The Benchmaker's Apprentice: The End

Today I started by putting some finishing touches on the leg vise chop.



I also finished up the tail vise sliding dog block.



Also, because the front apron drops down farther than the bench top, I cut this for a little modern flare, but it's just a 45*, so not too modern.

Now I started working on the cleats that hold the shelf.


The barrel nut meets the shelf cleat, preventing the cleat from fitting in its groove completely. We'll have to remedy that, won't we.




Perfect fit.

Now, after finishing the shelf pieces themselves, the two edge pieces must be cut to fit. The shelf boards are shiplapped on their long edges.



Another perfect fit! Man, this day is going great! Until...


At this point, this is what the dogs look like. To get the spring working, we need to make an angled cut at the bottom of the piece.

I made a quick jig to cut the angle on the dogs.




Now we need to make that springy piece thinner. Now, you might want to use a hand plane, but here at Benchcrafted, we don't believe in simplicity. It's sort of like magic. Every magic trick appears to be simple, but in actuality, it is quite complex(or is it the other way around?). Anyway, we developed a magic trick of our own while building this bench. Everything in your head will be saying that this was a mistake, but it was in every way intentional (and copyrighted).


Anyway, you might want to take a lighter cut when using this method.




Here is the jig we routed quickly to do this. It works, let's say, iffy. I wouldn't recommend doing this.


From there, I glued up the dogs.


And then added screws for added strength.

Then I drilled for the big Spax lags and attached the tops.

Now it's time to flatten the top.


I make a chamfer to minimize blowout because it's faster to plane across the grain on this.

I also file the dog holes.



It took a while, but I got it pretty flat.



Well, there you have it. That was the Benchmaker's Apprentice, and that is a Benchcrafted Split-Top Roubo Bench. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and details and my rambling about stuff I don't know anything about. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned, because in the near future (as in sometime in the next few weeks) we will be posting pictures of this thing because, as you may recall, she's getting painted. And if you want even more, you might get to see the Benchmaker's Apprentice Bench in St. Louis at the upcoming Lie Nielsen event. So stay tuned for news on that, also.

Thanks again!

Building Schwarz's 18th c. Roubo With Our Vises?

A few months ago we began getting orders for vises from students enrolled at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking. Author Chris Schwarz is teaching a class in May on building his Roubo bench featured in the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The benches will be built with massive timbers, and in order to help make the vise installation quick and efficient, we developed a sequence for installing our tail vise for the students who have just 6 days to build the bench.

The installation differs from the sequence outlined in our installation instructions in that there is no dog hole strip (the bench uses round holes drilled into the finished top) and no front laminate. This sequence can be applied to other top construction methods as well. Instead of building up the top around the vise (typical install), material is removed from the benchtop to receive the vise. Using massive 5x5 timbers the entire installation can virtually take place in the first laminate before assembling the rest of the top.

For those who are planning to build this excellent bench with the Benchcrafted Tail Vise, we're making these materials freely available. We have a Sketchup drawing (with animated scenes) showing the sequence as well as some 2d templates that help explain the install. These templates will be available for free download once our new website is updated (coming soon). In the meantime if you'd like to have them, send an email and you'll get a reply with the materials.

Update: Download the files here:
Sketchup Drawing
Overall View (End Template)

Lead Times Update

Just a quick update on lead times. We're still waiting on some deliveries from our supplier who is behind, but as of last Friday they are on schedule. We're producing other components while we wait, so filling orders once these overdue components arrive should be fairly quick. We greatly appreciate you bearing with it during this delay. We're not much for economic prognostication, but the silver lining here is that our supplier that's behind is getting lots of new work.

The Benchmaker's Apprentice: End Cap, Tail Vise, and Glueing

Here we are again, and today we are covering ALOT of stuff. I'm starting with the end cap. Above, you can see that I milled this piece of ash to roughly the size of the final piece.

Now I simply routed out this groove in the bench top...

And then routed a similar one in the cap.

Then I made a spline to tie it all together.

This tongue and groove doesn't really have any structural advantages, it simply aligns the cap for gluing. The bolts are what really hold this thing on.


I decided to use barrel nuts for this since they are easier to install. Although you probably won't be taking the cap off once it is glued on, the convenience is still there and it looks nice too!

Now I'm ready to route for the tail vise. I am removing lots of material here so I'm going to take it slow, only taking less than a quarter inch of material for each pass.

This clamp conveniently serves as a stop so I don't route to far into the top.


A nice fit. Now, to finish installing the tail vise, we need to glue on our dog hole laminate.

I start by hammering small brad nails into the front edge of bench, then clipping them off right at the surface. This keeps the pieces from slipping around on the glue.


This is not product placement.

Nor is this a Nature Valley granola bar commercial.

Nice and clean after some [Skraper]ing.

After the laminate was installed, I simply routed down about 1/4" for the rails of the vise.

As you can see here, because the bench top is a little thinner than what is called for, I had to elevate the inside rail with a shim, but it wasn't a problem.


At this point, I decided to glue on the last front laminate for the front top. It's 4" thick, unlike the rest of the top, which is around 3". This required a little aligning to be done right so I finished the legs so that we could drop the tops on and do some awesome aligning.


I also attached the short cross beams to the legs these are permanent so I took my pegs and glued them in, never to be removed.


Well, the top seems to fit the base nicely.

Since the front laminate drops down farther than the tops themselves, I had to take the handy Festool and make that notch up there. Now the laminate has some personal space.


