Well, its time for the final glue up. I have decided to use glue and dowels to fix the aprons to the leg assemblies, which will be a two stage operation.
First I glues the aprons to the assemblies and clamped them good and tight, removing as much excess glue as possible with a damp cloth. I did this first thing yesterday, before the school run, and left it to go off for a few hours.
Once the leg/stretcher joints were dry, I bored the holes for the stepped dowels, using a dedicated drill bit in my brace. The dowels I have chosen for this project are made from walnut, which I thought might offer a bit of contrast with the cherry. The dowels were glued in place and, once dry, sawn and plane flush. Continue reading “Sawyer’s Bench #4”
I got to work on the bird’s mouth for the top boards of the bench this weekend. They were quite difficult cuts to do in my little vice. I really could do with some kind of saw horse to do these kinds of cuts on. Maybe one with a removable fence and a bird’s mou…
…oh, yeah, right.
Someone in my local area was having a workshop sale the other day. I don’t know the reason behind it, but they were getting rid of everything it seems; power tools, hand tools, timber.
I wasn’t interested in the power tools, and there weren’t really any hand tools available that I didn’t already have. It was the timber, however, that caught my eye – there was tons of it. I made arrangements to meet the vendor, and I spent about an hour just going through it all, picking out what I wanted. A lot of it had already gone, but there was still plenty left – I could have spent a fortune.
Anyway, I made my selection and then made her an offer. We haggled for a bit and then I left…
I completed the joinery on my Sawyer’s Bench today, by tackling the half-laps that join the legs to the top boards. Continue reading “Sawyer’s Bench #2”
I started work on my Sawyer’s Bench this week. Last time I posted about this, all I had done was to rough cut the components from my stock of cherry (1″ by 6″ and 1½” by 2¾”). Well, now I have worked all of the components to their final dimensions as much as I can at this stage. There will be some final adjustments to make to the aprons and cleats once the subassemblies are complete. Continue reading “Sawyer’s Bench #1”
In this final post on different ways to be unplugged, I thought I’d share this video of Roy Underhill demonstrating a few amazing man-powered machine tools.
My next main project will be a Sawyer’s Bench, designed by Tom Fidgen and featured in his book The Unplugged Woodshop. He hasn’t done a tutorial on the bench yet, but here is a video where he goes through the design of the bench.
The Sawyer’s Bench is basically a glorified saw-horse. It has a split top for rip cutting, a removable fence for cross cutting, and the configuration of the legs is slightly unorthodox in that two are set at 100° and the other two at 90º. This helps with rip cutting, as it not only provides a visual guide for a square cut, it also ensures that you won’t hit the legs with the saw. If my description is confusing, the video will clear things up. Continue reading “Shooting board”
goatboys woodshop 