Phil Stone
02-22-2016, 8:32 PM
The shelf and deadman are finally in, so I’m going to call my Roubo “done” *now*, even though I’ve been using it for over a year. At last, I can take pretty pictures of it without having to make any excuses:
332284332283
This bench pretty closely follows Schwarz’s Roubo plan from his “Workbenches” book, in a left-handed orientation. There have been so many excellent Roubo build tutorials here that I won’t even try to go into all the details of construction, but will instead concentrate on the things that make this bench different.
The main departure from Schwarz’s Roubo is the top, which is a hybrid: a maple “Bally Block” top over a douglas fir sub-top frame.
332285
Why this design? I’ve asked myself that countless times while building it, and the only answer I’ve been able to come up with is “it just happened.” I thought about building a workbench for hand tool use for a very long time. But when the time and opportunity finally came, instead of proceeding methodically, I leaped impulsively into buying an on-sale 24” X 60” X 1-3/4” Bally Block maple top, which I figured I’d just design a bench under.
The more I researched the subject, the more I realized I wanted a big, heavy bench with at least a three inch-thick top. I probably could have done the hand tool work I envisioned with a 1-3/4” top, but I really began to favor the massiveness and solidity of the Roubo design.
At this point, a wiser man would have sold the Bally Block top, and proceeded to glue up a nice, thick, side-grain top. Classic Roubo, in other words. Instead, I came up with the hybrid design. Let me get the pros and cons out of the way up front: it was quite the learning experience, and while I really like the finished product, I’m not sure I’d recommend it over the more straight-forward, classic approach. My main complaint is that the block-maple top cannot be easily flattened with a handplane, as grain direction is all over the place, determined by the layout of the blocks as they are glued up.
On the other hand, there’s no reason this sub-top design couldn’t be combined with one’s own glued-up maple top instead of the Bally-Block. Having the much less expensive doug-fir sub-top allows a maple (or other wood of choice) top that is much thinner than a traditional Roubo top (e.g. 2” laminations would be plenty of wood to plane flat many times), but still feels and behaves like a four-inch thick top.
For better or worse, I went with the idea.
The sub-top, as already mentioned, is a frame made out of douglas fir. Two laminated beams define the front and back rails of the frame, with six cross-ties running between. Voids for the leg mortises are designed into the laminations of the rail/beams.
The cross-ties are attached to the rails with tapered sliding dovetails. Part of my design criteria for the bench was that it be able to be packed up and moved without too much trouble, so I used knockdown joinery whenever possible. I may have taken this a little far with the sub-top! I became fascinated with tapered sliding dovetail joints right about the time I was thinking about this top design, and thought “how hard could it be?”.
The answer is “hard (but worth it)”. It required lots of router jig building, tweaking, destroying and rebuilding. I ultimately intend to learn how to cut this joint by hand, because I didn’t enjoy doing it with a router much at all, in fact I found it to be very stressful! Finally, however, I got the jigs dialed in, cut the tails into the ends of the ties, cut the sockets into the rails, and incredibly, it all fit together!
Aside from the two rail laminations, the sub-top has no glue or fasteners. The tapered sliding dovetails essentially wedge it together, and in turn, the heavy top locks them in place. This all adds up to a very rigid top, and gives additional mass to the bench. After all that work on the tapered sliding dovetails, though, I think a glued-up mortise and tenon design would have worked sufficiently without being much more incovenient to move. I *do* like how this frame assembles and disassembles with nothing more than a soft hammer, though. In fact, assembling or disassembling it makes me inordinately happy!
The maple end caps were a bit of an after-thought. I didn’t like the way the unfinished ends looked without caps. The caps essentially lock the top and subtop together, with elongated holes in the back of the sub-top to allow for cross-grain movement. That turned out to be a good thing — the whole top sandwich can be lifted off as a unit for quick moves of the bench, and it’s nice to not *have* to take the whole top apart in those cases. When it *is* necessary to break it down further, though, the pins on the endcaps can be driven out.
The leg vise consists of a Lee Valley “tail vice screw”, a Benchcrafted Criss Cross device, and a two-and-a-half inch-thick maple chop (laminated from thinner stock).
332286
For some reason, the deadman took me a couple of months to finish. I think that since I could see the light at the end of the tunnel (and again, was already using the bench), I was in no hurry; maybe I was even putting off the “end” of the project. Anyway, it occurred to me that the deadman would look and function better without the gap between its tenon shoulder and the top of the bench (which allows it to be tilted into the extra-deep mortise and then set back down onto its track).
I came up with a “no-gap” design that uses a sliding tenon:
332287
This is not much harder to make than the normal, tilt-in deadman, and it works very well. As a bonus, the mortise in the top of the bench only needs to be deep enough to fit the tenon, not extra deep to allow the tilt-in. The two knob-bolts go into threaded inserts in the main body of the deadman. It’s easy and quick to set the deadman in place: slide the tenon to its lowest position, then put the deadman on the track. Reach up behind it and slide the tenon up into the mortise as far as it will go, then tighten the knobs. To remove the deadman, loosen the knobs and slide the tenon down.
I get a great deal of joy from working on this bench, and I also greatly enjoyed the process of designing and building it. I’m happy to call it “done”, though! I’ve made a detailed SketchUp model of it (which I found indispensible during the design and construction), and if there is demand, perhaps I’ll upload it to the 3D Warehouse. If anyone has any questions, or wants to see additional photos, let me know. Thanks for reading!
