Assembling the base

I wanted a very rigid bench, but I also wanted to be able to disassembly the workbench in case I needed to move it somewhere. So this made it pretty clear that the entire thing can’t be glued together. I needed to put the base together in some other way. So after finding some inspiration in a book I have I decided to use simple elevator bolts to connect the cross bars to the sides. The elevator bolts are inserted from the outside of the two sides into the cross bars, where they poke through into holes that I made using my hand router. 

Elevator bolt in cross bar

The elevator bolts were then tightened using a square washer and a locking nut. I made the cut-out large enough to fit an open-ended wrench that I used to tighten the nut. All the cross bars were connected in the exact same way.

And when all cross bars were connected the base looked like this:

The assembled base

It turned out VERY rigid, I couldn’t get it to move at all even though I applied my entire body weight onto it.

Laminating the bench tops

This process was pretty straight forward. I used a lot of glue and a fair amount of screws . Seriously though I laminated two sheets of 22 mm MDF together with one sheet of 11 mm OSB together, placing the two MDF sheets in the two outer layers and letting the OSB sheet become the core of the laminated piece. So I just spread glue onto one MDF sheet, put the OSB sheet onto that one and then put another MDF sheet on the OSB sheet. I then screwed the entire top together using a lot of screws, screwing from both sides of the tops (through the MDF pieces into the OSB core). Then I applied as much clamping pressure onto the top as I could find. It looked something like this during the process:

Glue-up of bench top pieces

Now, in the picture you will see not three but six layers of sheet material. That’s only because I placed both bench tops on each other during the glue-up because I wanted to use my clamps more efficiently. The total thickness of the tops became approximately 56 mm, which in the end became 62 mm due to an additional MDF that I added on top of the bench tops. But more on that in a later post.

Next time around I will talk a bit about how the tops were finished, how I drilled the holes for the bench dogs and of course how the vises were attached to the top.

/Jörgen

“After”

So as I mentioned in the previous post I tried to even out the stain on the table using a mixture of teak sanding dust and glue. It turned out like this:

The stained - finished

It’s definitely far from perfect, I overdid it a little bit with the filler I made and it did stain an area outside the original damage just a little too much.  The cavities turned out really well though, at least the ones I used my home made filler on. I tried to use an oak filler on one of the cavities and that didn’t work too well. This is how it turned out:

Cavity with oak filler

I should have been more careful to examine the filling job before finishing the surface. As you can see the filler spilled out into the grain and it doesn’t look great. Probably wiping around the actual cavity with denaturated alcohol would have done some difference.

On the whole though the total color and smoothness of the surface of the table after sanding and finishing it made it worth the effort anyway. I’m happy with the total result, even though I could have been more thorough on some details. I was on a time schedule though, my wife was turning 30 and she demanded that the table would be ready for that .

The finished result

The finished table

I am pretty happy with the overall result, and even though the insert boards aren’t in the picture they turned out even better. Mostly because they weren’t damaged at all by any previous owner.

To finish up I should say that I did learn a lot doing this which for me was the whole point. The table was cheap to begin with, so I wasn’t risking much. And in any case the result is a lot better than what I started out with.

I got an interesting comment on my first post about this table, it’s about staining damaged and miscolored wood. It made a lot of sense and I will definitely look into that type of procedure the next time I need to restore a miscolored piece! Thanks for the comment “eurekasprings”!

Have a nice one!

/Jörgen

“Before”

This is what the table looked like before I set my teeth into it. It’s really a nice nice table and it’s generally in pretty good shape. There are a couple of cavities in it from careless treatment at the flea market, some minor scratches and then there’s THE stain!

The table in it's original state

The stain before sanding

A previous owner somehow damaged the table top, and the sanding job done on it went through the veneer. I wasn’t sure how to tackle this (and I still am not…) so I decided to wait and see how it turned out after sanding the whole piece.

Sanding

I started out using a piece of MDF with sandpaper stuck onto it using spray glue. My strategy was to use a wide and long sanding device so that I would get the table top flat. Well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post anytime soon had I stuck to that strategy… I took forever getting any kind of result whatsoever so I soon retreated to using my random orbit sander. Maybe a bit risky considering the possibility to sand through the veneer, but I was willing to take that risk! I did learn however that the veneer was a lot thinner than I expected. At first, after inspecting the sides of the insert boards, I thought that the veneer was like 2 mm thick. But boy was I mistaken, it must have been some type of double veneer…

Sanding an insert board using my MDF sanding device

After an hour or so sanding the table and the insert boards I got this result.

