General

I’ve Figured it Out!

I call myself “The Apartment Woodworker”. But, really, nowadays, I’m the “small space woodworker”. Which doesn’t sound as cool, but it still pretty accurate (my workshop where my workbench and tool chest reside is a 12×13 bedroom). But after all these years of woodworking (8ish?), I’ve finally figured it out: the setup for woodworking in an apartment or other small space like a proper woodworker.

This is literally the apex of everything I’ve worked towards.

Without hyperbole, I feel like I’ve reached the apex of the intellectual exercise of small space woodworking. It starts with the Apartment Workbench, which is constructed entirely from 10 or less home center 2×4’s and built basically like a heavy-duty sawbench. Although the saw-bench construction might make the bench a bit tippy if the legs are too far in from the ends, the vertical legs might have a benefit: the design makes it easy to clamp onto the gussets.

When you add a couple of shop made sawhorses in the Japanese style, some F-style clamps, and maybe a strip of 3/4 plywood for a tool tray, you’ve apparently got an actual workbench. The gusset on the legs clamps to the cross beam of the sawhorse (both front and back) and that’s your workbench. Some lumber stored across the lower stretchers would add to the mass of the bench, but it’s not strictly necessary. And I’d probably add some non-skin disks to the sawhorses to make sure you’re not sliding around on a slick, laminate apartment floor.

The legs barely extend past the sawhorse.

But, all in all, it works as well as I could hope. It’s not perfect, as the combined height of a typical sawhorse (29″) and a 2×4 slab (3.25″ or so) is uncomfortable for much besides hand planing. But one can always clamp on whatever workholding you need beyond the palm, such as a moxon vise. I prefer a bench around 34.75″ high for most work (I’m exactly 5’10”), btw.

But, as far as I can tell, this is absolutely serviceable for a small space woodworking bench. It’s basically a Japanese planing bench, with some Western brute force adjustments.

Although I would recommend chopping mortises at the back end over the back sawhorse. For whatever reason, it jumps less when you chop on the back than the front.

Maybe it was just the grass.

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Apartment Workbench Update

After several months of working on the low, Apartment Workbench, I’ve learned a few things. First, 90 degrees is not the right angle for a palm-style planing stop. It doesn’t hold thinner stock on edge very well, and often the mouth is too wide to grip boards on their face. 60 degrees seems much better.

Compare the old palm arrangement:

In fairness, it’s more like 92 degrees.

To the new arrangement:

3/8″ still seems about the right height for these, though.

In addition, 9 inches of benchtop overhang beyond the vertical legs is not great. It’s fine in the front, where the palm interferes with things that might accidentally tip the bench forward. But on the back, in practice, it prevents one from sitting all the way back on the bench, effectively shortening the working area of the bench when planing. Even crosscutting on that end is precarious because of tipping.

The solution is either to move the legs further back (maybe 3 inches from the end of the bench would work) so the leverage is less OR, if you’re so adventurous, cant the legs forward so they sit at compound angles to the benchtop.

Speaking of which, that’s harder than it looks:

This reminds of a deer, for some reason.

It’s not so much the cutting of the compound angle on the leg that’s difficult. That’s pretty much just extending the usual saw bench birds-mouth joint with an extra angle on the shoulder. And then some fiddling after to make sure everything is crisp.

There is more to it, but this isn’t a how-to.

What presented more difficult was leveling the feet. After the initial cuts marked out with the 4×4 of justice, tweaking the legs to be perfectly flat alluded me. Perhaps it’s because it was saw horse height, and I couldn’t track the jointer plane off the other leg. Or perhaps because of tolerance stack the compound angles resulted in something that didn’t quite match the reference angle.

But it was good practice. And the net net on these compound angled legs is that I’m ready to move onto a proper Chinese-style low bench with compound leg angles. I plan to take significant advantage of rasps and floats the first run at it, as the legs will be mortised in (not affixed to the outside) And I have just the slab for it, too.

Reclaimed from the back wing of the old ash workbench.

But more on that soon.

