutting the tenons too short, and weakening the joint.

But after reading Bill's thread on "Courage", maybe I should have just gone for it. :@)

Re: Drawbore

wilbur

>I did taper the pegs, but I drilled the drawbore holes so that they went completely through the mortise hole, but not through to the other side of the leg. One thing I should have done was dry fit the peg and then mark the peg so that I would know how deep it should go in when pounding.

Why not drill through?

John in New Mexico

>Can't see it on the back side anyway. I almost always make rails flush with legs, or set in just a little on tables... I probably would do the same on a workbench of this type, so I'd say don't feel too bad about that on your short rails.

Looking great, what do you plan to do for a top?

John

Cut yourself some slack there Wilbur...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>You stated "I had planned to make the top stretchers haunched, partly because I thought that would be better since they were flush with the top, but mainly just to see if I could do it."

Ya see that took courage!

Thanks for the explanation, I see your learing from your mistakes. It's all good IMHO.

I'll second John's question... Whatcha have planned for the top?

Re: Why not drill through?

wilbur

>I didn't drill the drawbore holes all the way through because I was working off of an article on drawbored mortise and tenon joints from Woodworking magazine, and that article didn't have holes that went all the way though.

For the top I am planning to mill and glue up some 2x boards to make a 42" x 24" top. Nothing fancy. This workbench is just going to be used for sharpening equipment, as I don't have a good place to sharpen my tools right now. I've been threatened with exile from the house if I mess up our kitchen table with waterstone sludge one more time. So it's a bit of a race to see if I can get this thing done before the edges of my tools give out. Pretty exciting!

This workbench is also a bit of a dry run before I work on the "real" workbench. I'm already making a list of modifications to the workbench plan I have in mind.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

VLParisian

>I appreciate seeing other mess ups. Hopefully I will recall some of this when I finally feel up to some extended time in the shop.

Sludge in the kitchen. Been there done that.

Enjoy,

Victor in Houston

Finished my worktable/sharpening station

wilbur

>"Pics when you're finished?"

A few weeks back I posted some photos of some drawbored mortise and tenon joints that I blew out due to my incredible manliness lack of technique. Anyway, I just finished up the worktable/sharpening station to which those blown out drawbored mortise and tenon joints belong.

Here it is -- my first real finished project!

This worktable will be used as a place to sharpen things. It's a little lower than standard table height, partly to help me get on top of the waterstones I use, and partly because I also have a Tormek for sharpening turning gouges, and the recommended height for the Tormek makes placing it at standard table height a little too high for me.

The top is glued up 2x material, mainly 2x8's. The legs are glued up 2x4's to make a leg about 3 1/4" square. The bottom shelf is for storage, and I took the easy way out and used plywood. Overall, the table is about 47" x 22".

And, it was mainly done with hand tools! I used a powered jointer/planer combo machine to initially mill the 2x material, but used hand planes to finish up the surfaces. The drawbored mortise and tenon joints were cut by hand, except for using a drill press to get rid of most of the waste. Most of the sawing was done by hand. I used my bandsaw for some long rip cuts, and a circular saw to clean up the edges of the top and to cut down the sheet of plywood. That circular saw was easily my least favorite part of this whole process. Dust everywhere. Yuck.

I still have to finish the top to make it somewhat water resistant. But now that I have a place to sharpen my now fairly dull chisels and planes, I can set about building my real workbench!

Re: Finished my worktable/sharpening station

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Looks great, Wilbur. Will you put some sort of protective surface on the top?

Pam

Re: Finished my worktable/sharpening station

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>What a nice looking table Wilbur!

It is far too pretty to cover in laminate. What about a marine varnish?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Finished my worktable/sharpening station

Wiley Horne--So. Calif.

>Congratulations Wilbur!

Looks very crisp, stout, and functional. Even handsome. Right now.

It'll get way dirty in use. The first time you want or need for it to be clean again, you could just plane or scrape it back down to fresh wood and refinish. Then decide if that's the way you want to handle things. One option is to use sacrificial 1/4" CDX, use both sides, then throw it out and replace (the throw away society, right).

Wiley

Finishes

wilbur

>I have trays that catch most of the water from the waterstones and the Tormek. So I'm thinking that the top just needs to be water resistant, not completely waterproof. I have a can of Waterlox Original Sealer & Finish (the red labeled one), so I was going to use that for the top and the shelf.

Re: Finished my worktable/sharpening station

Kevin French, Antrim, NH

>Looks great Wilber, I know what your looking for with this table, I finished one a few months ago and it's really worked out well for me.

I finished mine with a Bees Wax, BLO and MS. I've finished my Bench this way also and it SEEMS to work well.

After a stone session, it won't look so pretty.

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Re: Finished my worktable/sharpening station

Bob Sobieck

>Looks nice! I did this 13 years ago and never made it to a real work bench. Mine was "workbench" size though, only temporary.

I made it all from 2x4 from crate material that was disposed at work (did metal detet for missed nails). I filled in all the knots and split out low parts with 5 minute epoxy. I then put on two coats of pure linseed oil.

I still use this bench today. It looks like a warhorse but shure holds up.

Wishing you many years to enjoy yours.

Bob S in Green Bay, WI

Well done Wilbur!

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Nice stout sharpening table you have there. Thanks for showing it completed.