About four years ago, armed with nothing but a double bevel sliding compound miter saw and a medium router kit, I set out to make a desk.  It was my first foray into what I could (at the time) consider non-traditional table joinery (mitered half-laps and bridle joints).  I’ve wanted to revisit the design for a while now; not because I don’t like it, but because I could do it so much better by hand.

Except that sensibilities change and the design now seems heavy to me.  I want something lighter, but that won’t leave me without a desk for an extended period of build time.  The tabletop is still in excellent shape.  Laminated from five boards of ~1″, quarter-sawn, mineral-streaked red oak, it’s straight and rigid over the years.  My solution for a quick retrofit: metal legs.

Made by Osborne Wood.

Each leg is 29″ high and has a 4×4 base.  No. 10 pan-head screws should be fine for attaching them to oak battens, which will in-turn be (hide)glued and nailed to the underside of the tabletop.

This is 3/4″ oak.  I think I might need 5/4″ (at least) for the battens.

There is not much weight on the tabletop (two monitors and basic computer input devices), so I don’t see the need for lengthwise support battens.  I may, however, add a third batten, cross-grain at the center point.  The switch from wooden frame to metal legs will raise the work surface the thickness of the battens (~1″), add over 4″ of underside clearance, and reduce the overall length by about 7″.

Assuming I prepare the leg assemblies in advance, the retrofit should be doable in an afternoon (including a quick flattening of the underside where it will mate with the battens).  The salvaged wood from the frame (also red oak) will find some use (after being stripped of wipe-on poly).

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I got so much done over the weekend.  I’m very close to being done with the Stent Panel workbench.

First, I added pine veneer to the cheek of each of the tenons, which is part 1 of the joinery strategy for a stretcher-less workbench. Part 2 is using my new mortise float to square and plumb each mortise (although a rasp would work equally well).  Part 3 is shoulder planing the opposite side of the tenon to perfect, piston-fit.

It’s face-grain to face-grain, so these are permanent additions.

Speaking of tenons, three out of four legs are completely done, with the fourth in process.  They are stouter than I anticipated and I’m confident in the plan for the workbench.  Overall weight should be close to 200 lbs. once assembled.

Always label your parts.

The fourth leg is only in process because I finally added the show face to the slab, which took all but one of my parallel jaw clamps.  It was an excellent glue-up, though, and I can’t wait until the show face is glistening from final planing.

Total depth is expected to be exactly 19.75″ after final squaring.

There is technically only one more board to glue up (the inside board on the front right leg), although I expect the crochet will be laminated.  In addition, I need two new short stretchers.  The old ones no longer fit with the fatter tenons sitting differently in the mortises.

Also, F-clamps are no substitute for parallel jaw clamps.

That’s it for now.  Looks like I need one more weekend to finish everything.  The very last step will be to rough flush the mortise strips with the rest of the benchtop using a hand-held power planer.  Final flattening will occur once it’s back home and in place.

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A quick update on the traveling tool tote: it has a bottom now.

First, each floorboard is tacked in position with a headless brad.  I’m still a relative novice at driving nails and I want the alignment to be correct when I drive the heavy nails.

With a business card’s worth of space in between.

Next, I pre-drill and drive the aforementioned heavy nails (CT6, to be exact) at 5″ intervals, which I marked using my new 8″ dividers.  I also trim the overhang with a panel saw.

The half-driven nails are a story unto themselves, for another time.

Then, I plane down the remaining overhang to be flush with the case and admire just how well cut nails cinch the work together.

Quite remarkable, really.

Finally, I spend a few days agonizing over whether I drilled the pilot holes too deep and resolve to drive a few brads through the lower skirt into the floorboards, just in case.

Because nothing can ever just be nice.

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Saturday was another productive day on the Douglas Fir workbench build.  I surfaced and glued two additional boards to the core slab, bringing it to just over 13″ deep.

The same length and depth as the planing slab, but nearly twice as thick!

Dodging a bullet on the previous eight boards, the expired/near-expired PVA glue has in fact held.  Being paranoid, I plan to add a couple full-length mending plates to the underside of the bench top once fully assembled.  Not because I think it will do anything, but because it will make me feel better.

I also rough cut to length the remaining stock so that I could take, umm, stock of how much more lumber I needed.  What’s shown below is almost everything required to make the full bench.