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Thought Experiment, Part Deux

In my ongoing efforts to replenish my intellectual excitement for woodworking, I have undergone a periodic downsizing of my tool kit. Using a full sized, English-style floor chest is great. But it gave me the space for extraneous tools to creep in. And, when something can happen, it does happen. So the best solution to reducing a tool kit is to reduce the available tool storage.

Another Dutch Tool Chest for the archives.

This particular Dutch Tool Chest has no dovetails. For good reason: the entire thing was built on the low, apartment woodworking bench. Which has no vices. And I’m a tails-first kind of person. The bottom corners are rabbeted and nailed, which is more than solid enough, even if it was actually more work to assemble than dovetails would have been. Well, more clamps and cauls, at least. I have a feeling it would have been easier if the apartment woodworking bench was more than 9.75″ inches wide.

Wooden hand screws are well worth the investment, if you’ve never used them.

I also, for the first time, just bought shiplapped pine siding from the home center instead of bothering to do my own rabbets or tongue and grooving. It saved quite a bit of time and effort and, if you pick through the pile, you can find knot-free wood. A sixteen foot board was like $8. I have no idea why I ever bothered doing this myself. Just put the course side facing into the chest.

Sure, the chamfers are a bit wide, but it’s the back of the case.

As I’ve done additional woodworking, I’ve slowly moved tools over to the new tool chest. A few things that haven’t made the cut yet:

1 1/2″ chisel (my 1 1/4″ is just fine)
Scrub plane (my No. 5 is just fine)
No. 3 smoothing plane (my No. 4 is just fine)
Low angle block plane (I’ve migrated to a rabbet block plane over time)
Roll of firmer gouges
Quarter set of Hollows and Rounds (Nos. 2, 4, 6, and 8)
Yankee Push Screwdriver
Large (18″ max) dividers

Although, it’s fair to say, I don’t think there is room for any of that stuff in the new tool chest anyway.

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Cultural Appreciation

Let me be the first to say: I have no non-American cultural identity. It’s just the way I was raised: my family doesn’t associate with any other country other than America. We’re just American, with no hyphens.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk about Chinese workbenches. To learn about working on a low workbench, I’ve done quite a bit of internet researching the forms and methods of low workbenches (as compared to high workbenches with vises). And part of that research involved Chinese woodworking.

From what I’ve seen, traditional Chinese woodworking involves bowsaws (or framesaws) on the push and they also push planes (but there is a cross-bar that’s held like you’re giving someone the guns). The Chinese workbench form seems pretty similar to other low workbench forms in that it has splayed (and sometimes raked) legs that are mortised into a slab benchtop. However, it seems unique in that it typically has a stretcher between each pair of legs (i.e., perpendicular to the length of the slab). It also has rectangular tenons instead of round tenons.

Like so.

I’ve made a number of low, Roman-style workbenches with slab tops pierced by round tenons (i.e., “staked” legs, per the current parlance). There is amazing recent scholarship out there by Lost Art Press on this form. But there isn’t a ton of information out there on Chinese woodworking (although, I haven’t moved to print yet).

So with little more than a few pictures, I set out to give the Chinese form a try. For ease, I only angled the legs outward at 10 degrees, same as on my sawbenches and my low workbench. I did not try for compound angled rectangular mortises on my first try.

As always, I do my protyping in Eastern White Pine, an easy to work and abundant material that lends itself to trial and error. The benchtop is 8/4 stock about 8 inches wide and 31 inches long. The legs are 1.75 inches x 1.5 inches and either red pine or heart pine (they’re reclaimed from an old shack) and are much harder and than the fluffy top. All parts are bone dry.

Although not strictly necessary, I started by boring the mortises with a brace and bit to clear most of the waste. I chose a 5/8″ bit for 3/4″-ish tenons, which were scribed with a mortise gauge. A 1/2″ would have worked as well, and folks are likely to have a 1/2″ bit handy in a drill driver. It’s a lot easier to bore a hole when you’re not aiming for perfection like with round tenon joinery. Even a wonky hole (as long as it doesn’t cross the scribe lines) is just fine.

To be clear, you do not need a brace a bit. These are easily chopped out. Just use a narrower chisel and leave some room to pare down to the lines.

