Mostly Neander Work Bench Build (Pic Heavy)

[Randy Bonella]

Hi All,
I've posted here a couple of times and finally decided to get serious on my work bench.

The story goes I have a friend who owns a number of green houses here in Oregon and he heats them in the winter burning wood. He gets bundles of rough cut wood from a local beam manufacturer at some ridiculously low prices. Much of what I salvaged is 8/4 x 10' x 10"+. A few surprises with some really hard spalted maple in the bundle most is Doug Fir and pretty well seasoned at that. Beyond ripping the timber to width on my table saw most of the bench will be build the Neander way, so can't say all done using hand tools. Pretty much Following the Roubo design from Chris Schwarz. Starting with the legs I've finally gotten far enough to show a little progress and wanted to document it. I'll post more as I go. Feel free to ask questions and I'm really new to this level of woodworking but having a lot of fun doing it.

This is the pile of wood I started with:


Ripped and cut to rough length using Table saw and SCMS:


Flattened the boards to prep for glue up:


The Glue-up, I'm going to need more clamps for the top!


Cutting the Tenons, Got better on each one but still tended to undercut so lost about 1/8" on the tenon width. should have been 3" not 2 7/8". Used Japanese pull razor saw. Works pretty well but not the easiest thing to cut these massive ends.


All 4 leg tenons now done. One to the mortices and milling the wood for the top. 28 1/2" to the shoulder of the tenon and 3 1/2" tenon, May lop off 1" prior to mounting to the top. Top will be about 4 1/2" thick mostly Doug Fir giving me a bench height of 33" when finished. I'm 5'7" and think this height is about right for me. If not I can adjust it.



Next installment will be the stretchers. It'll probably take me a couple weeks to get that part done in concert with milling up the wood for the table top.

Next question is to put in sq. dogs or wait and just bore round ones? Any inputs on that one?

Front vise will be a leg vise like shown in Christopher's book end vise I'm thinking I'll use a 9" Jorgensen Quick release I bought about a year ago. Also might consider a wagon vise but that means more money which I'm a bit short on at the moment. Any suggestions? pro's or con's? Keep in mind I'm a hobbiest.

[harry strasil]

nice job, but I would have used the nice rift sawn planks for the top as they will hardly warp at all if any.

[David Gendron]

nice work, so far! one thing to consider, it would be to put the paralel guide of your leg vise above the stretcher so you don't have to reach so low to move the pin!

[Randy Bonella]

David,
Thanks, I saw what Jamel did on his and though that was a good idea. didn't know if there was a functional issue moving the parallel guide up over the stretchers. Didn't seem to be a problem and thanks for the input makes sense.

Harry,
A good chunk of the wood I have is flat sawn but when ripped to size will have sections rift sawn. I'll keep it in mind and see if I can be selective. Makes sense to keep the movement to a min. for the top.

Thanks for the comments, I'll post more as I go. Learning a lot about how to do this neander type work even if it is only partially neander.

Randy...

[Randy Bonella]

Hi All,
I'm slow as a turtle at this but I've started to prep the wood for my top. Other than using my table saw to cut the slabs into proper width for top thickness the rest of the dimensioning and squaring is being done by hand using hand planes and winding sticks. I've got about 2/3's of my top prepped and will start the glue-up sometime later this week. I still need to get a couple more slabs from my friend to get enough material to finish the top. I'll do final board prep just prior to glue-up to fix any twisting that may occur due to the initial prep.

I do have one question for you all: Any recommendations on board ordering for glue-up of the top based on the different cuts of boards? any issues using any of the boards in my current stack?

[Matt Evans]

My only suggestion with the stock ordering and the current glue up is to select more rift sawn boards. ( Harry mentioned it already, I believe.)

# 3 is the best of the bunch currently glued up, in my opinion. A more stable top, and any movement will be more vertical, which is easy to flatten.

Looking good otherwise!

[David Gendron]

I agree with Matt(#3) if you can get most of you stock that way it would make for a rely stable top.... That said, I didn't pay much attention when building mine and it seem to be relatively stable!

[Chen-Tin Tsai]

The pictures you took are exactly what I'm trying to figure out. I'm in the beginning stages of designing my bench and I'm mentally working through the logistics of working each piece. I'm interested to see how your top works out, and how you flatten it.

