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.

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The Ultimate Workbench – Part 2

This is a continuation of my progress on my new hard maple workbench I am making, with my SawStop PCS table saw, using a jointer and planer for the first time. This is a Roubo style workbench, based on the book Workbenches Revised Edition: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use and The Workbench Design Book: The Art & Philosophy of Building Better Benches both by Chris Schwarz. I read both of these books and then decided what parts to include or change for my workbench.

I have now glued up one leg, and have a video of me gluing up the first top section, which is 4 boards wide, or about 7 1/4″ wide, which will still go through my jointer one more time before I glue up the larger sections into the entire top.

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The Ultimate Work Bench – Part 1

I haven’t done a lot of woodworking in my life, and most of what I did wasn’t much to be proud of.  In 2011, I changed when I made a wooden clock from plans, cutting out gear teeth with a scroll saw.  It’s the first project I ever decided to do the ultimate great job on, and I think it turned out pretty nice. I got a new SawStop table saw recently, and decided the first project should be a new work bench.  I got the Christopher Schwarz book Workbenches Revised Edition: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use and read through it trying to figure out what kind of bench I wanted.  I did find out my current workbenches, built many years ago are “kitchen cabinet” type of workbench, a work surface, and storage underneath, but little opportunity to clamp your work to it to work on it.

This series of articles has companion YouTube videos you can watch, starting with the one for this article. Please subscribe and Like the YouTube video, and you can follow along with the project until it is complete.

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