Just make sure to use a backer board to prevent blowout in the softwood.

After the bulk of the waste is removed, it’s just paring with a chisel down to the gauge line. Work slowly and use the same bevel gauge to help spot the angles. When working in fluffy pine (“bullshit pine”, as I like to call it), a flat mill file is just as good as a mortise float. Eventually, you’ll have an angled mortise. DO NOT reset your bevel gauge. You’ll need it for the stretchers.

OSHA-approved workshop footwear.

Each of the legs takes an angled shoulder at the same angle as the mortise. Make sure the tenon will clear the mortise, mark the tenon itself with a marking gauge set a bit fat to the mortise (so you have room to pare down or crush the fibers). Then mark the shoulder with the same bevel gauge. Angled shoulders, especially wide ones, are pretty easy to get right if you cut away from the line and pare down with a chisel. Undercutting is fine.

I apparently got no pictures of cutting of the angled mortises in the legs for the cross strechers. I used the same mortise gauge setting to mark the mortises and the tenons and set to chopping by hand. There was no way I was chopping a 3/4″ mortise with a 3/4″ chisel, even in pine, so I used my 1/2″ chisel and pared down to the lines. The same bevel gauge sets the shoulders of the stretcher, and eventually you have everything fitting nicely. I actually drawbored the stretchers into the legs and wedged the tenons in the top.

Leave some room to trim down the legs.

Leveling legs can be done a couple of ways. I prefer to use the 4×4 of truth. Which is just a length of 4×4 the height I want (minus the height of the benchtop) with a pencil resting on it to scribe around the legs. You could also use the level surface method, but level surfaces are hard to come by and in any event that sounds like overhandling to me.

These angles are perfect and it still looks wonky from several angles.

All in all, I get it. This entire bench could have been (and pretty much was) built with just three main tools: (x) a bench plane for preparing the stock, (y) a chisel for chopping the mortises, and (z) a saw for sawing the tenons. I guess you also need a mallet, a square, a bevel gauge and a marking knife, but that’s semantics. No lathe. No drill press. Just time and care and the most basic of tool kits within the reach of any hand tool woodworker in an apartment. I’m not even sure you’d need a proper workbench (even a low one).

Even with the vertical legs and no long stretcher connecting the leg assemblies, it’s very stable. And compound-angled legs would add additional more stability. In fact, that’s my next attempt: compound leg angles. But I wonder if that would require compound angled shoulders for the cross-stretcher as well.

Thoughts for another day.

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Thought Experiment

Where we last left off, I had just about made a functional workbench for the cost of seven Douglas Fir 2×4’s and some construction screws. Before I knew it, I had a sturdy surface that (although a bit narrow, in retrospect) was ready for some serious woodworking. There was just one problem: I had cheated and not even realized it.

Nice looking bench, if I say so myself.

You may have noticed the Veritas low profile planing stop shown above. They are easy to install (you just drill a couple of 3/4″ holes) and super functional and I swear by them. But there is no 3/4″ bit in my basic tool kit yet. Since I’m not yet ready to compromise this intellectual exercise, the planing stop has to go. Some West Systems epoxy does the trick filling the holes.

Faces in things.

3/4″ drill bit aside, I definitely have a regular set of drill bits and a hammer. So instead of a commercially-available planing stop, let’s instead make a palm, which is a different type of planing stop that’s useful for restraining boards both on the their faces and on their edges.

For those unfamiliar, it’s literally just two 1/2″ boards, nailed on at 45 degrees to the length of the bench and 90 degrees to each other. I used 6d die-forged nails with the heads counter-bored a bit so I don’t accidentally ding a plane sole on thinner stock. Narrow boards (and boards on edge) wedge themselves into the palm (a bit like a crochet), and wider boards but up against the points (like a straight planing stop).

Not sure what additional wisdom you’re looking for here.