332284332283
This bench pretty closely follows Schwarz’s Roubo plan from his “Workbenches” book, in a left-handed orientation. There have been so many excellent Roubo build tutorials here that I won’t even try to go into all the details of construction, but will instead concentrate on the things that make this bench different.
The main departure from Schwarz’s Roubo is the top, which is a hybrid: a maple “Bally Block” top over a douglas fir sub-top frame.
332285
Why this design? I’ve asked myself that countless times while building it, and the only answer I’ve been able to come up with is “it just happened.” I thought about building a workbench for hand tool use for a very long time. But when the time and opportunity finally came, instead of proceeding methodically, I leaped impulsively into buying an on-sale 24” X 60” X 1-3/4” Bally Block maple top, which I figured I’d just design a bench under.
The more I researched the subject, the more I realized I wanted a big, heavy bench with at least a three inch-thick top. I probably could have done the hand tool work I envisioned with a 1-3/4” top, but I really began to favor the massiveness and solidity of the Roubo design.
At this point, a wiser man would have sold the Bally Block top, and proceeded to glue up a nice, thick, side-grain top. Classic Roubo, in other words. Instead, I came up with the hybrid design. Let me get the pros and cons out of the way up front: it was quite the learning experience, and while I really like the finished product, I’m not sure I’d recommend it over the more straight-forward, classic approach. My main complaint is that the block-maple top cannot be easily flattened with a handplane, as grain direction is all over the place, determined by the layout of the blocks as they are glued up.
On the other hand, there’s no reason this sub-top design couldn’t be combined with one’s own glued-up maple top instead of the Bally-Block. Having the much less expensive doug-fir sub-top allows a maple (or other wood of choice) top that is much thinner than a traditional Roubo top (e.g. 2” laminations would be plenty of wood to plane flat many times), but still feels and behaves like a four-inch thick top.
For better or worse, I went with the idea.
The sub-top, as already mentioned, is a frame made out of douglas fir. Two laminated beams define the front and back rails of the frame, with six cross-ties running between. Voids for the leg mortises are designed into the laminations of the rail/beams.
The cross-ties are attached to the rails with tapered sliding dovetails. Part of my design criteria for the bench was that it be able to be packed up and moved without too much trouble, so I used knockdown joinery whenever possible. I may have taken this a little far with the sub-top! I became fascinated with tapered sliding dovetail joints right about the time I was thinking about this top design, and thought “how hard could it be?”.
The answer is “hard (but worth it)”. It required lots of router jig building, tweaking, destroying and rebuilding. I ultimately intend to learn how to cut this joint by hand, because I didn’t enjoy doing it with a router much at all, in fact I found it to be very stressful! Finally, however, I got the jigs dialed in, cut the tails into the ends of the ties, cut the sockets into the rails, and incredibly, it all fit together!
Aside from the two rail laminations, the sub-top has no glue or fasteners. The tapered sliding dovetails essentially wedge it together, and in turn, the heavy top locks them in place. This all adds up to a very rigid top, and gives additional mass to the bench. After all that work on the tapered sliding dovetails, though, I think a glued-up mortise and tenon design would have worked sufficiently without being much more incovenient to move. I *do* like how this frame assembles and disassembles with nothing more than a soft hammer, though. In fact, assembling or disassembling it makes me inordinately happy!
The maple end caps were a bit of an after-thought. I didn’t like the way the unfinished ends looked without caps. The caps essentially lock the top and subtop together, with elongated holes in the back of the sub-top to allow for cross-grain movement. That turned out to be a good thing — the whole top sandwich can be lifted off as a unit for quick moves of the bench, and it’s nice to not *have* to take the whole top apart in those cases. When it *is* necessary to break it down further, though, the pins on the endcaps can be driven out.
The leg vise consists of a Lee Valley “tail vice screw”, a Benchcrafted Criss Cross device, and a two-and-a-half inch-thick maple chop (laminated from thinner stock).
332286
For some reason, the deadman took me a couple of months to finish. I think that since I could see the light at the end of the tunnel (and again, was already using the bench), I was in no hurry; maybe I was even putting off the “end” of the project. Anyway, it occurred to me that the deadman would look and function better without the gap between its tenon shoulder and the top of the bench (which allows it to be tilted into the extra-deep mortise and then set back down onto its track).
I came up with a “no-gap” design that uses a sliding tenon:
332287
This is not much harder to make than the normal, tilt-in deadman, and it works very well. As a bonus, the mortise in the top of the bench only needs to be deep enough to fit the tenon, not extra deep to allow the tilt-in. The two knob-bolts go into threaded inserts in the main body of the deadman. It’s easy and quick to set the deadman in place: slide the tenon to its lowest position, then put the deadman on the track. Reach up behind it and slide the tenon up into the mortise as far as it will go, then tighten the knobs. To remove the deadman, loosen the knobs and slide the tenon down.
I get a great deal of joy from working on this bench, and I also greatly enjoyed the process of designing and building it. I’m happy to call it “done”, though! I’ve made a detailed SketchUp model of it (which I found indispensible during the design and construction), and if there is demand, perhaps I’ll upload it to the 3D Warehouse. If anyone has any questions, or wants to see additional photos, let me know. Thanks for reading!