I’m ready to attach the top to the base finally of my Roubo style workbench. This is based on the one in Chris Schwarz’s book. I’m making it out of hard maple. Most of the techniques I’m using are new to me, so I’m learning a lot, and it is a lot of fun too.
The Ultimate Workbench – Part 6
I’m finishing up the last few items before I can glue up the base, which will be exciting (and I’m a bit nervous about it too). I’ll be drilling dowel holes in the legs for the tenons, drilling three 3/4″ dog holes in the right leg, and drilling out the hole for the Benchcrafted Glide M leg vise screw in the left leg.
While I am left handed, I do some things left handed, some right, and sometimes it doesn’t matter, I can use either hand. I thought about it, and decided to go with the leg vise as standard, on the left side of the bench.
The Ultimate Workbench – Part 5
The continuing story of my Roubo Workbench, based on the book by Christopher Schwarz. In this part, I will be doing the 8 mortises for the stretchers to fit into the legs, and showing how I made the dowels out of some white oak. A lot of the YouTube videos crack me up, because the person always says they just happened to have the wood “lying around”. Sometimes what they had lying around is quite a bit of wood. An actual fact: I happened to have this white oak just lying around. I did not have all this hard maple wood just lying around though.
The Ultimate Workbench – Part 4
Forward progress finally got a bit faster. I had a lot of trouble with the top of the bench, getting it smoother out. I used a hand plane to do 95% of the work, and that did work for the most part. I had a lot of trouble with tearout, the plane blade tearing away wood, digging far deeper than the blade would have cut. I had to stop with the plane. I tried using a back bevel on the blade to increase the angle for less tearout, which I think helped, however I was still having the issue. I switched to sanding, an extremely tedious workout! I didn’t know how else to get it flat. Remember, this is the entire top of the bench, far too large to go into the 13″ planer.
Shop Vac Cart
I made a shop vacuum cart for a couple of main reasons. The twenty foot hose is very nice, and the Dust Deputy cyclone separator which put almost all of the dirt and shavings into the barrel, and keeps the shop vac clean, and more importantly the filter stays pristine. A clean filter keeps the suction at a maximum. I’ve been using the shop a lot more, and even though I have dust collection to all the main tools, the planer and jointer still can spit out quite a bit of shavings onto the floor, so I’ll be using the shop vac cart quite a bit. The 20 gallon drum makes it so I won’t have to empty that so often, as the shavings add up to quite a bit.
SawStop Table Saw Accessories
This is a quick overview of some of the accessories you’d want if you just bought a new SawStop table saw (check out my PCS saw, click here), or are planning on buying one. If you want to use a dado blade, there are a few pieces you will need to buy. I also upgraded from the saw blade which comes with the saw.