How I Ended Up With A Split-Top Saw Bench

It all started when I went to the walnut store.  I needed some for a project that shall not be mentioned.  While I was there I noticed that they had a pile of 4-foot long select pine on sale and you know how it is.  You’ve just got to paw wood that’s on sale.  And this got me to thinking – an all too dangerous proposition.  I bought some.

You see, I have had saw bench envy.  I have a saw bench.  I built it long ago, far away.  See here for details.   I built it when I was more of a hybrid woodworker than I am today.  Back then I used handsaws for all my cross-cuts but when ripping stock I uncovered my table saw and, well, let’er rip.

But now I’m not doing that.  My table saw has become a very expensive assembly table and I’d come to covet Shannon Roger’s split-top saw bench, which is great for ripping stock.  Every time I watched him use it to rip stock in his Hand Tool School, I told myself I needed to build one.   Also, I had come to want a bench that was a bit wider than my original.

And so I began one Saturday morning.  The boards I’d gotten were all 6″ wide, 4/4 rough-cut stock.  All of the boards in my sawbench are about 6″ wide, edges planed flat.  I’m not opposed to using a thickness planer so I shoved the boards through it and followed up with a jointer plane to achieve flat surfaces.  I tried to go light on the pieces that became the bench top and those are still nearly an inch thick.  The others a bit less.  The only dimensions I can provide is that the bench top is 32″ long and the bench built to be 20″ high to match my shop bents.

Those were the only two measurements I made.  The legs are two 6″ boards joined together and the sideboards  cut to allow some overhang on the ends.  It took me a little over two hours to generate the rough parts.

It took another two hours of fiddling around, smoothing the surfaces, though not to furniture grade, chamfering the edges of the top pieces, cutting the rabbets in the legs for the sideboards, and finally screwing it together with 1 3/4″ wood screws.

It was fun doing a project without setting up a camera every 20 minutes.  I’m pretty happy with it.  Anyone want an old, used saw bench?

There’s No Word Like “Done”

Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The woodworking community spills most of its ink in discussion of process.  We talk about what tools to use and how to use them.  We talk about choosing woods.  We talk about what joints to use and how to create them.  We talk about finishing – what finishes to use and how to apply them.  Only rarely do we spend much time talking about objects made from wood.

But let’s face it, we can hand cut the best dovetails or sand a glass finish with our whizbang Festool sander.  Unless we actually complete a project, however, most of it is meaningless.  This is hard for me to say as much of my motivation to be in the shop doesn’t come from the need for an object made from wood unless it’s shavings and sawdust.  I just like carving up wood.  I like the feel of it, the sound of it (the reason I work mostly with handtools) and I enjoy the serenity of it.  Nevertheless, if I never produce anything I would question my sanity.  And it does feel good when I actually complete a project.

I’ve talked about the creation of a set of bathroom wall cabinets from my gleam-in-the-eye concept activities with SketchUp and, along the way, I’ve discussed steps I’ve taken to remove wood from wood until the remaining wood resembled parts of a cabinet.  I’ve talked about assembling those pieces into cabinets.  If you missed all that excitement (?) you can find it here.

Finally, however, the cabinets are done.  I haven’t presented the finishing steps as they were conventional.  I applied some boiled linseed oil to achieve an ‘older’ color from the cherry, waited a week, and then applied a couple coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal polyurethane.  I used this because these cabinets were going into the moist environment of a bathroom.  For the same reason I use porcelain knobs on the doors rather than my more typical wooden door pulls.  The doors are held closed by small magnets.  They’re held to the walls using French cleats.

I apologize for the photograph.  The bathroom is very narrow.  I’m standing in the bathtub to take the photo and if you look in the mirrors you can see behind me the next job in the remodeling effort – tiling the bathtub wall area.  If they made bath tiles from curly maple I might be more interested in that job but not by much I’m afraid.  I still have to create a shelf under the center mirror.  It will reflect the same curve as the top and bottom of the cabinets.  I’ll dado the shelf into a decorative backplate to complete the scene.