I think that’s all the workholding I’ll need for now. That said, the list of tools has expanded a bit. The current list of all tools I used for building the bench is as follows:

No. 5 Jack Plane
Chisels: 1/2″ and 1″
Panel saw
Double-faced mallet (not pictured)
Claw hammer (not pictured)
12″ combination square
4″ try square
36″ straightedge
12′ tape measure (not pictured)
Folding marking knife
Wheel marking gauge
Small folding bevel gauge
Birdcage (square) awl
Mechanical pencil, etc.
Medium cut straight file
Cordless drill driver with standard drill bits and driver bits (bits not pictured)

But I think it’s fair to say that if the entire tool kit for making a workbench fit on the top of that workbench, then it qualifies as an apartment woodworking bench.

I plan to immediately add a large router plane, also. I can live without it; I just choose not to.

Up to this point, I’ve just been keeping track of the tools used and putting them back in my floor chest as I go. But a full size floor chest is not exactly within reach for most small space woodworkers. To be honest, my full size floor chest (40x24x24, not including the casters) is probably too large for my 12×13 bedroom workshop shop. So it’s time to make some tool storage that’s more appropriate for a small shop.

I think a tool chest in the Dutch style popularized by Christopher Schwarz and Megan Fitzpatrick is the best option here. I’ve built two of them before (one large that was gifted to a friend, one extra small with just the angled compartment that is just a residential toolbox) and in my experience they can be built with minimal tools. I’m not bold enough to cut dovetails pins first on a low workbench, so I’ll stick to rabbets and nails/screws for this one. Should be plenty strong for something that will live on a saw bench up against the wall.

But here are the rules going forward for this experiment:

Rule #1A: before I can pull a tool from my floor chest, I have to first do the operation (if possible) using one of the simple tools listed above. For example, when making the workbench, after I cleaned up one of the leg mortises entirely with chisel, I could have swapped in a large router plane to do the same job (I actually did this for one where the grain was particularly unruly). Another example: once I hand crosscut and square a board the first time, I can thereafter use my chop saw to move things along on the rest of the cuts.

Rule #1B: if the operation cannot be comfortably (or safely) done on the low workbench with a simpler tool, I can pull the correct tool as long as it can will in the Dutch tool chest. If the correct tool will not fit in the Dutch tool chest and the operation is not comfortable (or safe) to do on the low workbench, I cannot perform that operation and must use a different joint/feature.

Rule #2: No vises, but clamping boards to the workbench is fair game. I have access to my full set of clamps, in fact. I’m not that much of a masochist.

Rule #3: I have access to my existing shooting board and can do the operation on my high workbench. I can certainly make another shooting board that will fit better on the low workbench (I’ve done it before). However, this same shooting board used to live on my kitchen island and I see no reason to change things up now. And shooting while standing is far easier on the back and shoulders.

Rule #4: I’m also allowed to use my benchtop drill press for the chisel rack that goes in the chest. Yes, I could do it by hand. But I’m not getting into this argument with you.

As of the writing of this post, I’m almost finished with the main part of the Dutch tool chest. Here is the full tool kit to date (not counting parallel jaw clamps and the aforementioned benchtop drill press):

Still no 3/4″ auger and bit, though.

This has been a long one, so I’m leaving it at that for now.

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Starting Out Fresh

Having laminated seven Douglas Fir 2×4’s into a roughly 72″ x 10″ x 3.5″ slab off screen, it was time to set some ground rules. Going forward, I would only use basic hand tools to make a workbench worthy for an apartment woodworker. Or, at least that was the goal. Let’s see how it went.

Using just my No. 5 jack plane, I proceeded to flatten the underside and square both edges to the underside. I tried supporting it with the buckets I was using as saw benches, but that didn’t work too well. The buckets were just too slick and the slab rocked too much. So I reverted to just working on the floor on a non-skid mat. It was slower going than I wanted, and my back and knees are killing me (heyo!), but it got done.

The sawbucks are just for staging the picture.

It took less time to dress the top, but in doing so, I realized my basic tool kit was missing something: a marking gauge. So I’ve added a wheel marking gauge to the basic tool kit. Eventually, the slab was S4S enough for joinery. But before cutting any joints, a coat of “Tung Oil” to protect against any glue squeeze out when the legs eventually get glued on.

And also some home center saw horses to raise the work.

