I've been planning on building my first bench for a while now and was fortunate to be given access to a good bit of scrap wood from my employers to make a bench with. I'm using Chris Schwarz's plans from his first book and will have similar dimensions, but my process will be a bit different due to the nature of my material. I'm posting now instead of when finished in hopes for constructive feedback, before I make any big mistakes. I'm still new at this and can always use helpful wisdom from those that have been there and done that.
I'm just getting started at this point and this bench will be more of a hybrid approach to tools used in its construction. I love using hand tools and am really looking forward to having a bench to do a lot more handwork on, but in the interest of time and size of some of this material, I am using the power tools that are at my disposal and will use my hand tools for all the finesse and finishing touches. I respect you guys that are a little more neanderthal than me, but I just need to get up and running with something for the first time and don't have 6 months to spend hand cutting everything. I love reading and learning on this sub-forum, so I figured I'd contribute my 2 cents with my little project. I also thought this may be a useful primer for some folks in the future that may want to use materials that aren't exactly, err pre-dimensioned for their specific use. Takes a little bit of sweat and time, but it's not too bad to rip and resaw stuff to fit your project.
My initial plan was the build the bench using Douglas Fir, which is quite plentiful in the shop where I work. After looking around a bit though, I was fortunate enough to be given a nearly 14' long 6x9 beam of laminated of white oak used in a previous job about 6-7 years ago. Most of the laminated material is 6/4 or 8/4 and when I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for a bench top after a couple of cuts. Here's what it looked like after I crosscut it in half. I'm shooting for a bench roughly 24" wide by 80" long.
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After crosscutting, I took each half to the table saw and ripped the 9" wide timber in half, giving me roughly (2) 4 3/8 pieces. This will the be the thickness of the bench (it will end up being pretty close to 4" after milling and squaring all the stock.) So there are (4) 6" wide timbers that I will glue up to make the 24" wide top. I'm lucky to have had someone else do all that laminating previously. Saves me tons of time and work by just having to glue up with only 3 big glue lines. Haven't determined the order they will be glued in, but this is generally what the top will look like.
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Next, I found some nice Doug Fir timber frame drops to pick my leg and stretcher material from. It was a bit of a process milling these pieces from such large stock, but no biggie really. One good thing about having such large stock to work with is that you can select for optimum grain direction pretty easily. This is what the stock looked like after I pulled it out of storage and a pic of some table saw ripping and milling. I cleaned up each ripped face with my no 5 1/2 to square things up enough to ride on the table saw top and fence squarely. Only needed to take one cut to the bandsaw to saw out what was left. The rest of it worked with the table saw, flipping the stock over and cutting from each side.
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Then, I brought my stock home to mill square on my own jointer and planer. I've got a bit more planing to do on the top and frame, but everything is jointed square on at least 1 face and adjacent edge. I plan to have the milling finished today or tomorrow and get ready for glueing up the top. I may have access to a Domino for that. I have never used one, but was offered access to use it for glue-up, which may save me a bit of time later in flattening the top after glue-up. I know how stuff can slide around with glue on it at the last minute and make a lot more work for you that you anticipated. It was a bit of a trick jointing a 7' long, full dimension oak 4x6s but I got them square and didn't need to remove too much material in the process. This oak seems pretty stable.
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I will update as I make progress. Next up is glueing up the top and starting to cut tenons for stretchers (and legs) and begin to assemble the frame. Thanks for looking!
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