# Workbench completed!



## Gilgaron (Mar 16, 2012)

This is my take on Schwarz's English/Nicholson bench from here. 

SYP throughout, Ash leg vise jaw, quartersawn oak parallel guide, and a guide pin I made out of a rosewood scrap, piece of 3/8 steel rod and a 3/4 copper pipe cap as a ferrule.

Deviations from his procedure involved using metal as the track in the wagon vise, round dog holes, and not bothering pinning in the shelf pieces on the bottom. They fit pretty tight so I left them 'loose'.


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## Gilgaron (Mar 16, 2012)

That last shot was underneath the bench and supposed to show the supports.

I also followed Logan Cabinet Shoppe's lead and split the top, making an insert that has cutouts to fit over the supports. 

If your wife is on JoAnn Fabric's mailing list, you can get some coupons to get a pound of leather scraps for <$6, which I used to line the face of the jaw and my hold fasts, from Gramercy. 

The vise hardware came from Lee Valley. I used the Tail Vise Screw for the leg vise and the Shoulder Vise Screw for the wagon vise. 

For this project I did my first mortise and tennons, and I forget who mentioned it on here, but thank you whomever suggested to another forum goer of chopping the corners off of the tennon rather than squaring the mortise if the hole was blind. That saved a lot of time! The wagon vise is great for planing, I used it to plane down the ash for the leg vise, so the bench was handy in building itself. 

Finish was Danish Oil. I didn't bother cleaning my pencil marks but the oil actually took most of them off.


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## tc65 (Jan 9, 2012)

That's a great looking bench. Thanks for sharing pictures.

I'm in the planning stages for my bench and periodically re-reading Schwarz's book. Right now I'm leaning towards the Roubo type, but I'm sure it will be some sort of a hybrid by the time I decide on a final design.


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## cps (Jun 21, 2013)

Very nice and thanks for posting. I think I will have to get the book.


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## Gilgaron (Mar 16, 2012)

Yeah the book helped a lot! There's a whole section on different work holding methods depending on what you want to do. Don't be scared to do things differently than Chris did. For example, he used a dado stack to cut the tennons but I just used my table saw to cut the shoulders and my band saw to cut the cheeks then I cleaned em up with a shoulder plane and rabbet plane. 

If you use a forstner bit in a drill press for the mortises as he suggests, be sure to clean out the wood in the flutes often. I found the SYP gummy and hard to drill well without sticking to the bits. Maybe there's a dry lube for this sort of thing? I also found it a bit more difficult than I would have thought for softwood to rip on my table saw, which is the admittedly small Bosch 4100, but it has a Freud rip blade that eats hardwood fine. Without the pauls I'd have had a few kickbacks. If your table saw sucks I might recommend ripping on a bandsaw instead.


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## cps (Jun 21, 2013)

Gilgaron said:


> Yeah the book helped a lot! There's a whole section on different work holding methods depending on what you want to do. Don't be scared to do things differently than Chris did. For example, he used a dado stack to cut the tennons but I just used my table saw to cut the shoulders and my band saw to cut the cheeks then I cleaned em up with a shoulder plane and rabbet plane.
> 
> If you use a forstner bit in a drill press for the mortises as he suggests, be sure to clean out the wood in the flutes often. I found the SYP gummy and hard to drill well without sticking to the bits. Maybe there's a dry lube for this sort of thing? I also found it a bit more difficult than I would have thought for softwood to rip on my table saw, which is the admittedly small Bosch 4100, but it has a Freud rip blade that eats hardwood fine. Without the pauls I'd have had a few kickbacks. If your table saw sucks I might recommend ripping on a bandsaw instead.


I am somewhat tool limited right now, I have a table saw (Grizzly G0715P), miter saw, router, and a few other hand power tools. A joiner and planner are next on my list, and will probably get those before I do the workbench. I will probably start with the book and formulate what bench will work best for me.


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## Gilgaron (Mar 16, 2012)

I don't have a jointer or planer, so you don't necessarily need to wait for those. One reason I built the bench was because it was such a hassle to use my planes to joint and face plane. The work table down in my shop came with the house and is too flimsy for planing, so I had been using my jawhorse with a clamped piece of countertop in it and a plane stop clamped to that. With my feet in the jawhorse stirrups I could hold it solid enough to plane, but it was annoying. 

You can probably do without the drill press if your router is a plunge router, or you could chisel them all out.


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