Nine inches from the end seemed about right for the legs. When making a saw bench in the Schwarz pattern, the legs are recessed into the sides of the benchtop via square dadoes. Then, angled lap joints on the legs cause them to poke out at the right angle.

All dadoes start the same way: mark it, saw it, chop out the waste with a chisel. Typically, I finish off each dado with a light pass from the router plane to ensure uniform depth and a shoulder plane to square the walls of the extants. But router planes and shoulder planes are luxuries outside the scope of the basic tool kit. It has been a while since I did this by chisel alone, but I got it done, even if the dado bottom isn’t pretty. But that might be because Douglas Fir is real splintery. The extants are square at least.

One of four.

The only hard part about this joint is laying out the leg. However, if you cut the top of each leg to a consistent angle (10 degrees works great), you’re almost all the way there. But that requires a bevel gauge. Which has also been added to the core tool kit. I won’t go through the whole process, nor could I better than Mr. Schwarz does himself here. But suffice to say, if your shoulders line up, then you can pre-cut each leg to the exact same length and you won’t need to worry too much about leveling the feet.

More paring just via chisel. I would typically use a carriage maker’s plane for this job.

Part of what makes this joint strong is the large glue surface between the slab and the legs. Use the offcuts from the angled lap joints to assist in clamping, then drive in a couple screws through each leg (parallel to the bench top, not the legs). Be sure to countersink them a bit so the screw heads are well below the face of the legs. Don’t worry; we’ll flush the tops of the legs later.

I was uncomfortable with No. 10 screws and later upped to No. 12.

But the joint doesn’t just rely on glue and screws. A couple of gussets, glued and screwed onto the legs. When making gussets, perfectly quartersawn softwood stock will allow you to glue and screw along the entire width with minimal risk of splitting over time. I also squared up the ends of the slab off camera, but in fairness, that’s not necessary.

I’ve already done an ode to gussets.

And that’s it for the main bench. Next time, we’ll reassess the full basic tool kit and begin adding work-holding.

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Version 2.0

Once upon a time, I made a leg vise with a cog on a wooden screw instead of a pin board. I worked with it for about four months and can definitively say that I prefer it to a pin board. But 1.25″ for the wooden screw is a bit thin, in my opinion. So when it came to install a leg vise on the new workbench, I took the chance to perfect the form and use a full 1.5″ screw and a beefier cog.

Still need to shape the vise chop a bit.

The main screw for this leg vise is scavenged from the prior leg vise. It’s just one of those European screws marketed as a “tail vise” screw. I had intended to make a new wooden screw with my JJ Beall Big Threader, but none of my 1.5″ dowel stock is straight enough along. So I scavenged the screw from the leg vise on the reclaimed maple console table, which has over 12″ of thread.

The cog is 8/4 quartersawn white oak. It’s dense and stable and was honestly the only 8″+ wide stock I had already milled. What matters is it’s large enough that the teeth of the cog will protrude beyond the edges of the chop, so it is easily worked with your feet.

The cog is pretty easy to make, if you take it in steps. I began my marking and drilling out on the drill press the 1 3/8″ center hole for tapping, and eight 1.5″ holes to form the teeth. Eight teeth is plenty. Everything gets a light chamfer with a trim router.

I find it’s easier to do the boring when it’s part of the larger board.

It’s then trimmed to final size, first cut to square, then the corners taken off at 45 degrees. I ended up taking another 1/8″ or so off each side, so the teeth of the cog weren’t quite as sharp. Everything gets one more set of chamfers and hand sanding to break any more sharp edges.

The flat face points inward, where it contacts the leg.

All that’s left is to bore the hole in the chop for the cog screw. Don’t bore it too deep. You need at least 1/2″ of wood for the screw to press again. Otherwise, it might blow out if you’re really cranking down. I just use wood glue (although epoxy would work too) and I make sure the screw is perfectly perpendicular to the vise chop. You could angle it slightly upward (to create natural toe-in alignment), but I don’t think it’s necessary if your main screw is otherwise perpendicular.

Keep track of your reference surfaces and alignment is a breeze.