The table sanded down

The stain

You can see the stain right there, it lightened up quite a bit and really stands out from the rest of the table… I can’t say I know for sure that my further actions are a good idea, but in lack of other ideas I decided to mix up some glue with some teak powder that I saved up during sanding the top. Then I used that as a filler both for the stain and the cavities that I mentioned before. It’s still curing so I don’t know if that’s going to turn out ok, but I’ll get back to you on that one in a couple of days!

/Jörgen

I will not go for a traditional teak finish, using teak oil or chinese oil. Instead I will be using a simple water based varnish which I will be applying in as many coats as it needs. It’s hopefully more water resistent and more resistent to our 1½-year old son as well

More posts will follow with before and after shots of the table. Does anyone have experience in this type of restoration? I’d sure take any good advice I can get!

/Jörgen

Now first a small DISCLAIMER; I don’t claim to be a woodworking instructor in any way, neither is my experience with power tools large enough to educate anyone on how to use them. I may be using them in ways that others might react against, and that’s fine. Please let me know if that’s the case. Always remember that most power tools are potentially dangerous if used in hazardous ways, use them with respect! Always be careful, use protection gear, and ask someone if you feel uncomfortable using any of your power tools!

I will however share one safety knowledge with you; Don’t ever wear gloves or shirts with long sleeves when using rotating machines. Think about it, those machines cut through hard wood without effort, they will slice through your gloves or shirt without a second thought. And the risk of getting stuck and drawn into the machine with your gloves or sleeve is just too large to take.

Now to the heart of the matter…

Making the side pieces

Construction

I obviously wanted my side pieces to be very rigid, after all it is a workbench I also wanted to practice my skills as a woodworker in order to learn something new. So as the beginner I am I decided to join the pieces of the sides together using mortise and tenon joints. A joint that I have understood, from reading a lot of material on the web, is a fairly (or very) strong joint. It’s also fairly easy to make, and doesn’t take that long either.

In the picture below the tenons facing the foot piece are seen. There are also mortise and tenon joints at the top of the side piece, joining the two longer pieces together. The mortises are in the longer pieces (that have their tenons visible) and the tenons are in the shorter piece. I just forgot to take a picture of that before the glue-up…

Side with tenons

Mortises

The mortises were cut using a drill-press stand for my ordinary corded drill. The mortise was drawn out on the stock and then the I drilled four holes on a straight row to remove most of the material. I used a flat so called spade bit doing this. That I kind of regret, I should have purchased a forstner bit instead, it would have been a lot easier to get the mortises precise and more straight down the entire mortise that way. Anyway, the remaining material after having drilled the holes was cleaned up using an ordinary mortise chisel.

The footpiece for the sides, mortises shown

Tenons

Tenons can be cut in about as many ways as you can imagine. I guess I’ve seen at least five different ways of doing it online, and most of them work just fine. Some of the most common ones seems to be using a band saw (click the second video episode), or using a table saw with some type of jig or some type of really advanced jig. To me it seems almost as if it is your tool arsenal that will decide for you which method to use. I didn’t have a band saw (but I do now) and my table saw doesn’t cut deeper than 45 mm and that’s not enough for these tenons which are pretty deep.

In my case, since the tenons on these pieces are pretty large and doesn’t demand accuracy down to the 10th of a millimeter, I definitely could have hand cut them using a back saw. But what the heck, what’s the point in owning power tools if you’re not gonna use them! So I decided to test a few different ways.

Cutting tenons using the mitre saw

The idea for cutting tenons with the mitre saw is to cut a number of cuts on or four sides of the stock, removing as much material that is needed in order to clean up the rest with a chisel. A picture of the cutting is shown below.

Cutting tenon with the mitre saw

I have a perfectly good mitre saw that I wanted to try out for cutting tenons. It’s a Bosch GSM 8S and it works great for most things. However, in this case it didn’t perform perfect. I set the depth stop to the depth I wanted to ut away from my stock in order to create the tenon. But it didn’t perform with great repeatability, I guess the depth stop isn’t that great on my machine. So I ended up having to do quite a lot of work with my chisel and a rasp in order for the tenon to be usable. And it never really fit that great in the mortise either… but good enough I suppose.

Cutting tenons using the table saw

This method is basically the same idea as with the mitre saw. Set the depth of the blade, cut as many cuts as you find appropriate and remove the rest of the material with a chisel. You can see the result of this method in the pictures below.

