Bowling Alley Workbench #11: A Cap for the Gentlemen, a Skirt for the Dames

I picked up today where I left off yesterday, and finished the longer mortise in the end cap. that was one hell of a mortise, I hope I don’t have to make them at that magnitude too often (read – ever again). But it all fits perfectly and snug. The end cap currently protrudes (by design) 1/16” off the bench top, so that I can trim it flush later, otherwise you run into the (most likely) possibility that the end cap will be below the top of the bench. I also drilled and fit the Lee Valley Tail Vise Screw that I’m using for the wagon vise. I planned the top so that the screw end rests in an elongated hole in the left leg cross brace support, which keeps the screw parallel to the bench top, but allows it to shift left/right which will let me align it with the vice jaw for smooth action (hopefully):

I also milled and glued up the 1 1/2” (laminated from 2 3/4 strips) strip of 5” wide maple for the skirt: jointing this by hand really made me wish I already had the leg vise to hold the piece on edge:

while fiddling with the setup of the #5 Buck Bros hand plane, the part that moves the blade back/forth broke off, I guess it’s some sort of poorly machined aluminum… RIP… time to get a better one.

All in all, a busy day, glueups slows things down, I took the down-time and sharpened some chisels with my new scheppach wet sharpener to get some more experience with it, I can see where a more powerful machine would be nice, or a high speed grinder to speed things up – but I’m very pleased with it’s performance for it’s price. definitely less messy, and faster than scary sharp (I used to end up with black hands). a Nice trick that I picked up from Grizzly website is, I dropped a magnet in the water bath, and it picks up all the fallen metal dust – pretty weird when emptying the water bath, its like metal mush…

Thanks for reading,
Peace

-- ㊍ When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.