This cog has some real heft to it. A decent spin with the foot and the cog spins under its own momentum. A real improvement over the 1′ hard maple cog on the last workbench. I will say the angled chop makes it a slightly harder to get at on the right side (the tightening side). But it’s not too much effort.

Is this method more economical than a criss-cross or a pin board? Not really. But it works great and I highly recommend it. Just remember to ream the hole in the leg vertically. Otherwise, the cog screw will bind if it’s not perfectly in alignment with the main screw.

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Keeping it Together

Fair warning: this post is actually a “how to” on a method for reinforcing a joint where you’re joining two boards at a right angle by screwing through the face grain of one board into the end-grain of the mating board. If that interests you, please proceed.

I recently built a “The Naked Woodworker” workbench, partly for the intellectual exercise of it and partly because my brother needed a workbench for his recently-expanded garage. I have mostly good things to say about the design and the ease of construction. I was able to put the entire bench together in less than 12 hours time of shop time stretched over two days (one long, one short). Had I let the wood acclimate a bit more before construction, I bet could have done the whole thing in a single day.

This was about 6 total shop hours in.

The bench is mostly glued and screwed together, but there are two joints where boards are joined at right angles with just screws through the face grain of one board into the end grain of the mating board. One such place is the top rails of the leg assemblies (seen above). The other is the number of bearers stretched between the aprons to which the top is eventually screwed down.

Screws into end grain, especially late growth softwood, is not the strongest joint. In an abundance of caution, I sized all the end grain and glued it as best I could. But it was still a bit shaky in places. So when using up the last bits of construction lumber to make a shop fixture, there were a couple of places where screws into end-grain just wouldn’t cut it. Instead, I utilized a 3/4″ oak dowel like a bench bolt to give something for the screw to bite into.

I’ve been using my 18 gauge brad nailer more, these days.

Please note, I cannot take credit for this technique. I learned it from a Popular Woodworking video on making a quick and dirty first workbench. It shows up in the first half of the linked video.

First, bore a hole to match the dowel (3/4″ in this case) and glue it in place with the rings perpendicular to the direction the screw will penetrate. While not critical, this will reduce the likelihood of the dowel splitting and weakening the joint. Anything over 1″ is probably enough. I went the full 1.5″ that my drill guide could handle.

This hole is 1 5/8″ on center, meaning there is a full 1 1/4″ of material for the dowel to lock against.

The boards cupped a bit after planing. More stable stock would not have needed this screw.

Next, drill a pilot hole for the screw, all the way through the dowel. For cleanliness, I first countersank the hole, then finished it off with a long drill bit. Red oak is tough, even for self-drilling deck screws. Better not to risk it. An extra long bit lets you sight to ensure the pilot hole passes through the dowel.

Luckily, this extra long bit (the only one I own) was perfect for the screws in use.

Finally, drive the screw and flush up the dowel. I use a flush trim saw and either a chisel or a plane, depending on how much material remains after sawing.

Never to be seen again once the top is attached.

If done right, this joint is tremendously strong (at least compared to screwing into end grain alone). Bench bolts are not terribly expensive, but oak dowel and screws are undoubtedly cheaper. And, to be fair, this method requires less prep and fuss.

And less prep and fuss is what shop fixtures are all about.

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Test Run

A few years ago, I bought a Veritas Bevel Up Jointer Plane. I also got the jointing fence, which I have more than once used to make a hand jointer for small parts. It’s also still very useful for edge-squaring, especially on long, narrow stock.

But ever since I inherited a first gen Stanley Bedrock Jointer Plane, I haven’t had room in the tool chest for it. It therefore lives in storage and, without it closely at hand, it’s been rather neglected in its use. So I’ve devised a way to keep it closer at hand: a saw till to hang on the wall.

Ignore the bad paint job on the wall!

I have a fair pile of reclaimed mahogany that one day will become a full wall cabinet (maybe not Studley-level, but something like it). One part of any good wall cabinet is a plane till. From what I can tell, there are two basic ways to capture the planes in a plane till. First, angle the till with a single catch at the bottom so gravity does all the work. Or have both top and bottom catches so the planes can sit vertical. I’ve chosen the latter.

