The piece I’m dubbing my Studio Table was the first project I have completed with my Roubo workbench completely finished. After investing so much time in building this bench it was a very affirming experience to build a piece of furniture using my newest and easily most valuable tool.

Granted this little Stickley table hardly taxes the hand tool woodworker with work holding problems and complex joinery but to me what was most rewarding was the simple fact that I didn’t think once about how I was going to hold something for an operation. It all just happened.

When milling the stock I was faced with edge planing, face planing, twisted boards, and out of square ends. The stock just flowed across the bench from end vise and dogs to leg vise to bench top without a thought about how I would accomplish something. On top of that during all of this work, the bench stayed complete immobile. I might as well have been working directly on my concrete floor.

During joinery, I had to cut half blind dovetails, mortise and tenons, and half laps. My chisels sang and shoulder planes hummed. My sawed cut straight and true. Not once did a cut go a foul because of a shifting work piece.

During assembly and glue up the bench was my rock. Flat, never moving, and spacious enough for all my parts, glue, and accessories.

The top is solid, the vises strong, fast, and efficient. I never once stopped working to set up a jig or an operation. This is what our workbenches are supposed to do: allow us to focus completely on our work piece and assist us in our work. In essence I have spent a great deal of time to make a tool that is so effective as to be completely invisible.

Strange praise, but high praise indeed. This past weekend I spent time in Colonial Williamsburg. I chatted extensively with Joiners, Cabinetmakers, Coopers, and Wheelwrights. I saw a different style of bench in every shop I visited. I saw different ways of using those benches too. What I never saw was a craftsman stop his work to set up a tool or secure a piece for chiseling, sawing, shaving, etc. With such a variety of work being done it seems sensible that there would be a variety of workbenches to be seen, and this was certainly the case. What is common between the Cabinetmaker’s bench and the Cooper’s shavehorse is that the tool is suited for the work at hand. I think you would see a lot of standing around and scratching of heads if the Cabinetmaker was trying to build a side chair at a shavehorse, and likewise that Cooper would really be slowed down tapering and bending staves while at the Nicholson bench.

So have I uncovered the holy grail of benches with my Roubo? Not at all. But I did think about the type of work I do and how I do it when I designed the bench at the outset. I listed the tasks that I would go through in a typical piece of furniture and began listing next to it all the ways I would hold the work. From there it was simply a matter of determining which methods had the most overlap and adding them to the bench.

Long story short, I could not be happier with my workbench. Now I’m ready to stop talking about it and just let it disappear and do it’s job. There are masterpieces to be made!!

I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something very calming about working in a semi dark shop. It feels more intimate and just feels wrong to be making a lot of noise like I might wake up someone so it seems that this low lighting actually lends itself to hand work. The weather is still a bit too cold for me to open my garage door and the two windows I do have shed some natural light on things but not quite enough; hence the incandescent task lights.

All of this preamble leads up to an experience from this weekend. I was working in my shop most of the day on my Wood Whisperer Guild build table with only this one light on over the bench. I continued to work until just before the sun went down when I took a break to walk the dog. That led to dinner and a few other things in the house and I was not able to get back down to the shop until it was fully dark outside. As I walked through the door into the shop I was greeted by this sight:

Behold my shrine to hand tool woodworking! How can you not be inspired to produce your best work when confronted with this setting!

First of all the cut started easily and powered through the hard Ash with little effort and in no time at all. The cut was dead square and really clean considering the 10 ppi pitch. There is no tear out on the back of the cut because of that relaxed rake on the front and rear teeth.

This will be a visible piece every time I remove the vise assembly but I made no attempt to clean it up because I like the reminder that I cut this by hand with a beautiful saw.

Call me a fanboy if you like, but I am sold on Bad Axe Toolworks! The beauty of this cut is merely another testament to a great tool.

The proof as they say is in the pudding…or the end grain. Last night I was squaring up the end of a board with my block plane. I wasn’t even thinking about it when I realized that the plane was gliding across the end grain and producing shavings.

