Roubo lite

[Chris True]

Been working on a new bench for the past 3 or 4 weeks. I call it Roubo "lite" because the bench was built to use the quantity and width of wood I had available which made the top 3" thick rather than 4"+, the legs are also 4*3.5. Still plenty sturdy:)

So to start I picked up about 110 board feet of 8/4 ambrosia maple in the form of 3 16 foot planks, 12", 14" and 16" wide. I had to cut them in half lengthwise to fit em in the SUV. Later I went back for another much smaller board to finish off the stretchers. The orignal load was enough for the top, the legs and about a third of the stretchers.

So to start I planed and ripped the top boards to 3.25" plus and glued up the basic top which is a few inches short of 8 feet long. End caps gave me a final length of 97.5". I'm thinking of a possible sliding leg vise so I laid a 4 foot length of angle iron in a groove routed in the bottom after the basic flattening with hand planes.

[Chris True]

Next up was a long weekend working on the wagon vise. I used a shoulder vise screw from Lee Valley, the dog block fits in a void left during the top glue up with a 3/4" rabbet routed on each side on the bottom. The dog block is trapped in place by a 2" strip of 1/8" steel on each side fitted to a shallow groove so it is all flush with the bottom.

[Chris True]

Leg blanks were glued up and run through the jointer / planer / cleaned up with a #4.5. 2" tenons cut on the end of the legs and mortised in to the top. Stretchers offered up and tenons / mortises cut.

[Chris True]

Final fitting and assembly took a couple days. I carefully adjusted each joint vertically so the shelf support rabbets cut in the strectchers all lined up then drilled all the legs for draw bore pins (3/8" oak dowels), clamped up the end frames and marked the tenons, took it apart and drilled the offset holes. The two end frames were glued with epoxy and draw bored first. The top was drilled for draw bore pins, end frames temporarily clamped in place to mark the pins then removed to drill the holes. Last night the long stretchers were epoxied and pinned to make a base. Finally, the top was slid on to the base and the tenons dropped in the mortises with a "Thud"! No glue on the leg to top joints, just oak dowels pounded in place.

[Dan Andrews]

That sure is a nice bench Chris. I never heard of ambrosia maple. Sure is pretty wood though.

[Brett Bobo]

Chris,
She's coming along--looks good! I must say that the plane till cabinet behind the bench was well done. Is that Garrett Hack's design from a recent FW magazine?

[Chris True]

It is basically red maple with a bug infestation (worm?) that results in the streaks Dan. Pretty cheap @ appr. $3 a BF for 8/4.

The cabinet is a Schwarz design, I believe it appeared in the recent plane book as well as hand tool essentials among other places. I did that cabinet a couple months ago, pretty pleased with it :)

[Mark Baldwin III]

Would it be possible to get some more details on the wagon vise? It's something that I'd like to try to build, but I'm just having trouble picturing the whole thing. For whatever reason, I have a hard time visualizing certain things. Been a mechanic all of my life, you'd think I'd be able to figure it out.

[Chris True]

Sure, I'll snap a couple more pics shortly

[Chris True]

Here you go, the end cap is centered by an internal tenon and bolted to the end of the bench with 4.5" long lags. The nut for the screw is inserted from the inside of the cavity and burried in the end cap. If anything isn't clear just ask. The steel came from Lowes, drilled and countersunk on the drill press. Then 1" long 10-24 contersunk screws are drilled and tapped into the bench wood to hold them in place.

[Mark Baldwin III]

Thanks! That's pretty much exactly what I needed to see. I was trying to think of ways of keying the moving part of the vise, and your method simply did not occur to me. This will likely be the route I take when I start on my bench top in January.

[Pat Barry]

Chris - love the way this bench looks. The ambrosia maple is beautiful. Are you going to put a coat of finish on the bench to protect it? What are you going to use? Also a question about the end caps - they look to be breadboard style. Are your holes in the end caps slotted to allow for the expansion / contraction of the top?

[Chris True]

I'll probably use a couple coats of watco danish oil natural. Need to get the top fully flattened first though. Yes the bolt holes towards the back of the top are slotted, the front two holes are not. Actually, that's a good point. I have to look at the non-wagon vise end, I may not have slotted the outer two holes. I thought about it and may have put it off on that end.

[Chris True]

So, today's task was to fabricate the leg vise chop, parallel guide and sliding deadman. I had done the guide wheels during the week. The design s all shamelessly stolen from the Benchcrafted design, their instruction book and the predecesor prototype unit and the oldluthier web blog found here http://oudluthier.blogspot.com/2008/06/bench-3-leg-vise-rollers.html

The rollers are blocks of maple + $30 worth or skateboard wheels and bearings and about $12 worth of hardware from the local hardware store. Clevis pins, which is what I used as a shaft, are expensive! The chop and legman are from 10/4 ash, still need a little shaping and chamfering but the basics are there. The vise is shown at near max capacity, it'll go another 1/2" or so.

With one exception it operates very smoothly and I'm quite pleased with it. If I screw the collar tight to the chop the vise screw handle boss wants to whirl through about a 5 degree arc and everything tightens up a lot. If I back off those screws the collar plate will wobble a bit and allow everything to turn smoothly. Obviously something is not machined right, not sure if this is just par for the course with these < $30 screws or if it is a defect. In anycase, it works well and didn't cost $325 :)

[Chris Fournier]

Very nice bench but I don't understand the Roubo reference as your bench is about two centuries of sophistication advanced from the Roubo bench from what I understand. The Roubo bench had no tail vise or dog holes and used very primitive (yet effective) 18th century work holding fixtures. I've seen vintage benches made in this style and they were all single slabs of wood. The Roubo bench in Scott Landis' "Workbench Book" looked pretty similar to the benches I saw overseas.

[Bill Rusnak]

That's a great looking bench and some great ideas on your vises. The steel support bars for the wagon vise are a great idea.

Could you give us some details on the materials you used for the leg vise roller as well?

Thanks, Bill

[Chris True]

Sure, the wheels and bearings are from a skateboard shop. You could use the wheels as is but the are a bit wide. I made a little fixture to hold the wheel and fed it into the badsaw blade to skim about an 1/8" or 3/16" off each side. You are left with bearing grooves too narrow for the bearings so I removed the center nubs allowing the bearings to seat fully. The nubs get removed partially with a 3/4" forstner and the rest is sanded away on the spindle sande. For shafts I used clevis pins and a keeper clip from the hardware store. A cheaper choice would be to cut the unthreaded portion off a big 5/16" carraige bolt and use a set screw or two to keep the shaft imobilized.

[Chris True]

Last night I applied a bit of finish to the top and the deadman as well as softened the edges on the leg vise with some champhering. Still need another board or two for the shelf along with some tongue and grooves. At some point I'll acquire another bench screw and do a sliding leg vise...

[Peter Aeschliman]

I love this bench. I've studied this thread numerous times. Congratulations and thanks for posting!

[Chris True]

I think I"ll declare the proect complete. A couple days before Christmas I ordered another tail vise screw from Lee Valley and over the weekend I turned my remaining 6 foot length of 10/4 Ash into the sliding leg vise, also ragged on a couple coats of danish oil on the base and 4 on the top. The screw came in yesterday so I put it all together. Need to edge joint a 5 foot board? Dovetail a 24 inch wide carcass side (aka plywood here <g>)? No problem!

[Peter Aeschliman]

So cool... I can't think of a single reasonable clamping operation you can't do with this bench.