So there you have it; the work is done.  I’m satisfied, or at least as satisfied as I ever am.  Mostly I’m thrilled that I can move on to the next gleam in my eye.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Installing Cabinet Mirrors

I’m finally able to get back to my vanity cabinets and really, there isn’t much to do before I start finishing.  I’m using a small magnet to hold the door closed and simple, no-mortise hinges so the only operation worth talking about is the installation of the mirror panels, using cherry backer strips.

These strips will be removable in case the mirrors break.  It may also be the case that I’ll get sufficiently irritated by the lack of a wooden back plate on the mirror and remove them so I can add one at a later date.  The reason I’m not doing so now is that I’m concerned about door weight.  Seems something got lost in translation (story of my life here in Quebec) and I ended up with 3/16″ mirror panels rather than 1/8″ thick panels.  The upside is that they’ll be very strong.  The downside is that they’re fairly heavy and I’m concerned about how the 1 1/2″ wide frame pieces will hold up under the weight.  Anyone with experience with thick glass like this – chime in please.  I guess the virtue of building something to put in your own bathroom is that you can take a ‘wait and see’ attitude towards some of this stuff.

Sizing and Fitting the Pieces

I started the process by ripping a bunch of 3/8″ strips from a board that was just a bit more than 7/16″ thick.  These dimensions were because I needed backers that would be 5/16″ wide and 3/8″ deep.  I took the width down to 5/16″ as I smoothed the faces.

I started by cutting/fitting the pieces to the frame.  This required a bunch of miter cuts but it’s a straightforward, measure/cut process.

I placed all of the frame pieces in the frame and behind the mirror panel.  As I planned, these stuck out of the back of the frame by about 1/8″.  I wanted a reveal of around 1/16″ to form a border.  Using a smooth plane so the process would go slowly, I started bringing the 4 strips down to the desired height.

Once I got the height I wanted I pulled the pieces and rounded both edges.  Here It’s good to do one piece and then, slowly, round over the adjacent piece(s) to match the roundover to the existing piece.

This is the result.  At this point the pieces aren’t screwed in place, nor has the frame been finish sanded.  But you get the idea of what I was after and I was happy with the result.

Installing Backers

So, the pieces were pulled and holes drilled for screws.  These holes were countersunk as well.  At this point I finish sanded the inside of the door frame as well as these pieces.

This photo is to remind you that it’s best never to drive brass screws, even if you’ve pre-drilled holes for them.  They’re soft and it’s easy to break one off in your piece, ruining your whole day.  Here, I installed a backing piece with 2-4 steel screws.  Then I removed those and, one at a time, replaced them with brass screws.

Here’s a photo of one of the cabinets, needing a bit of finish prep and then it’s on to applying finish.  You know, it’s hard to take a photo of a mirrored piece in a shop. The cases already have a coat of boiled linseed oil and I’ll add that to the doors as well.  I’ll be applying some polyurethane I think, since they’re going into a bathroom.

Making A Simple Outdoor Table – Pt 2

Do you ever have one of those moments where you wonder “This ain’t right.”  I’m having one of those moments right now as it’s clear that it’s taken me longer to take photos, edit/size photos and to write about this project than it did to build the table.  “That ain’t right!”

But here we go with part two of this saga.  For those who missed it, you might want to read part one first.  At this point the legs are built/assembled and the long aprons connect pairs of legs.

Finishing the Table Base

I cut the short aprons and planed them both to smooth them and to fit them into the notches in the legs.  What’s important in this step is that as you fit each end of the apron into its leg, do everything in your power to get the apron square with the leg in all directions.  This will determine whether your table base is square or not.

Once you’re convinced the pieces will fit together, it’s time to glue/screw the base together. At this point it starts looking like a table.

If you’ve taken the time to study the design you can see that I have made an error.  I forgot to cut the dados in the long aprons that hold the cross-pieces to which the top planks are attached.  I was just glad this table wasn’t made of hard maple as cedar is easier to chop.  I marked out the dados using a cutting marking gauge, cut the dado sides using a carcase saw, and carefully chiseled out the waste.