“Hey, whaddaya know, maybe I have gotten good at this sharpening thing!”, I quietly congratulated myself. I then moved on to planing the 1 inch chamfer for clearance on the top of the vise chop I was working on. After sawing most of the bulk away, I turned to my low angle jack (with freshly sharpened blade) to refine the chamfer to my marking lines. Long beautiful end grain (ish) shavings peeled off the wood.

So let this post be my penance for yesterday’s power tool transgression. I do what I have to do to get the job done, but it sure is fun when you realize you may have actually done it right!

Reality check, it’s 2010. Aren’t we supposed to make contact with aliens this year in orbit around Jupiter or something? So when another 4×5x3″ mortise presents itself, I break out my router, pattern bit, and a template. Yes, I am very confident that I can chop that by hand and make it pretty and square and to depth with my lovely chisels. I have chopped enough mortises to say that I can do it, but I have also chopped enough to say that I don’t want to do it.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the sliding leg vise for my Roubo bench and it is time to inlay the vise nut into the sliding chop. I cut the nut down so it is only 5″ long but it is still a huge mortise and one that requires utmost precision so I don’t compromise the strength of the chop. Woo hoo for power tools!!! Turn on the dust collector, turn up the music, don the respirator and hearing protection and let’s chew up some wood.

10 minutes later and I have made a mortise that would make the Grand Canyon proud. I even used pocket holes and a powered drill to make the template. If it makes the galoots out there feel better, I squared up the corners with a beautiful 1.5″ paring chisel.

So before anyone starts calling me a purist, let me also say that I like my TiVo, read a fair amount of Science Fiction, and cannot live without my iPhone. Hooray 21st century conveniences!

…now where did I put my laser marking gauge…

This episode came out longer than I had planned as I really try to keep them under 30 minutes. However, I find that oftentimes woodworking shows can be frustrating by telling you how to do something without actually showing it so I decided to keep in all of my footage of cutting the tongue and groove joints by hand. So I apologize for the 200+ MB download (even after compression) but I hope you will enjoy the show.

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I was putting the finishing touches on the leg vise to my workbench this past weekend and focusing solely on the functionality of it. I had installed the parallel guide with a through wedged tenon and backed it up by pegging the joint. I was very proud of this very strong and if I may very pretty joint and the vise was working great. I then realized that I still needed to chamfer the edges not only to allow room for working on the outside of the chop but to cut down on weight since the chop is a 2 inch thick piece of Ash. I also wanted to cut a taper on the chop toward the bottom. So much for running it through the table saw or band saw.

Imagine a thick board that is 2×8x35 with an 18″ board sticking out of the back at a right angle.

Now how am I going to cut the taper and the edge profile?

Clamp it to the bench front, and hit it with a frame saw or panel saw filed rip and you have a tapered edge, all the while working around the parallel guide sticking out the back.

Now onto the chamfer. I clamped the chop down to my bench with the parallel guide hanging off the back and held securely between two dogs.

Then it was time to make lots of shaving with my drawknife, spokeshave, and block plane to create perfect 1″ 45 degree chamfer all the way around the coffin shaped vise chop.

This is just one example of the work you can do after the glue up with hand tooling. Call it flexibility, but often it is just me realizing too late that I should have done something before putting glue on that tenon.

Any war stories out there where a hand tool has corrected your glue happy tendencies?

I am plagued with this all the time. I did a podcast many months ago on organizing yourself when working on multiple projects. In that episode I was talking about combining like tasks with like tasks like doing all your milling at the same time, etc. Lately I have been building task lists for my projects. I have had a list for my Roubo bench stuck to the wall of my shop for the better part of a year which is great since I dip in and out of the bench so often that it helps me to remember where I left off.

Lately though I have been frustrated with my progress on a few projects because I can’t seem to get even a single task on my list completed. For example, on my Roubo list was the item, “leg vise”.

It seems I have been working on that task for several weekends now and have not been able to gain the satisfaction of crossing it off. It is such a little thing but the act of crossing something off a list gives us OCD types a real warm fuzzy feeling. I think the problem here is not that I work slow it is that there are so many little parts within that one task. I’ll break it down and I think you will see that this applies to just about everything you make.

