Anybody who has watched my latest podcast, episode 30, will see that I have already used my Roubo bench even though it is not done yet. After scraping the glue and some light planing to flatten the bottom in preparation for the joinery, I moved the flattened 19″ wide slab onto some saw horses in preparation for squaring up the ends. It is amazing how solid it is just on some cheap plastic saw horses. I could stretch out on it and take a nap and believe me I feel like it right now.
I just put the bench to use filming my process for milling stock to thickness using hand tools only. Using some battens and some clamps for stops, I secured a 12/4, 11″ wide, 30″ long piece of Ash to the top and went to work with Scrub and Jack plane to flattened one side.
It was hard work, but very gratifying to put this slab to work after so much work to get it into it’s current state.
It is also nice to see what kind of space the bench will take up and how I can use it in my small shop. With an 8 foot long bench it will just fit along the back wall under the window. I don’t have much room on either side but enough to reach the end vise wheel so it will be functional. Upon starting out on this build I thought that I would probably use the bench more pulled out perpendicular to the back wall so that is how I have it positioned now. No doubt for heavy hand work the bench should take center stage in the shop so I imagine I will be moving it around a lot. The question now though is whether 8 feet is just too long in my small shop. My gut tells me that if it fits, I should keep it at 8 feet because who knows if I will every move to a bigger shop. Taking some measurements and seeing what it would look like to reduce the length to even 7 feet would make a difference, but I think I will end up regretting it in the long run. So I will keep it at 8 feet. I suppose that with the legs set in so far from the ends that I can always shorten one end later if necessary, but I think that would hurt to do it.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Glen // Mar 16, 2009 at 11:38 pm
It looks great! I’m knee deep in wood shavings as I am almost finished with my first bench. So I know how you feel.
Keep the pictures coming.
2 Jason Young // Mar 17, 2009 at 6:06 am
Hi Shannon,
I really enjoyed the flattening video and wondered what blade you have installed in your jack plane? I have the same one with a 25 degree bevel angle and though it’s great for shooting, I find I get a lot of tearout when I’m flattening or using it as a smoother. I plan on buying a 38 degree blade and just wondered if you had it and what your thought are on it.
3 Shannon // Mar 17, 2009 at 10:44 am
I still use the 25 degree blade for most of my work since I use the Jack as a rough tool more often than not. I move on to the Jointer and smoother later. I have the 38 degree blade in my smoother and it works like a dream but is significantly harder to push. Perhaps, you could grind a blade to 30 with a 2-3 degree microbevel to get an inclusive 45 degree as a compromise. Then again probably more effort than is needed when you can just buy the 38 and go with York pitch. Make sure you tighten up the mouth though or you will still get tearout.
4 AAAndrew // Mar 20, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Keep it as long as you can. Mine is a tiny little thing at 5 feet. I’m now hoping to re-arrange my shop and I’ve got some ideas for how to mount my tools on the wall that will give me more space. I wish that I had made it just a foot longer. Since my wood stretcher doesn’t work these days, I’ll have to make do for now. My NEXT bench, now…
Andrew
who also really enjoyed your video on flattening and dimensioning stock. One of these days I’m going to try narrowing a board by attacking it with my Portuguese boat-building adze I got as a Christmas surprise. Now THAT should be worth a video to see me fail spectacularly.
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