Whether you do this at this stage or before you assemble the base, you should work from both sides to avoid tearing out one side.  Fit the cross-pieces to the dados and the base is complete.

Adding the Table Top

The top consists of five 1/2″ x 4″ x 36″ boards.  I crosscut the boards to length using a handsaw but ripped them to width using my table saw.  I laid them out on my table with 3/16″ gaps between them and centered the base (inverted) on them.  I attached the top boards with screws through the base cross-pieces using a “hybrid” approach.  I predrilled the holes with an electric drill, countersunk them with an eggbeater drill, and then drove the screws with a Yankee spiral push screwdriver.  If you haven’t used a push screwdriver for driving screws, give one a try.  It’s my favorite way to drive screws.

I used a beam compass and marked out an arc that fit each end of the table.  I believe it was around 11″ radius but I just set the beam to ‘looks about right’ and used it on both ends of the table.  Then, with an ancient Craftsman jig saw I rounded the table top ends.  It gave me a good reason to dust off the jig saw and it was probably feeling neglected anyhow.

That’s it…fini!  This would be a good project for those taking early steps into furniture making.  I enjoyed the project as it came together so quickly.  Though I did use an occasional power tool, mostly I used handtools and darn few of those.  The simplicity of the joinery allowed me to create it in 4-5 hours and it could have been done more quickly by someone more interested in “quick” than I am.   I painted it light blue to match the chairs I made.  Have I mentioned how much I hate painting and how bad I am at doing it?  Anyways, here is a view of the table frolicking in its native habitat.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Making A Simple Outdoor Table – Pt 1

When you make Adirondack chairs for your family the darndest thing happens.  The family sits in them.  Quickly the fact that there is no table in front of them becomes apparent, as I commented here and here.

Quick and Simple Design

The requirements for this small 15″ high, 18″ x 36″ table are small and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it as my vanity cabinets are getting bored collecting dust in my shop and they want me to finish them.   Before we discuss the build, let’s talk quickie joinery, Larry-style.

I planned on making the legs by screwing two 2×4 pieces together and so the first “design” question was how to attach aprons to them.  Obviously the simple way is to screw them directly to the outside of the legs but I thought I could do better than that.  Here was my first idea:

This creates a surprisingly clean design.  But, thinking of how low this table would be to the ground, and about the amount of overhanging I was planning for the top, I decided to simplify this approach a bit more and came up with:

Cutting the rabbet in one side and the slot in the other is a piece of cake using handsaws and so I settled on this as the design for the base:

Trying to match the Adirondack chairs, I built the top by attaching slats to the cross-pieces in the base.  I decided that rounding the ends would improve the looks so I planned for that as well.  If you’re interested, you can download a SketchUp drawing here.

Creating the Legs

I had two cedar 2x4s and half a dozen 1×6 fence planks and that’s what I used for this little table.  The fence planks were only around 1/2″ thick.  The first thing I did was to cut 8, 15″ long pieces of 2×4 for the legs.  I sort of matched them up for grain but since I was planning on painting this hardly mattered.  What did matter, however, was that I treated them as pairs, keeping track of the faces that would come together to form the legs.  You need to end up with a set of 4 legs with the slots pointing in the proper orientation so burn a neuron or three as you give some thought to how they have to be oriented.

Yes, I could have used a dado head to cut the rabbets.  But in less time than it would take to install the dado head in my table saw I used a carcase saw and a tenon saw to cut the rabbets, thus avoiding the time required to get the dado head back on the shelf.

Cutting the notches in the other leg halves was nearly as quick.  I just made the two long cuts with the tenon saw and then chopped out the waste using a chisel.  Unfortunately, I got involved in the work and forgot to take a photo of the chisel work.

I cut the aprons at this point as I wanted to attach the long aprons before screwing the leg pieces together.  What’s important here is ensuring that the structure is square.

With this accomplished it’s a simple matter to line up the two leg halves and screw them together.  I use #8, 2″ screws for this.

This post is getting long and I’ve got some more photos to show of the process so I will put them in a separate post in the next day or so.  The “hard” work of this project is over, however.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

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