Bench dogs from a coat hanger

Clever!  I'll have to try this.

Making bench dogs for your workbench using a suitable diameter dowel, and a coat hanger for a spring.



--GG

Log slabs into something

Back in January 2013 (or 1/27/13, to be exact), a storm knocked down a tree a few houses down, which had been growing along the side of the road.  Unfortunately, the tree's roots passed under the water mains, so when it fell over we (and our neighbors) were without water for nearly a week.  But -- I managed to gain a log, about an arm-span in length.

I think the tree might have been some sort of eucalyptus.  Certainly, it's a hardwood.

I took the log home and slabbed it so that it would dry in a controlled manner -- rather than letting it dry "in the round" and developing all sorts of splits and cracks, thus rendering it un-usable.

My first attempt was to split it with some wedges.  Unfortunately, not all trees have wood that splits cleanly -- and this species was not one of the well-behaved ones.  So, I ended up ripping them by hand, using a converted crosscut saw.

I parked the resulting slabs under the eaves, up on bricks (to keep the termites away).  Although one of the slabs ended up on our porch.


Slightly more than two years later, I took another look.  Here's how they are.


Here's a shot of three of the four slabs, showing the sides that were up.  You can see that they've been bleached by the sun.

But.  Here are their undersides, with a lovely reddish color.  Note the one in the foreground will need some cleaning up:  you can see how it didn't split cleanly.  (Click to enlarge.)

Here are the ends of two of them, giving you a sense of their thickness.  The one on the left is about a fist's thickness (i.e. four of my fingers).  That's enough mass to use for something useful.

I oiled the underside of two of them -- that is, the portions that have not been bleached by the sun.  It gives a sense of their original color.  Nice.  :)

Here's the one that's been on the porch.  It's the other section that didn't split cleanly.

And, here's the porch one, from the end.  Again, it will need some cleaning up (with a handplane, probably prefaced with an adze).  I think this section would be about three finger-widths thick, once it's cleaned up.

My inclination is to make a small-ish woodworking workbench from this log.  The more practical use of the wood would be to make a sitting bench, with a back.  However, I'm afraid that if I made the bench and had it on the porch, then the sun would bleach the lovely color -- even if I oiled it.  And the bench would be too "rustic" go inside the house.  (And there's no room in my workshop.)

In contrast, a workbench would (presumably) be indoors, and thus retain the color.


I'm thinking using two, or maybe three, of the slabs as the surface.  I've read that traditional Japanese woodworking always has the bark side up (and the heart of the log down) -- and for some reason this fits my sense of aesthetics.

In other words (see illustration to the left), most Western wood- workers would cut a log in half and use configuration "A", because it maximizes the work surface:  you can see how you actually get a "leading corner" to the work surface, because the curve of the log is to the underside, where it isn't a detriment.

In contrast, I think option "B" looks better -- at least, when viewing it from the end.  But compared to the first option, you lose a few inches due to having to make the front and back of the slab meet the top surface (where I've made the red vertical lines).  Also, I would only partially clean up the area where the front and back slab meet -- which means that there would be a small valley there.  But, I'm fine with that.

 Here's my vision for the top.  I'd use two of the slabs.  The one with the fork would go on the back, and the thicker, more rectangular one would go along the front.  Only the edge along the front of the workbench needs to be straight (for clamping boards):  the back can be oddly-shaped.

The red arrows indicate the direction of the grain:  it's easier to flatten the work surface with a handplane when both pieces have grain that runs in the same direction.

 Here's a view from the left end of the work- bench.  Note that it's not quite to scale.  Note also the "V"-shaped groove -- which is fine.

The front slab would be thicker, and the back slab -- with the fork -- is a bit thinner.  So, I'd have to supplement the back with a wooden spacer, at least where the framework would be.