Cutting tenon with table saw

Shoulder cut with table saw

All cuts made on tenon with table saw

Using my semi-stationary table saw, a Festool CMS TS 55, I got good results with this method. Still some work with a chisel as well as with a rasp, but not too bad. And the tenon fit really nice and snug in the mortise.

Cutting tenons at the router table

Now, I know many woodworkers out there don’t have a router table with a mitre gauge on it, but I do so I decided to give it a try . This method however demands some explanation. When using a router, which rotates in a certain direction (mine rotates counter-clockwise when mounted upside down in my router table) it will produce tear-out if the router bit is pushed through the entire piece of wood (I know because I did just that the first time around). So I needed to do this in some way that didn’t produce tear-out. Not that it matters that much for these tenons (after all, it is a workbench) but I wanted a method that I can use also for finer woodworking.

I did this by routing one side of the stock at a time, starting from the tip of the tenon working my way down to the shoulder of the tenon. All the time being careful about not pushing the entire piece over the router bit, thereby saving maybe 10 mm of material at the very end of the cut. It produced a really good result with a very flat and accurate tenon that fit great into the mortise. I can definitely recommend it.

What I should have done is the following refined way of cutting the tenons (and this is in hindsight, I tried this method and took these pictures after the bench was completed).

1. Clamp some type of stop to the mitre gauge that the workpiece can be held onto, its placement should be so that the router bit cuts the shoulder of the tenon.
2. Cut all four sides of the piece once, creating a cut that defines the shoulder all around. REMEMBER NOT TO CUT THROUGH THE ENTIRE MATERIAL ON THE FIRST TWO CUTS! Start with one side, then do the opposite side and then do the other two sides in any order. The pictures below shows how to do this.
3. Cut away the rest of the material on all four sides. Now you can be as rough as you want, not having to care about tear-out at all since the only place where tear-out will ruin the piece, namely the shoulder, is already finished.

Setup for cutting tenon with router table

First cut one side, save a little material to avoid tear-out

Then cut the opposite side, also saving some material

Shoulder cut with router, no tear-out on any part that will remain in the finished piece

Entire tenon cut with router

Now from my experience during this project I must say that I can really recommend cutting the tenons using a router table, given that you have one of course. The end result was just great and the time it took, including cleaning up, was probably less than half of the time using any of the other two methods.

Glue-up

After cutting the mortises and tenons it was time for glue-up. Nothing special about that really, I applied a good amount of glue in both the mortises and on the tenons and then clamped the sides using long clamps. Here’s a picture of how it looked.

A side piece during glue-up

I also added a dust protecting board to the sides since I will be adding drawers to the workbench later on and would like to avoid cleaning them a couple of times per week . A picture of that is seen below. Also in the picture are the height-adjustable feet that have been mounted into the foot piece.

Side piece with dust cover

Okay, that’s it for the sides of the workbench. Next time I will go through how I mounted the sides to each other and also how I laminated the bench top.

/Jörgen

You’ll find the page here

/Jörgen

Materials and hardware

One of the first things I did was to decide which materials and hardware to use. I knew that I wanted the workbench to be sturdy, I needed to keep a budget (hopefully) and I didn’t want to spend several hundreds of hours building it. Those parameters where key in my materials and hardware choices.

The base

The base of the workbench is obviously a key part of the experience of a workbench. I wanted it to be very rigid and I also wanted to be able to dismount the entire bench in case of a need to move the workbench to another area of the house or if we decide to move in the future. So how do you combine those two? Well I designed the workbench to have two identical and symmetrical sides that in turn are held together by several horizontal bars. The bars are attached to the sides using bolts (elevator bolts) which are hidden in holes at the back of each bar. A detail picture is shown below.

Detail of horizontal bar attachment

The wood used for the pieces of the base is pine. I ordered it in the correct dimensions from a shop since I at the time didn’t own a jointer/thicknesser (which I do now   ). The dimensions are approx. 90 mm wide by 42 mm thick.

Another important (at least for me) feature that I needed for my workbench was to be able to level it out in relation to my basement floor which is not level at all. Therefore I got hold of four adjustable feet (the machine feet type ones which are often used for stationary machines) with a thick rubber layer at the bottom of them. This allows me to set the height of each corner of the workbench so that it completely level and flat when set right. A detail of a foot is shown below.

Detail of height adjustable foot

The bench top

As I mentioned above I needed to keep a budget, and I did not want to spend several hundred of hours making the workbench. This pretty much ruled out making a bench top of laminated hard wood pieces; both because of the cost but also because of my so far limited experience as a wood worker. So I decided to laminate some sheet material together instead. I ended up using two layers of 22 mm MDF and one layer of 11 mm OSB sheet.