Workbench Leg Vise

Mill chop stock true and square
Cut chop to final size
Layout for hole for vise screw
Drill hole for vise screw
Layout for internal garter mortise
Cut garter mortise
Cut garter stock to approximate stock
Fit garter into mortise
Mill parallel guide stock
Drill parallel guide pin holes
Finish guide with decorate profile, chamfers, etc
Layout through mortise for parallel guide in chop
Cut through mortise
Flare outer mortise walls to allow for wedges
Cut tenon on parallel guide
Fit tenon
Cut wedge stock
Install wedges and glue up parallel guide
Drill peg holes
Hammer in pegs
Layout chop taper
Cut taper
Layout chop bevel
Cut bevels
Finish plane/sand
Install chop and go to work

This list doesn’t even include installing the vise nut into the leg but you can see that all of these steps go into the single line item of “leg vise” on my list. If you really want to be picky you can break down the above steps even further. Think about all the step included in cutting a tenon. Layout, cut shoulder, cut cheek, smooth and fit, possibly undercut shoulder, etc, etc. Now careful on this slippery slope because you will quickly get into list building and no woodworking. I think the point it clear. If you feel like you are getting no where, don’t get discouraged; but rather, sit down and break down what you have to do. Each one of these tasks can be done with minimal shop time and you feel like you are getting somewhere when you leave the shop after crossing off 1 or 2 of these items.

Maybe you are the type of person who doesn’t need this level of organization, or just doesn’t make lists to keep on track. I still think this post contains something to think about. All of these steps take time and time is money if you are a professional so being able to gauge how long it will take you to build something is your life blood. So next time you feel like you are making no progress and have a customer, spouse, conscience, etc hounding you for results take some time to plan your build so you can really estimate how long it will take and build in some milestones. Remember though, whether you are a hobby woodworker or a professional, don’t forget to have fun. These milestones keep you on track but they should not be a burly bald man with a dog collar beating on a drum in the stern of your shop shouting, “stroke, stroke!”

Since this footage was shot I have finished the leg vise and you can see it if you look close in one of the opening photos. I’ll post that part soon, but really y’all are caught up to my progress now.

Oh yeah, let me know what you think of my new opening credits segment with episode specific shots.

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Posted via web from renaissanceww’s posterous

So call the Guiness Book people because I cut the largest mortise I have ever seen in this episode!

Enjoy the show…

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Now that I have made this case for our civilized nature let me dispell all of that with a little Tim Allen grunting and testoterone filled gloating….

I cut one big as##$# mortise today! You could fit a bunt cake in there (sorry couldn’t think of something else that would fit in there and my wife is watching the food network in the background)

And when I fit the nut into the mortise I felt the air escaping around it in the most perfect piston fit I have ever achieved. OOOhh hoo ahhh arght! (ape grunting noises)

Just thought I would share my ape like regression with you all.

Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss (2001 Theme)

Using the slot in the benchtop I have cut several tenons and a few sets of dovetails too. The quality of my dovetails is not the finest but trust me that has nothing to do with the vise holding ability.

I you remember I installed my vise in the late winter so it has experienced the full climate change of the mid atlantic now that we are in the summer heat and humidity. The hardware is stable and solid and I have seen no rust appear as to be expected. The only problem I have encountered was that I fit my dog block a bit too snug and now that the humidity is back the vise jammed as the dog block expanded. My tip is to remember the season when you fit the block and anticipate the movement. I made 2 or 3 passes with my smoothing plane and the block was gliding along smoothly once again.

Stay tuned for some more usage tips and photos of the vise in action as I work with it more closely. So far I give it an A++++!

Anyway, on with the show.

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So in the last few months I have been face planing, some edge planing on thicker stock, cutting tenons on narrow stock with my end vise, carving, sanding, routing, chiseling, and lots and lots more planing. I have filled up several dust collector bags with shavings from face planing and scrub planing on this bench already. With those credentials out of the way I feel safe in stating that I am starting to reap the benefits of Roubo. Here is one observation I have that makes me feel really good about one of my choices during this bench construction.