Unfortunately, the log wouldn't supply enough wood to make the framework or the legs of the workbench.  (Although the extra pieces could be used as the stringers(? - the horizontal pieces that would connect the legs).)  The solution would be to use one of the many "stumps" (basically, hardwood pilings) that I saved from The Lady's grandmother's old house.  They are of a similar red color to what I've shown you above, and they're about long enough to serve as front-to-back beams, as well as the legs of the workbench.


This, of course, will go somewhere near the bottom of my "To Do" list.  Fun, and interesting -- but not a priority.


--GG

Nice chuck box

When you're camping -- more "car-camping" than "backpacking" -- it seems like a chuck box would be a nice way to keep everything together.

And, you could probably borrow the designs for a toolbox or portable workstation.

I came across this by accident, when doing a YouTube search.  But, I like it:  nice design.




--GG

Woodworking workbench useage video

Much cleverness.



--GG

Workbench modification

One difficulty with English-style workbenches (example at left) is that it's hard to clamp things to the surface, because the front and back edges of the benchtop are obscured by the apron:  the wide, vertically-oriented board the provides structure to the relatively thin benchtop..

This isn't an original observation:  I got it from one of Chris Schwarz's "workbenches" books, and/or one of his blogs.


My suggested work-around to this problem -- although non-traditional! -- would be to cut a series of vertically-oriented rectangles in the apron.  This would allow clamping access.

The top end of the rectangular holes would not be flush with the underside of the surface of the benchtop, but would instead be perhaps a half inch or three-fourths of an inch of remaining material (i.e. running "with the grain") hanging down below the underside of the workbench.  (The specific amount would depend on the configuration of your clamps.).  You would then clamp **through** this access hole, to the underside of the benchtop.

The reasoning -- much like with truss bridges -- is that even when you make holes in a sheet that serves a "stiffening" function, you still retain much of the strength in that direction.


I've tried out this approach on my own workbench -- and it seems to work.


Please see the photo below -- which is a poor but illustrative sketch overlaid on an outdated photo.  Specifically, the little black rectangles across the front of the workbench.

I took this photo when I first put my bench in my workshop.  Since this day, neither the workbench nor the workshop have been this tidy.


--GG

Spacers

Here's the second of three "quickie" projects that I turned to, during my week's vacation -- when I realized that none of my "larger" projects would get completed.  I wanted to have a sense of accomplishment -- of actually **completing** something.  :)

I made a series of "spacers" for my vice.  The screw for my workbench's leg vice is in the middle.  When I'm clamping something short, it's easy to center it across the width of the jaws, so that the left and right side of the jaw share the load.

However, when I'm clamping something vertically that is fairly long, it has to pass to one side or the other of the screw.  This means that half of the jaw is clamping, but not the other side.  This is bad for the vice, as it causes twisting pressures:  the formal term is "racking".

The solution is to hold a spacer in the other side of the vice.  The space should be pretty close to the thickness of the actual workpiece -- although it doesn't have to be exact.

The photo above shows a top view of my vice.  My hand represents the workpiece that would be clamped only on one side of the jaw.  The bits of wood on the other side of the vice serve as the spacers.

More specifically:  I've drilled holes in the corner of many different scrap pieces of wood.  I then mix and match the thicknesses, to approximate the thickness of the workpiece.  Then I thread a bamboo chopstick (disposable!  but salvaged) through the holes, and pass the chopstick from the top of the workbench to the top of the vice jaw -- with the pieces of wood dangling.  This balances the load on the vice jaws.

(Note that this isn't my own invention:  it's a variation on a design I've seen elsewhere.)

As you can see in the second photo (side view!), I have -- as I usually do -- noted the date of completion of the project.  I also painted sections of them purple -- to indicate that these are **not** simply scraps of wood:  they now have a specific purpose!  (Otherwise, I might mistake them as simple scraps of wood, and accidentally throw them out or use them for other purposes.)


Nothing fancy:  given the purpose and function, it wasn't worth the extra time to make it purty.  But, as with the "splitter" rack, I've been meaning to do this for a while.


