Workbench #9: Time for a break

Over the weekend I worked on the bench a bit. I marked many areas of the base to drill holes: to drawbore tenons, planned out the leg vise, etc.

Saturday afternoon I felt like I was a little stuck. I really need to drill some holes to get things together and continue with the base. I don’t have a drill press so would have to drive over to my parents’ house to use my great-grandfathers press. My wife told me to just go on Saturday; I should have listened to her but didn’t.

On Sunday I finished drawing the details of the leg vise on both the leg and chop. I need to drill some holes for the vise, but figured I could get started with shaping the chop. Unfortunately, I then realized that I don’t have my coping saw: I loaned it out recently so that a young Scout could build his Pinewood Derby car.

So then I turned to the shelf for the bottom of the base. I am going to follow the Benchcrafted design, which calls for a small dado in the stretchers and ledgers for support of the shelf. I opened the new Veritas plow plane to have a look at it, and found the blade advance screw threads were cut poorly and I couldn’t advance the blade. So I set that aside, thinking I’d work on the rabbet for the ledger. I opened the new Veritas rabbet plane to find that the screw for the nicker was impossibly tight, and I stripped it trying to get it out. So I gave up on that, too, and sent an email to Lee Valley for some help. (They replied today and are shipping two new replacement planes to me; great service!)

So… I’m taking a break, at least for a little bit. The end of this week and next week will be busy anyway, so I probably wouldn’t get much done in that time anyway. So, shifting focus to something else.