Several months ago I posted a query about whether to go with round or square dog holes. It seemed there were a lot of pros for both and not a lot of cons so the decision was a toss up. I chose to go with round holes for ease of install and because I already had a few brass Veritas dogs and Wonder Dogs. This week while I was working on my desk organizer for TSDC I was working with a lot of curves and angles. I discovered that another benefit to having round dogs is that you can rotate the clamping face to match any angle and pinch it with the end vise.

Here you can see one of the vertical dividers with the obtuse angle along the top. I was doing a final clean up with my smoother and needed to hold it to the bench for that operation. By twisting the dog clockwise a little I was able to match the angle and not damage the piece. You can see also in the below picture that I have a little more flattening to do to get rid of that glue line!

So the long and short of it is, my bench is not yet done, but I am already reaping the rewards and patting myself on the back for some of the choices I made in construction. Stay tuned for more Roubo soon enough as the projects have finally cleared out of the shop and nothing is left but Roubo!

This was a fun project that tested my abilities and taught me a lot about precision. Now that the vise is up and running, I have made more shavings playing with it. I want to thank Jameel for producing such an outstanding product and for his hints and tips along the way. Speaking of Jameel, make sure you go check out his newest product, the Glide Leg Vise!

Next week is Safety Week 2009 so make sure to stay tuned in to The Wood Whisperer Network for all the great safety information. I will be posting a new video every day so make sure to hang around.

Finally, May 1st is the launch of The Sawdust Chronicles 30 Day Build Challenge. If you don’t enter before May 1st you won’t get a chance to participate in this exciting on demand build challenge. Head on over and sign up today, time is running out fast!

Enjoy the show!

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For those of you not familar with Benchcrafted’s tail vise, check out the link and bring a napkin to wipe away the drool. This is a beautiful piece of equipment and the dream addition to every bench. The install is daunting to say the least and it has many parts, all of which need to be executed with great precision. That is why I took an enormous amount of video footage during this install so I could share it all for any of you thinking of adding this vise to your benches.

And no, Jameel did not pay me to put up this post. (Jameel, use the Cayman Island’s account) Seriously, the fine folks at Benchcrafted have produced a great product and I hear they have something even more interesting on the horizon. Follow their blog and keep up with all the news!

Enjoy the show.

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I read a Woodworking magazine article from one of their first issues about holdfasts and how they work. This article was weighing the difference between mass produced and hand forged. Phil Koontz and Don Weber were mentioned several times as blacksmiths who produced outstanding holdfasts. I was particularly drawn to the Koontz model, but realizing that this article was written almost 5 years ago, I emailed Phil to see if he was still producing holdfasts. He said that while he is still in business, his friend “Jake the Russian” had taken over the holdfast business and passed my email request along to Jake. Within minutes Jake Pogrebinsky had contacted me and I had placed my order for a pair of holdfasts. Both Jake and Phil admitted that holdfasts sometimes can be a mystery as to whether they hold or not. Their concession was that I was not to send them payment until I had put the holdfast through it’s paces and was completely satisfied. This is even more impressive when you think about the fact that this product was coming from a small town blacksmith in Alaska and not a conglomerate.

So test them I did. I wanted to make sure I could simulate the various thicknesses that I would encouter between bench top, bench legs, and sawbench. I have seen several people solve the problem of the holdfast not grabbing in thick stock by drilling larger than 3/4″ holes. I needed to get this right before I started drilling holes in my benchtop. So I took a test board that was long enough and wide enough to act as a small test surface.

Thick test board was 1.5″ thick and would be able to simulate my upcoming sawbench. I then duplicated this test board several times so that when stacked I could simulate 4″ and 5″ thicknesses.

Both the Gramercy and Koontz held very well in the 1.5″ stock, and they were dislodged just as easily with a firm whack to the back of the neck.

Both models held very well in the 4″ thick simulated benchtop as well. This test was looking to be a draw.