--GG

Woodworking not knitting

Every Friday morning, I take the kids to their before-school tennis lesson, which lasts a half hour.

For the first semester, I'd sit there and read. Reading is fine:  I enjoy reading.  But I read on the bus for an hour each workday, so I don't need more reading.  What I need is more shop time...


So!

Starting Friday, August 16, I started bringing along a small tool kit and two pieces of wood -- and I work on the wood.  I use one of the benches next to the tennis court as a workbench.


There are three different styles of benches next to the tennis court.  There's a pair of wooden benches which aren't suitable as workbenches because they each have a lip (indicated by the red circles) across the front of the seat, and also across the top of the back, which get in the way of clamping.

Similarly, the seats and backs on the aluminum benches aren't solid.  Instead, the back is hollow, with a lip all the way around:  again, this gets in the way of clamping.

So, I use this one.  It's clearly seen better days -- which is an advantage, as people at the school would be less likely to worry about me damaging the bench than if it was beautiful.  And it has an open structure, which allows me to clamp the boards I'm working on to the back and to the seat. For example, it's easy to pass my clamps through the gaps between the slats of the seat.

Here's one of the boards I'm working on, in the position I would clamp it when I'm (eventually!) ready to dovetail it.

Here's the position of my workpiece when I'm jointing the edge.  Ideally the wood would be perfectly vertical, and the top would be horizontal.  Instead, it's tilted towards me -- so when I'm using my handplane I have to adjust for that.

The red arrows (photo above, photo below) indicate the direction of handplaning.  You can also see how I butt the workpiece up to the concrete leg, which serves as a planing stop.  The concrete leg is sunk into the earth -- so there is no movement of my "workbench" whatsoever.

Below is how I clamp battens or stops to the seat of the bench, and then butt the workpiece against that.  I'm using a scrub plane to clean up and flatten the surface.

This next photo shows the workpiece pulled away from the battens, so you can see their positioning.  It also shows the towel a bit better.  The towel is mostly symbolic:  it signals that I'm taking steps to not damage the bench, and it also serves as visual contrast to show that my workpiece is separate from the park bench -- that is, that I'm **not** hacking away at the bench itself.

As you can see from this next photo, the bench isn't an optimal working height for some tasks.  Actually, for scrub planing the faces of the boards, I usually sit on the curb (upon which my left foot is standing).  When I'm jointing the edges of the boards (see earlier photos), the workpiece is actually at a comfortable height.

Here's a closer look at the wood that I'm working on.  They are two pieces, cut from a longer piece of hardwood that I found in my back yard (I forget exactly where) about five years ago.  I balanced it on a pile of bricks, unsheltered, and re-discovered it a few weeks before starting this project.  It's part of my wife's grandfather's legacy:  they used to own the property where we live, so there are piles of rusty metal, abandoned car parts, and stashes of 50-100 year old lumber here and there.

I'm cleaning up the surfaces, flattening the faces and jointing the edges (i.e. making them perpendicular to the faces).  Then I'll rip the boards in half to create bookmatched pairs (i.e. open the boards like a book, and the wood grain on the inside surfaces should mostly match each other).  These will eventually be the sides of a rustic-looking tool caddy.


And here's my stash of tools.  The specific contents will vary with the task.  Currently the caddy holds three clamps, the two wooden battens, a scrub plane, and some layout and marking tools (e.g. trysquare, grease pencils), plus my homemade plane-adjusting hammer.  When it's time to rip (resaw) the boards, I'll add a marking gauge, and carry my rip saw by hand; when it's time to dovetail, I'll swap in a backsaw, a bevel gauge and a marking knife.

And what am I building?  A tool caddy, similar to the one above but with more capacity.  It will serve as a portable, self-contained "dovetailing a box" kit -- with tools for scrubbing/surfacing, simple jointing, rabbeting, layout, and dovetailing.