[Randy Bonella]

Hi CT,
I haven't had a lot of time in the workshop lately but I have been able to get more of the top boards cleaned up. I'm hoping to get started on laminating the top next week and I'll add more information to this thread as I do it. I think I've figured out a method to my madness. One thing I am concerned about is not having enough clamps once I get this more than 14" wide, we'll see. Good excuse to buy more clamps

This is my current state in prep, and a bit more yet to go. Other than ripping by my table saw all the squaring and cleaning up is done by hand. Some of this wood is incredibly hard and been having to work hard to prep it.

Randy...

[Randy Bonella]

One more thing: This sucker is heavy. It didn't seem so bad when it was about 14" wide but now with it at near 26", pre glue, its a bear to lift. One key learning is that once this thing was about 18" wide and I was planing the other boards it didn't move at all on the saw horses. Can't wait to get real legs on it. should be rock solid!

Final top dimensions will be about 86" long, 24" or so wide and 4.5" thick. I contemplated leaving it at a full 96" but I just don't have the space. I knocked off about 10" and it feels like it fits much better.

I had to get a 2nd load of lumber to finish up the top and have enough for the stretchers. I'm loosing about 40% to waste because of severe defects. This batch had been sitting out in a field all winter so far and was pretty wet. Its spent a week or so in the garage stickered with fans on it prior to ripping to rough width. I did this batch a bit different and it proved to be much much easier. I used a straight edge and skill saw to get it to rough width then the table saw to nominal width. First batch I did all on the table saw and that proved to be extremely difficult. This was much easier.

Hopefull some glue-up pix next week.

Randy...

[David Gendron]

Randy, I would like to find a field that grow rough dry lumbers like that!! Lucky you!

[Chen-Tin Tsai]

Looking good. Now, you said that when you planed the other boards when it was 18", did you glue them down and then plane them flat? Are you going to flatten the entire top once you've glued down all of the planks?

[Randy Bonella]

Now if I could only get it to grow without knots, checks, twisting, warping and be of uniform thickness.... I've been lucky, timing was right but my supply is going away. I might try and forge a relationship with his supplier and see if possible to pick through the discard pile at the beam maker. Just farther away
and not sure they would be amenable to it but we'll see.

Randy, I would like to find a field that grow rough dry lumbers like that!! Lucky you!

Randy...

[Randy Bonella]

Question: I'm about ready to start my top glue-up. I'll be doing it one board at a time Until I get the stack done. I got a few more top boards cleaned up the last couple days and once I have the back 3-4 boards ready I'll start gluing.

One key question beyond "Dog Type" is placement. I see benches with the Dogs located within a couple of inches of the front as shown in Jameel's blog and web site to as far back as Schwarz Roubo with the location a good 5"-6" away from the front. Based on the way I'm currently working I'm thinking similar to Jameel's is better but as I have zero experience with this I'd ask before I cut. Dog to Dog spacing will be 3"-4".

The wagon vise will be made with a home made wood screw. Another woodworker here in Portland has offered to help make a few of them. He has the right tools and I have Hard maple blanks that are perfect for the task. I'll be posting the design and build portion of the wagon vise soon.

Thanks for all the help!

Randy...

[Randy Bonella]

Well I've been making some progress on the bench finally. I'm down to the last 5 boards to get my top to width. Also been working with another local woodworker to build a wooden screw wagon vise for the bench. I've been gluing up the top one board at a time. May be slow but the only way I can handle this by myself. I'm at 15" width. The most interesting thing about this project to date is that I"m getting much better at sharpening my plane irons. While not perfect yet they are getting much better. Since going to the LN show a few weeks back my skills have improved markedly. I'll be working on the wagon vise and have included a rough drawing on what I"m planning on doing. Each board was hand plane rough to square then once I started the glue up each board was final prepped just prior to glue up. Didn't want to risk getting it all square then finding out the wood moves before I could get to it.

I took the shot of the bench top between glue-ups. The top has remained amazing stable in this vertical position. Still getting used to how much glue to put on to minimize squeeze out. getting better but still wasting a bit of glue.

Comments and feedback welcome. Particularly on the wagon vise shuttle design.

Looks like I'll get to the wooden screw this week. We've got 3-4 to make and so we'll see how it all goes. I'll be posting some in progress pix as we go.

Randy...