Finally I tested both in the 5″ thick stack to simulate holding power when using them in the legs of my Roubo. Again, both grabbed without incident. (I forgot to get a pic of the Gramercy) I was a little surprised seeing as I have heard from several sources that the Gramercy would not work in greater thicknesses. Maybe Phil Koontz was right and holdfasts truly are mysterious.

Long story short, I am a very happy customer with both models of holdfast. I must admit that I am partial to the Koontz because of the length allowing greater capacity and aesthetically they are very cool.

Ultimately, I believe I will keep my pair of Koontz at my bench and use the Gramercy when I need reinforcments and keep it full time on my sawbench.

Make sure to check out The Sawdust Chronicles Beginning Woodworker contest. This looks like it will be an exciting contest where you have 30 days to build a new project inspired by an example given by the judges. The build begins on May 1st so get your entry in before then so you can participate in this exciting contest. I hear the prizes are pretty cool!

Enjoy the show!

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I conclude the episode with a little hand sawing exercise. Enjoy!

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The left side of the bench will have the Benchcrafted vise installed there and I need it to be perfectly flat and square since an endcap will be mortised to fit there. I used my bowsaw to take the end flush and then set up a fence to guide my router and a straight bit to get the face perfectly square. I’ll use this same set up to cut the tongue that will mate to the mortise in the end cap.

For the right hand side of the bench it is a different story. Nothing will be mounted here and it doesn’t have to be perfect so this is where the sawing exercise comes into play. A few episodes of my podcast ago, I mentioned that I had won a Disston D23 filed crosscut. I have played around with it on smaller boards but have had problems keeping my cut plumb to the face. Using my framing square, I drew several lines across the end of the bench to use as a guide for practice cuts. My finished benchtop will be 8 feet long but I have 4 inches extra in the top right now. If my shop would accomodate a longer bench I would keep it that way, but I need it to fit under the window and any longer than 8 feet will not work. I used a saddle square to extend the lines down the sides and a little ways across the bottom too.

I started the cut and focused on keeping to the vertical line by sawing almost vertically into the top.

Here you can see the vertical kerf. The angled kerf to the side is an earlier attempt where I was focused too much on the horizontal line acrros the top and wandered off square.

Once I had established the kerf to be plumb I leaned the saw back and started tracking along the horizontal line on the top.

I found that my cut started to wander off the line so I laid the saw down further to correct the line.

This did the trick and I was back in business. Lots of sweat later I had finished the cut across the 20″ wide top and it was time to inspect my work.

I only wandered from the horizontal line by a little at the end of the cut.

But I discovered that I had fallen off my line in the vertical plane. More than likely this was while I had laid the saw down to correct my line horizontally. Here you can see the line of the original vertical kerf and then a tiny ledge where the cut wandered off at an angle. Unfortunately the rest of the cut is in this out of square plane.

Here’s a look at the other side of the cut clearly showing where I have deviated from my line.

Fortunately, the cut went out of square on the friendly side of the line and I can true it up using a spoke shave and my low angle Jack plane. Since I seem to have the disposition to cut off the square vertical plane, I figured I should get some practice truing up a face using a plane. Here you can see the start of a planed face.

This is a simple operation normally when dealing with furniture pieces as you can put the stock on a shooting board and have it square in no time. Not so in dealing with a piece this big. I would need one heck of a shooting board! I have some work ahead of me, better get back to it!

The end stretchers were glued up and jointed and squared but I have not cut the tenons yet because I don’t know the exact finised width of the benchtop until after I have installed the end vise and dovetailed the front laminate into the end cap. The long stretchers however are a different story and I was able to cut the tenons there.

The sliding leg vise will ride in a groove on the bottom of the benchtop and on a V shaped rail built into the stretcher. After milling two 1 1/4″ thick planks, I cut one to 3 3/4″ wide and the other to 3″ wide. I cut the double chamfer on the 3 3/4 plank using my table saw. Then I cut the chamfered plank to the finished length which is equal to the distance between the legs of the bench.

The finished tenons will be 2 1/2″ long so I drew a line on the narrower stock that was 2 1/2″ back from the edges as a reminder to stay inside those lines when glueing the two pieces together.

From here, I rolled on the glue and put them into the clamps.