It's somewhat recursive, I realize:  dragging a tool kit around and spending many hours to make...  a portable tool kit to drag around.  But I figure I have twelve more years of childrens' tennis lessons, soccer lessons, and etcetera.  I figure as long as there's a park bench, picnic table, or bleachers nearby, I can set up shop.  "Downtime" becomes "shop time".


My aim is to work on this project only during tennis lessons, and see how long it takes me. 


So far it's been working well. As I mentioned above, my first Friday doing this was Friday, August 16.  I've logged four Fridays of progress, and things are coming along -- and I arrive at work each Friday with a slight buzz, having started off the day with some woodworking.

(Although:  I have to clock in a few minutes late, as I work up a slight sweat while woodworking.  So I sneak off to the downstairs showers and change into my work clothes, before formally starting my day.)


Unfortunately, I didn't get to do any "portable woodworking" yesterday:  Thursday night I helped The Lady grade a bunch of papers (urgh), so I didn't get to bed until about 2am.  So instead of bringing my tool kit Friday morning, I brought a green bath towel -- which I folded up and used as a pillow during the kids' tennis lesson.

My nap took place on a different park bench.


--GG

Workbench mod

Ideally, I'd have a workbench with a top thick enough for dogholes -- holes into which you press or drop pegs or stops -- which you then brace your wood against.

But I don't.  One of these days I'll (probably) replace the crummy MDF top with a few nice solid slabs of wood.  But that's not gonna happen any time soon.

So, in the meantime, I choose to make various modifications to suit my needs -- while still keeping in mind that it's an ''heirloom'' workbench (it originally belonged to my wife's great-grandfather; presumably one of my kids will end up with it).

One of the modifications is taping a blue ''sewing'' measuring tape to the front edge of the benchtop (see photo above).  This allows me to approximately measure the length of wood without using a measuring tape -- for example, if I'm digging through scrap pieces of wood and looking for something ''around 18 inches long''.

In a similar vein, my solution to the difficulty in installing ''proper'' dogholes was to drill an array of holes, then populate these holes with short Allen screws (again, in the photo above).  By selectively extending these screws (see photo at left), I can create ''stops'' to butt my work against, for handplaning, chiseling, and etc.

Note the Allen key lying on top of my ''example'' piece of wood.  I put a big piece of tape on it so it's harder to misplace.

In this final photo (see below), I've butted up the piece of wood to the Allen screws I'd extended.  Because of where I stand -- basically, with my belly towards the blue measuring tape -- and because I'm right-handed, the chiseling and handplaning forces tend to be to the left and/or away from the front of the workbench.  So, the workpiece gets pushed up against the stops.

It also works well for securing sharpening stones when I'm sharpening.

Apologies for the poor-quality photos:  it's all by lamp light, as I didn't want to use up my camera batteries by using the flash.

--GG

Neat-o sawhorses

For some reason, I like sawhorses.  I own more of them than I need (seven, I think -- if you include my sawbench), I save photos of them to my hard drive, and when workers are in my office building I stop and gawk at their sawhorses (which weirds them out).

So:  here are some photos from a guy's webpage of his saw horses. 

I like 'em!  A hybrid between a ''pure'' sawhorse and a small workbench.


--GG

The best part of my vacation

Although it was indeed good to go off an a (short!) road-trip with my family -- I gotta admit, the best part was getting to spend three full days whipping the shed into shape.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday -- July 2nd through July 4th.

By ''shed'', I mean the three-car garage-sized outbuilding, which will never house a car.  Here in Aussie-land, we call that a shed.  About one-third of it is my workshop, and two-thirds of it are storage (bikes, suitcases, etc.).  We don't have a functional attic, nor a basement, so all the misc. ''guff'' deserves to be out there.

The problem is that I've been busy for the last few months -- with the chicken coop, plus other things -- so items have just been shoved into the shed around nightfall, then never properly placed.