To finish up the day, I did some work on the leg vise chop. I cut an angle into the bottom half so it's not so "square".



And then I also attached the parallel guide to the chop with pegs.

Lead Times and a Shaker Bench Update

As you may have noticed, we've had to increase our lead time on vises to 10-12 weeks. One of our materials suppliers has been swamped with orders the past few weeks and are frantically trying to keep up, to the point of adding machinery to their operation, which has the ironic effect of further delaying orders in the short term. During the past couple years many manufacturers have changed the way they do business. Instead of keeping lots of raw material on hand and warehousing finished parts, they wait until they have several orders to do a run. It's like having to do a group order with a bunch of people you don't know. It's something that's out of our hands, so we're trying to deal with it the best way as we can. Couple this with the immense popularity of our vises (demand is hotter than an iPad 2!), that means increasing lead times for the time being. The upside is, we're making some significant changes to the way we work, which should, after this hiccup runs its course, mean very short lead times. If you're in the market for vises, stay tuned here for updates. As soon as things change, we'll make a post.

Now on to some good news. The Benchcrafted Shaker Bench plans have been progressing nicely. We're getting quite close to completion, and are shooting for an early summer release date. No promises yet, as we still have some issues to work out. As usual, we've changed some construction details since building the prototype, improving the strength of the joinery, and simplifying the construction at the same time.

We've answered a lot of questions about this bench in the past few months. The most common seems to be, "is this bench strong?". The Roubo bench design has become so popular that its become the benchmark for other benches. So is this bench as strong as a Roubo? We're not about to send our benches to the testing lab at MIT to be crushed under a giant hydraulic ram. So short of that, I'd say yes. In fact, I may be leaning towards the opinion that the base of this bench might even be stronger. Why? Unlike traditional Shaker benches, made with solid timbers and frame and panel construction, we've engineered the base of our bench around the torsion box model, using plywood panels which won't move and don't require joinery like a frame and panel.

The front of the cabinet is made with a 1" thick hardwood face frame joined with numerous tight half-lap joints. Once glued, these joints are incredibly strong. The back of the case, instead of frame-and panel is one unified element of 3/4" ply. The interior of the case is divided with several more plywood panels further adding weight and rigidity. The advantage of this construction method will be that you can glue the entire case together without worrying about wood movement, and use the joinery method of your choice: biscuits, Dominoes, tongue and groove, spline, or simply butt joints and dovetailed screws. We also use traditional cut nails for structural reinforcement where aesthetics is important. Once the cabinet is together, it is functionally a solid cube. One single joint, standing alone, may be quite weak, but taken as a whole the case would be nearly impossible to destruct in normal use. Of course this all depends on tight joinery and proper gluing, which should be at the top of your list when building this bench. Even a massive Roubo would be useless with weak, wobbly joints.

New products announcement !!!

We're extremely happy and excited and very pleased and thrilled to announce two new products to the Benchcrafted lineup. We've been working on these for several months and it's been very difficult to keep these under wraps. We never thought we'd be subject to such things but we've had to contact our lawyers on several occasions to bring charges of corporate espionage against parties that will remain unnamed as per the settlement agreements. Needless to say, we are relieved to finally announce these items which will in turn take some of the wind out of our competitors sails.

One product, is entirely made in the USA. The other product will be available in both a USA and a Mexico version. We're typically very conscientious about keeping everything in the Americas, but this item was only available via Mexico so we had no choice but to have it made on another continent. OK, so enough talk. We're VERY proud to announce the Benchcrafted G.P.T., Glide Paper Towel holder!

We've spared no expense. As with our award winning vises, the materials are top notch and will blend with any post-industrial kitchen decor. Whether your little homemaker is a machinist, woodworker, or simply a former Eastern Block designer, this will fit right in. The weight will immediately be appreciated. How many times have you gone to tear off a single sheet of paper towel, tucked it under your chin, walked down the hallway and into the living room, sat down with your full slab of ribs, only to find you pulled the whole roll off and now have to close up the recliner and go fix that mess? No more.


The NEW Benchcrafted G.P.T. !



Your Homemaker will LOVE it!


Our second announcement would have been impossible had we not been able to secure, under extreme expense we might add, the design advise and mentor-ship of world renowned Industrial Designer D. Puch. Alski. We approached Mr. Alski with a simple request; what can we offer that will seem complex but not be, inexpensive yet costly, deep but shallow, and accessible to only the few? His answer astounded us!

"What does everyone need, from Disappointment, Kentucky to Ngama, Chad? What are we all looking for all the time?"

"Food, water, shelter? The meaning of life?"

"No you idiots! Wallets. Wallets are the answer to everything. We keep everything that is most important in our wallets. But what is the matter with wallets? They are are ugly. I find them offensive with their folding and creasing."

Needless to say we were floored. And this, we are proud to announce is the final result of his design prowess.

The Benchcrafted Brakolai Bandolier

As we said earlier, it is available in two versions, the Limited Edition Tinamura & Antle iBrakolai (see it's white just like an Apple product) and the South of the border Bandito Blue Brakolai Bandolier. Both are finished is supple caoutchouc, durable, functional and above all, chic!

Availability late Fall 2010.



Limited Edition Tinamura & Antle iBrakolai on top, Bandito Blue Brakolai Bandolier on bottom.



Bandito Blue Brakolai Bandolier in action!