The vises

I knew that I wanted both a front and a tail vise. So I needed two vises. Should I use one and the same model for both or should I use different models? I decided on using the same model for both. My choice fell on the Irwin Record V175B which is a very simple model without any extra features. It does not for example have a quick release function. It does however open up 175 mm between the jaws which I consider to be more than enough. I payed around 75$ per piece, so a total of about 150$.

Bench dogs and holdfasts

In Sweden a lot of the hardware and materials that are readily available in the US are not that easily available. So it took a lot of looking around to find bench dogs and holdfasts. Eventually I found what I was looking for at a Do-it-yourself store called Jula. They are manufactured by a company named Sjöbergs which also manufacture workbenches. A picture of the bench dogs can be seen here. They fit into a 3/4″ (19 mm) round hole which I really found neat, I didn’t want to make square holes! The holdfasts also fit into the same diameter round hole and a picture of them is available here.

Well, that’s it for this time. I’ll get back shortly writing about how the sides were made and put together as well as three different ways of cutting tenons for the mortise and tenon joins in the sides.

See you back soon!

/Jörgen

Designing a new workbench

So I decided to get a little bit more serious about my woodworking. And to do that, one of course needs a solid and usable workbench. Instead of buying one, which is roughly between 800$ and 1500$ here in Sweden where I am from (depending on extras), I of course decided to build one on my own. Not only would that save me money but it would also give me exactly the workbench that I wanted. And of course, the practise and training that I need to progress in my woodworking.

I started to look around on the internet to find some inspiration for a design. For example I found the 21st-Century workbench designed and used by Robert W. Lang. Someone even made a SketchUp model of it.  It has a lot of nice features, some of which I kind of incorporated in my own design. I wasn’t too interested in building that exact workbench though, mainly because the problem in getting hold of that vice in Sweden. Here is another really nice woodworking workbench. And yet another one right here.

There are a lot of great ideas out there which would probably have worked OK for me. But none of them felt 100%, at least not without severe adjustments. I had a list of must have features:

• Not too expensive, I was aiming at under 400$.
• Fairly easy to build. I didn’t want to spend 100 hours or more on this particular project. I want to start building furniture soon!
• A bench top in some sheet material like MDF or something similar, I wanted it to be rigid and I didn’t want it to move around over time. And, I would never be able to fit for example a laminated beech top into my budget of 400$.
• The workbench had to be possible to use as an outfeed table for my semi-stationary table saw. I thought – height adjustable feet!
• Possibility to cut sheet material to size on the workbench.
• Being able to work on fairly large workpieces that could be clamped using holdfasts except for the front vise. I needed the front vise to be flush with the front of the base.

So I came up with this design:

The workbench

Now, this is of course very much alike other workbenches you might find out there. I’m not claiming that I have come up with something entirely new here. I just want to share it with you all.

The picture above shows the workbench in its “closed” mode. This means that the two parts of the bench top are pulled together. You can see the front vise and the tail vise and also a lot of dog holes on the front of the base. Those are there in order to be able to clamp down larger work pieces with holdfasts together with the front vise.

Here is another picture of the workbench:

The workbench - opened up

Now in this picture the bench tops have been pushed apart, creating a gap of around 200 mm or so. I wanted this feature in order to be able to cut sheet material to size using an ordinary plunge saw. I would be able to use that gap as a place to have the blade pass underneath the sheet material when cutting it. And of course, the bench can also be opened up this way when I need support for a larger workpiece while working on it in other ways as well.

Well, this first post was about the design of the workbench, in the next one I will talk a bit more about the first steps I took in building it.

Other posts in the series:

A new workbench – Part 2, first steps

/Jörgen

This post is just to inform you that I’m starting out my “career” as a blogger. The blog will be about my progress as a struggling beginner woodworker, and I will try to share with you both my successful projects as well as my mistakes. You will also find information about different techinques I may have learned, tips about other great woodworking blogs, my equipment and perhaps some reviews of equipment that I have or have tried out that may be interesting for you to read about.

But most importantly, please let me know if you have any ideas on what I could blog about, or elaborate on from any of my existing posts. Give me your feedback and comment away!

I hope you will find reading the blog interesting, I sure will find it interesting to see if this may become an equally big passion as the woodworking itself is.

Oh, and be on the lookout for my first project series -  a new workbench. Which woodworker can be without one?

/Jörgen