Building my Workbench #13: Still Upside Down... But Better

Had a little bit of time this week and got a few things done. I didn’t get the bench right-side-up… yet. But, I’m ready to now! WOO-HOO!

First thing I did after the last update was to finish drilling out my dog/holdfast holes. I did the row closest to the edge with 4” spacing. The other row is on 12” centers. I didn’t want to “Swiss Cheese” it too much so the second row is spaced to ensure my 8” holdfasts can get anywhere on the bench. I can always drill more holes later if needed. Once I got that done, I figured it would be a good idea to go ahead and put finish on the bottom of the top so I don’t have to contort myself to reach it later.

Next was the leg/short stretcher assemblies. I decided I would go ahead and do final finishing on them before assembling the bench. I used a flush cut saw and my 140 block plane to flush up all the drawbore pegs:

Then I made a final pass with a smoother on the faces:

And scraped some of the nasty spots in this tough old oak:

Then I put finish on those parts as well.

I didn’t take any pics but I also planed/scraped the long stretchers but didn’t put finish on them yet.

So, I can flip her over and finish pegging everything just anytime now! Hopefully I’ll have a couple of hours and some help one evening this week. In the meantime, I still need to turn a few more drawbore pegs, mill/cut some wood for the bottom of the tool wells, make some French cleat for the back of the bench, make holders to go on the cleat and work on ledgers and boards to make the bottom shelf.

So, I still have a lot to do obviously. BUT the good news is that there’s little left to do before the bench is fully-functional and in service :-))) The rest of the stuff is all “fluff” that can be done as time permits.

Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully the next blog will show what actually looks like a workbench!

-- Kenny, SW VA, Go Hokies!!!