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?

Build a Saw Bench

For the past few years my “saw bench” was a crate with a piece of 2×8 screwed to it.  It was sufficiently ugly and disfunctional that it hasI’ve never let it wander in front of a camera lens.  It is no more as I gave it to the neighbor to put in his outdoor fireplace.

And why, might you ask, would I endure such a device so long?  Procrastination, plain and simple.  On my ‘to do’ list was “Build a Schwarz Saw Bench” but this became a haunting ’round to-it.  Chris’s saw bench has the virtue of being stackable but it has the drawback of being designed with the notion of teaching hand tool joinery classes and, as nice as it is, it’s more complex than it need be.  Worse, it requires 2x4s and I didn’t have any in my shop yesterday morning when I was cussing at my crate-based saw bench.

But what I did have was an 8′ 2×10, left over from a porch step project.  It looked a lot like a saw bench to me and very quickly I was making sawdust and shavings.  Unfortunately, it completely slipped my mind that I had a blog where step-by-step photos would be nice.  Oops… So here is what I can tell of the saga.  I hope you find it useful as it’s an example of “molding wood” rather than starting with an exactly plan and cut list.

“Design” the bench

I put “design” in quotes as I’m not sure this qualifies.  Saw benches work well only if the bench height matches that of the sawyer.  A rule of thumb is to set the height at knee height, which for me is 20″.  This not only lets you put a knee on the bench while you saw but also makes sitting on the bench comfortable.  I also, somewhat arbitrarily, decided that my bench would be 32″ long.  This seemed neither too long or too short… “it was just right” to quote a favorite fairy tale.  Besides, this would leave me 5-feet of 2×10 for the legs and stretchers.

I vascillated for a few seconds, deciding whether to set the legs vertical or at an angle.  I decided that an angled approach would provide better stability.  In thinking about use, I decided that the legs needed to be less wide than the top.  I also realized that if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t have enough wood in my 2×10 to make two legs and two stringers.  I reasoned that I could rip 2 1/2″ off my 5′ 2×10, leaving 7″ wide stock for the legs, and thus I finished the “design” of my bench underpinnings.  Let’s cut wood.

Build the bench

Cutting the 5 pieces

The first thing I did was cut the top, 32″ long.  Because this was construction-grade lumber, the edges were chipped and dented so I decided to lop off 1/4″ off each edge so I shoved it through my table saw a couple times, giving me nice, smooth edges.  I used a block plane to slightly chamfer the long edges so they wouldn’t be sharp.  Top finished.

I ripped the remaining 5-feet of 2×10, removing 2 1/2″ to be used for stringers.  Then I set the table saw to 10-degrees and cut 2, 20″ legs, with 10-degree angles on each end.  *Note that I’m living loose here.  I wanted a 20″ bench, knew that the top was 1 1/2″, knew that the angled legs would reduce the leg height by some amount, and knew that the user of the bench wasn’t going to be too picky.  Yes, I could have done the trig to figure out exactly how long the legs needed to be but… lazy am me.  The punch line here is that my bench ended up 20 1/4″.

I put the top on my workbench and positioned the legs, moving them back and forth, trying to decide how close to the ends to put them.  I settled on 24″ stringers between the legs as that looked about right.  Using my carcase saw, I cut a couple 24″ long stringers with appropriate 10-degree ends from my 2 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ piece.

At this point, I realized that I hadn’t taken any photographs and so I did shoot a couple photos of the single “hard” step of this bench.  You could just screw thinner stringers (1×3) to the edge of the legs but I had 2×10 stock and I also feel that you achieve considerable strength by notching in the stringers into the legs.

Notching the legs for stringers

This is a lot easier than it looks.  I used a bevel gauge set to 10-degrees to draw appropriate lines where the notches needed to be.  I used a  marking gauge to cut a line indicating the depth of the notches.  Using my Wenzloff carcase saw, I cut to that depth on each side of the notch.  From this point there are numerous approaches.

For myself, I just grab a chisel.  I don’t cut out any of the waste.  It may look as though that’s a big hunk of wood to chisel out but the truth is, it’s simple.  I took these steps for each notch:

1) Lay the leg down and pare a shallow groove that stops at the cutting gauge mark.

2) Stand the chisel up in that groove and hit it with a hammer.  Pare back to the new, deeper groove.

3) Repeat step 2.

4) Flip the leg over and do steps 1, 2, and 3.

5) Continue deepening the groove.  You won’t have to go much further with 1 1/2″ thick pine.

6) Be surprised when the entire piece of waste pops out and you’re left with the notch you’re after.

If you look closely at the block that popped out you can see how both sides of it show a ‘”curved” portion.  This is all the wood I actually chiseled out.  I don’t know the exact time required but from the first pencil line to looking at four notches probably required no more than 15 minutes and I was in putter-around pace.

One last thing is to relieve the bottom of the legs.  I took a roll of masking tape, marked a centerline and drew a ‘half-roll’ circle on the bottom of each leg.  I used the turning saw I built recently and cut the reliefs to create 4 feet.

Assemble the Bench

The initial goal is to achieve a dry assembly of the bench.  Without glue or screws you should be able to achieve joinery such that you can sit on the dry-assembled bench.  To achieve that I fit the ends of the stringers into the notches by planing thin shavings off top and bottom of the stringer ends until they would fit.  An alternative approach would be to work on the notches themselves using a paring chisel.  If you’ve made good saw cuts, you shouldn’t need to do much in either case.  Once this is done, assemble the bench, checking everything for square and level.   Sit on it if you want.  I did and deemed it ready for screws and glue.

Apply glue to the four notches and assemble the leg/stringer assembly. Pay particular attention to getting it square.  I sat the top on top and ensured that it sat level.  Once I was happy, I put a 2 1/2″ screw in each notch joint.  I attached the top using 2 screws for each leg.

Oh…after I was done I decided that I wanted a ‘beak’ opening on one end so I put a rip saw to work and cut the opening.  As this was a shop accessory, I didn’t worry much about finish.  I slathered on a bunch of boiled linseed oil and considered the job done.

I think my hand sawing just got better.  It’s certainly gotten easier.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com