After the glue had dried, it was a simple matter to joint the bottom edge and with a shoulder plane clean up the glue joint between the V shaped piece and the back of the stretcher.

Now over to the miter saw to cut the tenons to finished length.

Call this technique a bit of a hybrid from Schwarz’s suggestion in his book, but it meant that I could do away with spacers to ensure the tenon dimensions and take advantage of the slightly longer stock I have on hand.

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.

This episode is for you Rick!

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Other excellent sources for this technique are the videos:

Coarse, Medium, and Fine by Chris Schwarz
Rough to Ready by Rob Cosman

Also be sure to check out Mack’s latest Way of the Galoot podcast, episode 16 where he addresses this same topic in response to the Twitter conversation. As of the time of this publishing, Mack had not put up the blog to go along with the episode but you can find it on iTunes or Blip.tv.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode when I take a straight edge plane blade and grind a curve and hone it for use in a Fore or Scrub plane.

Lessons Learned:

Good infeed and outfeed support is essential when jointing/planing long boards
Handplanes make glue ups even easier
Proper planning can save you money
Furniture is furniture whether is lives in your shop or not: don’t sacrifice quality

Enjoy the show!

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I got two of these done before I read a post by Mark (Loogie) on Lumberjocks about the building of Bob’s Bench.

Mark mentioned a technique he was using to keep the individual boards in line with one another to decrease the amount of flattening that would need to be done later. By glueing up the top one piece at a time, he could run a clamp perpendicular to the clamping pressure across the joint thereby clamping the boards into alignment. Any more than 1 board at a time and the thickness would be too great for your average clamp.

While in hindsight this seems pretty obvious, it was a revelation at the time so thank you Mark. I immediately stopped making my sub-assemblies and starting adding one piece at a time. This kept my boards in almost perfect alignment as I started to build the top.

Here’s 3 boards in the clamps

Roll on some more glue and now 4 boards in the clamps

At this point my bench is in 3 pieces. Two 6 inch wide, 3 board assemblies, and one 7 inch wide, 4 board assembly. I had already jointed the 6 inch assemblies and using the new clamping technique had allowed me to form the 4 board assembly almost flat already so I skipped the jointer (mine is only 6″ anyway) and went straight to the planer to flatten completely. This is where the workout really got hairy. I wanted to make sure all 3 of these assemblies were exactly the same width so I could continue to use Mark’s clamping strategy to control the final glue ups since from here on out, only handplanes can tame this massive beast due not only to limitations in machine width capacity, but sheer weight.

With each one of these assemblies weighing in over 50 lbs, I took very light cuts with the planer and made sure I have perfect infeed and outfeed support. This adds a new element of safety to woodworking because dropping one of these would definately break a foot. After breaking a serious sweat making 3-4 passes through the planer with these beauties (don’t worry I got it on film so y’all can laugh at me later) I was at a uniform thickness and flatness all around.

Time to get serious about glue up. I could continue to use Mark’s technique by clamping across the joint on the very ends, but in the middle I would need to make some cauls.

These are just some scrap wood (I’ve got plenty of Ash laying about) covered in packing tape to prevent glue from sticking. I even planed a slight crown to the boards to provide extra pressure in the center of the caul across the joint. Now I could roll on even more glue, and, oooommmfff! Lift a 50 lb assembly on top of another one to make a 7 board glue up.

More glue, heavy lifting, and a hernia later and I had 10 boards glued and clamped.

This is the main bench assembly after I scraped off the glue using my number 80 cabinet scraper. The bench top now measures 4 inches thick, just over 8 feet long, and 19 inches wide.

It’s enough to bring a woodworker to tears. Just gazing out over the sea of laminated Ash! OK no more waxing poetic! Next I’ll flush up the ends using the same technique I used to cut the bottoms of the legs by cutting with a circular saw from both side and evening the face out with a flush trim bit in the router. I will keep the bench at this width to lay out the cavity for the end vise, then I can add the dog block and final laminations to bring the bench to around 26 inches.

I need to go rest my muscles now!