My main goal was to put my workshop area into functional shape -- and I achieved this.  Photos below.  My secondary goal was to tidy and organize the ''storage'' area.  I improved the order -- but I simply ran out of time.  So, it's better -- but not how I'd like it.


Here's a few ''Before'' and ''After'' photos.


The main entrance -- Before...

 ... and After!

The difficulty was that this main entrance to the shed was where I'd stash all my frequently-used tools while I was building the chicken coop.  But they needed to be put away.  So, I did!


The nuts 'n' bolts shelf -- Before...

...and After!

The main problem with this area is that the blue ''bloodletting chair'' (long story; had for years but no place for it in the house) was in the way -- I always had to lean over it to reach these shelves.  The green up-ended table sitting on it was also in the way.  I moved the blue chair from this ''prime location'' into the deeper reaches of the shed (i.e. against a back wall), and moved the green table into a less-intrusive location.  (It has a bad leg: I'm going to repair it, and The Girl will use it as an art desk.)

I also was able to use up a fair bit of my stash of jars and containers in the process of sorting my nails, nuts 'n' bolts, and etcetra.  If the photo was less blurry you'd be able to see that all the boxes, tubs, and jars are labeled clearly.


My workbench -- Before...

...and After!

Woo-hoo!!!  Actual cleared **benchtop** **space**!!!

A lot of people hang tools off the wall behind their workbench.  I don't want to permanently attach anything to the wall -- it's just sheet metal -- so for the moment I'm using a small shelf which I (of course!) rescued from the side of the road.  Instead of hooks on the wall, I just lay my tools on the shelf.  Works well.



BONUS:  Working at night.

Here's the view -- post-tidy -- from near our back door:

And, standing in the shed doorway...

Because the shed doesn't have power running to it, I could only really work on things during the day -- which meant ''weekends only''.  Occasionally I'd try to do work at night -- but I'd have to hold a flashlight or wear a headlamp. 

BUT!!! -- I've now set things up so that I have two lamps permanently plugged in to a power strip, and an extension cord permanently coiled up near the other door.  Now when I want to do work at night, I just throw the cord out the door and plug it in to the nearby outlet on the side of the house.  Takes me about 60 seconds.

UPDATE:  Yep!  Have made use of being able to things at night about twice a week during the following four weeks.  Good stuff.


(Pre-emptive note:  Because we use 220 Volts here in Aussie-land, it's illegal to do your own home wiring, unless you're a licensed electrician.)


So:  I didn't accomplish **all** that I wanted to do.  But, by the end of this process, I could actually walk between each of the three doors without stepping over things!!!  And, I had a useable workbench.  And can actually find nuts and bolts, screws, and nails.

So, mission accomplished, really.


--GG

Woodworking in the kitchen

About a week ago The Lady was off at a conference for a few days. Normally, I can sneak off to my workshop after the kids are asleep, in order to log some time on woodworking projects. However, as the only adult in the house, I couldn't really do this.

So, in order to make some progress on a woodworking project, I moved my operations indoors. The kitchen, I reasoned, has hard floors that are sweep-able, and lots of counter space.

But I was careful to lay some towels over the counter, so I didn't scratch things.


The photo above shows my work in progress. Look! it's an oven!!! Yep, I'm in the kitchen. A pile of weatherbeaten wood on the floor in front of the oven, as well as in the toekick area to the left. (I'm leaving the wood grey and weatherbeaten: I'm going for a ''rustic'' look.)


The core of my operations were my little sawbench. A sawbench is basically just a sawhorse that's optimized in size and shape for more ergonomic sawing of boards using a handsaw: it's short enough that you can put your knee on it, thus securing the wood to be sawn.

My sawbench, however, has become a mini-workbench.

(Side note: Most sawbenches I've seen have splayed legs, which stick out beyond the work surface of the sawbench. See the fairly typical ''Google image search'' hit, below -- although there **are** a few with vertical legs. I designed my sawbench to have vertical legs, so that when I'm ripping lumber I don't accidentally cut into the legs.)



