Bob Easton

The legs for the workbench are laminated from two pieces of 2 x 4. They are actually gotten out of rather nice 2 x 6s that aren’t nearly as gnarly and twisted as a typical 2 x 4.

After dimensioning the lumber and laminating the parts, it’s time to cut mortises. The bottom rails are also 2 x 4 and fit in blind mortises in the thicker part of the legs.  The way this is done in a powered workshop is with a drill press, using a fence to assure correct spacing of the mortise. As you can see, I’m using my made-in-1896 cordless drill and the chance of using an accurate fence is nil. Yeah, I toyed with making a block that could ride on the bit and act as a fence, but it didn’t seem stable enough.  Instead, I incise the center line of the mortise with a chisel. Make that deep enough, and the center point of a forstner bit falls right in place. Nice! Now, there is one thing that a drill press can do that a hand drill cannot. With a drill press, the bit can be moved anywhere in the mortise to remove almost all the waste. Can’t be done by hand, so there’s a bit more chisel work to be done. Six legs, three rails, six blind mortises. These were my first mortise and tenon joints and I’m pleased with the results.

Time to move to the upper rails. These guys are heftier, currently being 9 inches wide. I got them out of a 2 x 10 that I know sat idle in an air conditioned Home Depot store for about three months. I had it in my shop about a week before I began working it. After dimensioning the wood, I rough cut it into the three pieces, noting that the newly cut ends felt about the same temperature as the outside edge of the wood. That’s a rough indication of relative dryness. (No, I’m not going to buy a $300 moisture meter.) I stickered the three pieces and let them sit for about a week while doing other things. When I came back to them, they were absolutely flat. So, I cut their tenons and set the pieces aside, still dead flat.

A week later, I’m ready to cut mortises for these rails and I look over and see… Two of the three, all from the same board are now cupped. Yes, wood moves. Yet, I was a bit surprised to see these pieces change shape rather suddenly after being flat for a few weeks. It’s also interesting that the tenons aren’t cupped as much as the thicker part of the wood.  No, I’m not going to flatten the pieces again. This is a workbench, not a grand piano, and those rails will do very well as they are. All of the important strength and bearing surfaces are unaffected by whether the piece is dead flat or cupped a bit.

Speaking of pianos, who needs a grand piano to play honky tonk music, except maybe Jerry Lee Lewis? His latest collection “Last Man Standing” is great music for drilling mortises.

That stange looking thing I’ve been using as a workbench is actually the building horse for the Fiddlehead canoe. Once enough frame parts are ready, they’ll be set up on the building horse. Then, what will I use for a workbench?

Chris Schawarz’s “Workbenches…” book is a winner. As a cabinet maker and writer about woodworking, he has made a number of workbenches. The unique thing about his book is a chapter in which he analyzes almost any woodworking task imaginable and classifies all the ways a bench might handle them. This analysis ends up with plans for two benches, one built incredibly heavy and perfect for cabinet makers, the other lighter and originally used by for 19th century joiners. This lighter bench, which Chris calls the “English” bench, looks ideal for boat building work. The most appealing feature is the ability to clamp long boards to the face aprons, enabling the kinds of edge working that is prevalent in boat building.

All I need is to make it longer. One can never have a bench that’s too long. I’m planing for 12 feet. Extending the length requires some longer lumber and an extra pair of legs.

Chris suggests building benches from construction lumber. After all, these are workbenches, not grand pianos, we’re building. He uses southern yellow pine, very hard softwood that’s availalble where Chris lives. The examples in his book show beautiful wood that is clear and knot free. Not here. I have load of “green Douglas fir,” the next best alternative in this part of the country. As an aside, the lumber is sold green (high moisture content) because it is intended for house framing. If a framer uses it immediately, the joins become tighter as the lumber dries. Some of what I bought is still very green and very heavy. It was a good load test for the truck rack and for my knot tying.

Yeah, this puts the Fiddlehead build into limbo for a while.