The key to this technique of laminating the boards to form tenons is to make sure that your keep your tenon shoulders square and evenly spaced across all four legs. I followed The Schwarz’s example by using small spacers tacked to each leg.

I was certain to make sure these spacers were square to the leg itself while I tacked them in place. Don’t assume that your cuts on the end of the tenon are square along the whole length but double check first. Here you can see one of my legs ready for glue up.

From here the process was just the same as step one. I rolled on the glue, and started clamping the you know what out of the legs.

Yet another reason you can never have too many clamps!

Once I had the clamps on tight, I double checked that my outer boards were tight to the MDF spacers and the tenon shoulders were completely square, then using a hammer, I knocked off the spacers so they wouldn’t have a chance to get glued in place by squeeze out. Speaking of squeeze out, my general rule for determining how much glue to use in a lamination, is that once I have clamped up a piece I want to see consistent squeeze out all the way around the joint. This glue up definately met that criteria.

Here is where I started to run into problems. I noticed a slight discrepancy when I was tacking on the MDF spacers for the tenons. Once I had them square to the leg I noticed that I wasn’t quite flush along the top edge. As I began to add the outer pieces and flushed them up to the spacers that very minor deviation was telegraphed down the length of the 31″ leg and my long edges were no longer flush.

I recognized this during the glue up, but knowing that I have a good half an inch of extra width on the legs I knew I could plane the legs flat and square after the glue set and have no problems just as long as I focused on keeping the shoulder square. I realized in hindsight that my end cuts on these individual boards were not right at 90 degrees because the build up of dust and chips on my table saw was bumping the work out away from the miter guage fence just slightly. Yet another reason to keep the shop clean while you work. Also a good reason to build in extra length and width to allow for some clean up space after glue up.

I pulled the clamps off and used my Cabinet scraper to knock off the dried glue.

Here is a good shot along the length where you can clearly see the deviation caused by imperfect end cuts.

This was easily corrected by making a visit to the jointer to flatten one edge and then I rotated 90 degrees to ensure the other face was square. From here it was off to the planer to bring the legs to their final 5″ square size. As I approached the planer I still had 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch of extra to play with so it was no problem to get the legs complete flat and square.

I had not cut the leg parts to final length yet and was glad I did since I ran into that little problem getting the legs totally flush. Once I have the legs flat and square I need to trim the bottoms flush.

This presents a little problems considering the 5″ square size. My table saw only has a 3″ depth of cut capacity. I could have cut the legs flush using my bandsaw, but balancing this 30+ lb leg on that high bandsaw table didn’t appeal to me nor was I confident in my ability to keep the leg completely square. I would then have to go back and clean up the mill marks anyway.

Instead I chose to use the table saw to make the cross cuts. I fashioned a tall and long auxillary fence for my miter gauge and added a stop block 33″ from the blade. Making one cut then rotating the legs 180 degrees allowed the second cut to remove the waste.

It seems that no matter how hard you try to align everything that this kind of cut never seems to line up completely. This case was no exception and I ended up with about 1/32″ deviation on the bottom of the legs. I anticipated this and actually was looking forward to correcting the problem as a warm up to the time when I have to make the final cross cut on the end of the bench top.

I chucked up a 2″ flush trim bit in my router and aligned the bearing with the deeper side of the table saw cut and went to work.

While it is not imperative that the bottoms be perfectly flat, I wanted to make sure that they didn’t rock. Even then once all four legs are attached with a approximately 300 lb top on top of them, I’m sure they won’t rock at all. But why not use this opportunity to practice some techniques. My final step was to chamfer the bottom edges. I aslo knocked off the long corners because I kept cutting myself on them since they were so sharp.

Looking back, I’m not so sure that I would build the legs this way again. It seems to be much more work to laminate the legs with the tenons already formed than to just glue up a 5″ square blank and cut the tenons afterward. In this case I probably could have used only 3 boards to form the total size instead of having to plane down the wood needlessly to make 4 parts that equal 5″. Using either my table saw or bandsaw, I would have made quick work of the four tenons and I could refine them with a shoulder plane.

Oh well, next time I build something like this I’ll do it that way.