A good workbench (for hand tool woodworking, at least) is a clamping platform with enough mass to stay put. (I should possibly be citing Chris Schwarz' Workbench book here...) However, my sawbench is pretty darned light: I can pick it up with one hand.

I compensate for its lack of mass in two ways. First, I've installed a hook on the tail end, where I hang sandbags (rinsed-out juice jugs, filled with sand). This keeps the end from kicking up when I handplane.


The other thing I do is stick my right foot against the nearest leg of the sawbench. This keeps the sawbench from sliding forward when the wood resists the handplane. Standing this way is a little awkward, but not terrible. And, it works.

If standing like that became too awkward, I'd just lay a piece of wood on the floor, against the base of the kitchen cabinets, and brace the front legs of the sawhorse against the wood.


As far as its suitability for clamping: well, my sawbench is basically an elongated cube, and it's an open frame. So I can clamp things horizontally, vertically -- whatever.


For handplaning, and sharpening with a whetstone, I clamp a scrap of wood to the non-weighted end. This serves as a planing stop: you can see it sticking up vertically just a little bit past the work surface.



Then, to handplane a piece of wood, I just butt it up against the planing stop. In the below photo I've placed my sharpening stone in a similar position.



And, the photo below shows how I position my workpiece when I need to plane the edge. I've clamped a caul (is that the term? a cleat? a supporting length of board) across the two near legs of the sawbench. This supports the weight of the wood that I'm handplaning. Other clamps hold the wood in place horizontally.

This piece of wood, eventually, will become part of a rustic wooden box.


And: note that the right-hand bar clamp is actually clamped **between** the slats on the top of the sawhorse? In other words, not having a continuous top ''isn't a bug -- it's a feature!''

In instances where I need a solid top, I just throw a piece of plywood across the top.


Dimensions? Well, you can get a sense of scale relative to the clamps and the sharpening stone. But basically, mid-thigh height. The length and depth were determined by the board that I used for the top: the length is approximately one-third of the length of the original board (but allowing for two of the three slats to protrude slightly, as support for workpieces that hang over the edge); the width is three slats wide, plus the spaces between.

Making it thigh-height does deviate from most other sawbenches: most people make theirs just under the knee, to facilitate kneeling on the wood they're cutting. Again, I intentionally made mine higher than that, so that I could better use it as an emergency workbench (or a workbench for my kids). And mid-thigh still works for kneeling on the boards I'm cutting -- although, sometimes I supplement it with a clamp.


Anyhow: I used this arrangement for three nights, sweeping up the sawdust and wood shavings each night, but otherwise leaving everything set up.

And then, the night before my wife came home, I put everything away.


--GG

FINALLY got the bench

Well! After many false warnings about moving a workbench two whole blocks, from my wife's uncle's place to mine (I've uncovered an e-mail from me to him (11/29/09), anticipating "three to four weeks"!) I **finally** did it!

Did it this recent Sunday, June 12th, after church -- with the help of my next-door brother-in-law, the scrap metal hoarder (in symbiotic contrast to my wood hoarding).


According to my wife's uncle (who apprenticed as a carpenter in his youth [he's now in his 70s], but worked most of his life as a construction supervisor) :

The bench was under the grandparents house at Carl St Thompson Estate (Buranda). Great-Grandpa G. used it for general cabinet/carpentry work. He probably made the cedar sideboard we have here in our dining room on it.

When he died my Dad moved some of his stuff down here on the farm at Gumdale into one of the unused chicken houses. This was c. 1947/8.

I rescued it from the termites c. 1964.

I put a MDF board top on it around 1970 and previously used it to make all of the doors and windows on our house on it. Also our four poster bed. Plus lotsa other stuff I forget.

SO you had better to make GOOD use of it. Maybe keep warm in winter. Should burn well!!!!