DeWalt, I am open to sponsorship…

Here is what’s still on the buy list:

• Eight feet of 2×6, which will become (i) the tenon board and the inside board of the left front leg and (ii) [probably] the outside vise chop on the tail vise.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but unlike the other three legs (which are comprised of ripped down 2×10’s), the left front leg is laminated from 2×6’s for extra stoutness when chopping.

• Twelve feet of 2×10, which will be ripped in half and cut down to (i) four 48″ lengths for two long stretchers and (ii) four 24″ lengths to make two short stretchers.  I also have two other 24″ lengths which are flagged as short stretchers.  The prettiest of the six 24″ boards will become the end cap/inner chop on the tail vise.  I will decide on the fly if I want to add a second end cap to the benchtop (unlikely).

All in all, should be another $30 or so from the home center.  I’m definitely under budget on this build, having carefully planned out my cuts from what was available.  I will eventually need some pine for the slatted shelf, but I’m not worried about that right now.

I’m torn about something, though.  My thickness planer is only 13″, so to use it I’d have to remove about 1/4″ of depth from the core slab as it currently exists.  However, my local woodworking club has a 15″ thickness planer.  If I use theirs, I can add one more board to the core slab.  But then I’d be using tools other than my own (and it would cost me for shop time).  A good problem to have, I guess.

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A few things on the workbench build thus far:

1. Always check your glue expiration date.  I’ve been agonizing this entire week over whether or not the first lamination of eight boards will hold up.  The PVA glue I used was (unbeknownst to me) nearing its expiration date.  After clamping the work for over 72 hours, I am leaving it un-clamped for another 72 hours or so.  By the time I check the lamination again on Saturday morning, if the glue is going to give, it will have (or so customer support told me).
2. Finished length is never enough.  A twelve foot board from the home center is usually no more than 1/2″ overlong.  Subtract the kerf from crosscutting it to rough length and (theoretically) you’ve got about 3/8″ extra from which both ends need to be squared.  It never really works out that way, and I’m always short of my desired 72″ length.  An end cap on the tail vise side to cover the inner vice chop will get me back over six feet for the main bench (plus whatever thickness the outside tail vise chop will be).
3. Finished thickness is never enough.  A home center 2×10 is about 1 1/2″ thick off the rack, but do not use this as the base multiple for buying the bench top lumber.  After dressing for the glue up, I was lucky that one or two of the boards even came in at 1 3/8″ thick.  Most were closer to 1 1/4″.  Eight boards combined for only 10 1/2″ of total depth (or an average of 1 5/16″), so I needed to buy another twelve foot 2×10 just to complete main core of the bench top.
4. Remember the limitations of your tools.  All of Item Three aside, I own a 13″ thickness planer.  This means the actual core can only be ten boards total and still fit through.  Each of the laminations containing the mortises (3 boards thick each) must therefore be created separately and added onto the main slab after.  If I can get the mortise laminations square and straight (using the dressed core slab as a reference), they can each be glued onto the main slab (with fresh glue, this time, and maybe a lag bolt or two) to full the form bench top.
5. Improvise.  The total bench top lamination described in Item Four is sixteen boards deep, and should be approximately 21″ total.  This is a fine depth for a bench, but I plan to add one more board to the show face of the assembled bench (i.e., to the bench top and the front legs.  Party because I know dressing the entire slab will remove additional material and partly because it will allow me to move the dog strip out of the mortise layer.  I already have the prettiest boards set aside.

Sorry for the block text.  This was more an exercise of me thinking through these issues than content generation.

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Before I could turn this:

Why is there a diapers box in my planer dungeon?

into this:

2/3 of the core slab.

I had to replace these:

I wonder if the old blades are re-sharpenable…

The previous blades got pretty beat up when re-flattening the old planing slab.  It turns out that water-based wood filler > carbide blades.  But I must have known this day was coming, because I had a spare set of blades.

So after a morning of flattening one face of each board (by hand), then an hour or so of thicknessing (by machine) and smoothing for final glue up (by hand), I had eight boards at a total depth of 10.5″.  Exactly half of the total depth on the new workbench.

It’s actually 10 9/16, but who’s counting?

The glue-up was a nightmare, though.  Despite some aggressive shaking, the older PVA glue was starting to get viscous and kept clogging in the nozzle. I am hoping the glue holds up, as it was over two years old.  It would be a pain to redo the glue-up, but I do own a heat gun if worse comes to worst.

Ordinarily, the sign of a good glue-up is squeeze-out from the knots!

I can add two more boards to the core and still be narrow enough to pass through my thickness planer.  Which I will do next weekend.

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