There’s three parts to store in the till: (x) the plane itself, (y) the jointing fence, and (z) a toothed blade that’s great for coarse work and also roughing up smooth bench tops. Let’s start with the box to store the plane.

Because of the ridge to which the fence attaches, it’s unfortunately not possible to shoot with this plane.

The box is pretty simple: just three narrow pieces of cherry, glued together in a long U shape and nailed after-the-fact for extra strength. The recess should be about 1/8″ wider than the plane sole and at least 4″ longer than the plane sole. Then friction fit and glue and nail on ends to enclose the box. Once the glue dries, glue and screw on the first cleat to capture the heel of the plane sole. The exact thickness of the cleat and the height and depth of the recess will depend on the plane.

Like so.

If this were an angled till, that would be the end of it. But a vertical till needs another cleat at the top to capture the toe of the plane. The till works by inserting the plane toe at an angle into the top cleat, then straightening the plane to vertical and dropping the heel into the bottom cleat seen above. And when it’s dropped into the recess made by the bottom cleat, the toe should still be retained by the top cleat. Otherwise the plane would crash to the floor.

Unfortunately, locating the top cleat is a bit of trial and error. It’s L-shaped, much like the cleats that retain the fence as seen below. You can make this cleat in a single piece (like I did) or laminate it from one narrower piece and one wider piece. There will be a sweet spot where the depth and height of the rabbet forming the L allows easy access in and out without too much slop.

Once you figure out the spacing, screw the top cleat in place from the back of the till. No glue with this one, just in case something needs to be adjusted, either because the angle is off or you get a different plane and want to reuse the till.

The nearly-finished till.

A couple of wooden hooks retain the jointing fence and the replacement blade hangs in its plastic case from a cut nail. I declined to finish the till and just screwed it into a stud on the wall.

Funny thing is, since making the till, I still haven’t used the plane. Perhaps I just don’t need it.

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Lay(out) of the Land

I’m pretty excited to be basically done with the core of my new workbench. I finished boring the holdfast holes in the benchtop and everything seems to be in good order. I also bought another Veritas planing stop to span the entire 22″ width of the bench, as seen above. It’s about 8″ from the end of the benchtop.

Not a knot in sight (sorta).

I’ve been using these Veritas planing stops for years and, for most operations, they are fantastic. They struggle a little bit for particularly bowed or twisted stock, but a proper bench dog makes quick work of that. For maximum capacity, though, I bored one extra dog hole along the front edge about 4″ in from both the front edge and the end of the top.

I think the eight holdfast holes and three planing stop holes shown above will be more than sufficient for most topside work. The holdfast holes start at 8 and 16 inches from the tail end of the benchtop and they are spaced 13″ apart along the two rows (the Grammercy holdfasts have a span of 6.5″ from center of shaft to center of pad). The back row sits about 4″ on center from the back of the workbench. The front row sits 12.5″ on center from the front edge. This seems ideal to me.

It pays to have a plan.

I haven’t yet bored the peg holes in the front apron, but I think I know why. The new leg vise works just so very well.

Glamour shot!

I’ve made several leg vises with pinboards before. I’m only in my mid-thirties, but bending to adjust the pin when dimensioning stock gets old (and stiff) fast. So I’ve gone in a different direction with this one.

I took an extra 1 1/4″ wooden screw I had on hand and made a wooden nut that would wedge against the leg. I made a small nut at first, just as a test. It worked great, but I still had to bend over every time to adjust it.

If I make another one of these, I’ll use a larger screw.

After passing the proof of concept, I made a second cog. One that is large enough to protrude beyond the leg vise chop, in fact. So instead of stooping to adjust the pin location, you just spin the cog with your foot. It works great.

I think it looks like fine.

I know it’s all the rage to have legs that are flush to the front of the bench top. But having the apron extend beyond the legs, at least in this case, makes a ton of sense. That way, I don’t have to mortise the plate into leg. Which sped up construction quite a bit.

I have some upcoming projects that I need to get back to. But I hope everyone is having a great 2020 so far.

JPG

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