So, it's somewhere around 100-120 years old -- **and** "family" (her uncle's paternal grandfather -- so, my wife's great-grandfather's). That's WAY cool!!! :)

Although I'm not a blood relative, my wife's uncle knows that I'm the most into woodworking than anyone else of my generation (i.e., his daughter or her partner; my wife; her sibs or their partners). So, a few years after I moved to Australia, he offered it to me: I just needed a good place to put it. My woodshop was built a year or two ago: then it was just a matter of lining up a weekend where I was free, my brother-in-law was free, the uncle was free, **and** it wasn't raining. And, **finally**...!!!

The uncle restores old cars -- so for him, this was just one of three large, flat surfaces to place things "in progress". After the brother-in-law and I moved this workbench out of the way, we replaced it with spare workbench that had been under the eaves behind the house for a decade or so. Then we balanced the workbench on a dolly and walked down the street (literally -- luckily, no traffic!), across my front yard, and then carried it from my carport to my workshop. A little heavy -- but not horrible.


Some snapshots, followed by relevant commentary, are below. As typical, click on the photo to enlarge it.


Here's a general shot of the workbench, including a "sleeve" (don't know the correct term) for the sliding arm(?) of the leg vice. (Leg vice! Neat-o!)

(Upon reflection: technically, I don't think it's a leg vice, as it's not mounted into the leg, and doesn't hold the workpiece against the leg. Just FYI.)

Note that my workshop area is fairly long and narrow. That's fine with me.

A lot of leg vices use a removable pin the the bottom sliding bar to keep it open: the bottom gap is supposed to be about the same width as the object being held in the top. Instead of a pin, I have three blocks of wood of differing thicknesses that I mix and match to create the right gap.


Check out the span of the leg vice! 9.25" (24cm). Yowza! That's **huge**!!!



One quirk of the workbench is that the uncle actually worked at the "back" of the workbench. One implication is that there's a "mystery hole" near the back (his "front"). I'll have to ask him what it's for.


Another implication of the front-versus-back conversion is that the MDF sheeting that he added is tidier at **his** front (which was the original "back"). So, when I'm using it in the original orientation (in order to use the vice), the added sheeting doesn't quite line up. Still functional, though.


Here's a closer shot of the left-hand end. You can see the MDF top, with the original top underneath, with the ragged ends. Sometime here I'll take off the MDF top, and probably add two to four inches of additional wood on top. That might involve taking an inch or two off the legs -- but that's o.k., as the ends of the legs (not shown) are a little ragged.

Note also that there's a very thin sheet of material over the original wooden apron (the vertical wood), which faces the vice. At some point, I'll remove that as well. I'll probably replace it with some half-inch planks of wood.



A closer view of the raggedy ends of the original top.




Here's a shot of the underneath the workbench -- just to give you a sense of the structure. The bottom-most horizontal, closest to the viewer, is a drawer runner: you can see its partner farther back in the picture. At some point I'll probably add a drawer there.



Here you can see the "borer" holes. The insects are supposedly long gone -- but I'll putty them up, just the same. If no new holes appear, then good. If new holes appear: bad.



Here's the tip of my thumb indicating the overhang of the MDF top over the vice area. Ideally, the benchtop is flush with the apron (the side of the workbench), so that you can clamp things between the vice face and the apron. The overhang messes this up. (Makes sense, though: the uncle used the other side of the workbench -- and didn't use this vice.)



Here's the early stages of my sawing away the overhang. Left an ugly edge -- but I didn't want to take the time to make it pretty. Besides, the whole MDF top will get removed, eventually.



Within about a half hour of putting the workbench in position, I was already using it! I'm in the process of puttying up the decorative grooves in a pair of old speaker boxes, prior to painting them with glow-in-the-dark paint. **Much** nicer to have a waist-high work surface, rather than working with them on the floor! And, much safer than doing things on the kitchen counter (and hoping to heck I don't screw up and damage the countertop!).


The workbench is a work in progress, to be sure. But, I'm honoured to have it.


--GG