23 - How to Make an Extreme Woodworking Bench for under $200 part 2 - final

[Music] hi my name is James and welcome back to part two of how to make an extreme woodworking bench we are going to pick up where the last video left off and we're going to complete the project in this video if you are interested in doing this project I have a complete set of plans and there's a link to those in the description and here's just a little recap of where we left off we finished the two bench tops and we finished all of the legs and rails including the mortises and Tenon's so the first thing we're going to do here today is a complete dry fit try to put the whole base together and make sure everything fits properly this will also act as a practice run for the assembly order and this is one of the reasons I made my assembly table so big because my daughter stands on one side to work while I work on the other side from the ground of course now she's getting pretty tall so we'll both be working from the ground soon and here you can't forget to put a block of scrap wood in front of those clamps in the event that you want to squeeze down real tight we don't want to damage the wood at this point and it looks like I've got a really good fit all the way around it's important to check for square I check for square between the legs and the table my assembly table is of course perfectly flat it's a torsion box and we check those in all locations and all four feet meet the ground nice and flat and we've got a good foundation and if that looks good we'll pull it apart and we'll begin our glue up I'm a big fan of lots of glue I've said this many times before I like to glue both sides of every joint and so I'll do that with excess glue I let all the excess glue squeeze out and then I wipe it off this way that I can ensure that there is a very good bond I think the easiest way to assemble this table is to do the two sides first we'll glue and clamp those together fully and then I'll set the sides up once those are complete and we'll attach the long rails together that way you and here the long wheels are going in a couple of these or one of them at least had glue on it for several minutes before we were actually able to put it together so we will probably need to use the clamps to squeeze it fully together and that's what my daughter is doing there and sometimes I have to use a wrench there for persuasion I use the big 1 inch pipe clamps for this and a large inch or inch and a half wrench anything in that range where it's great to apply a whole lot of torque and here it is it's fully clamped up all the joints came together nicely and we're just going to let this sit and dry overnight I think we're going to go ahead and put a dowel pin into all of those pinions this just gives the whole structure a little bit of extra strength it's a good idea to taper the very end of the dowel before you drive it into the hole that way it doesn't leave any resistance or catch on any lift inside and it'll go in a little bit better I chose dowels that are a contrast in color I'm going to use walnut dowels and this Douglas fir I think that looks nice it's important to do a have a nice layout if you're going to use a dowel of a contrasting color so you know measure and just make sure that all of them are consistent and that'll make the work a little bit more professional so I'm going all the way through the front part of the leg completely through the tenon and about 3/4 of an inch into the back part of the leg behind the tenon this will securely lock of the tenon in place this is one area that's definitely an exception to my glue rule I just put a little bit at the entrance of the hole and a little bit on the end of the dowel because as I Drive the dowel in the glue will spread and it'll go in there and it will coat all the surfaces that are necessary if you put too much glue in the hole you'll create a situation where the dowel cannot be driven all the way in the pressure will become too tight and your wood will split so here is one area you definitely want to go sparingly on the glue I just take any handsaw cut the dowels off flush or very close to flush and then after that we will stand them smooth I'm actually starting with a coarse grit of a tea I'm going to do the entire table with a tea and so I might as well start that here and then I'll gradually work finer through the grid once I've sanded this I'm going to go ahead and round over the corners all the way around the legs and rails have developed the corners that are really quite sharp I will see send it to the milling process and I don't want too much of a round over so I'm just going to choose a quarter inch radius round over bit just kind of to knock those sharp corners off and I'll still have that same big bulky look okay I told you I was going to come back to where we weigh one of those bench tops there's my son-in-law helping me there because it's too heavy for me to carry by myself and we're just going to check the weight on this I think this thing topped out at one hundred and thirty one point six pounds so this is the whole table together is quite a beast and here I've got the two table tops the bench tops placed upside down I've put them on a blanket because I don't wanna scratch them up very much I've measured them carefully and space them apart appropriately I've got a little spacer there you can see in a little clamp to kind of lightly hold it in place I've spaced it so that they're the exact width of my legs because when my legs come down I want that to be flush and once I get them centered from side to side like that then I'm going to measure them for length to identify the exact location and I'll go ahead and take a pencil and trace out where I need to chisel those mortises into the tabletop and it looks like my daughter paused from her photobombing for a moment to help me draw these since the tables upside down this is a good time to rout the bottoms of the leg all the way around this way if the table gets split around in the shop anywhere the edges of it won't have a tendency to chip off and next I'm going to show you one of the mortises that I did in the top the other mortises I had to slow way down so that you could see them this one I'm just going to go ahead and do it actual speed you yeah there are no special vo has not been sped up in any way okay so now it's back to the gluing and the booing is one of the the more fun parts of the project in fact the only part I can think of this funder is sanding so I have to do gluing real slow so I can savor it every step of the way and if you pay close attention we have a photo bomber right there on the right and the left and I think my daughter got nervous right there when it dropped but I paid attention major there were no fingers in the way now I'm going to securely attach this upper rail to the tabletop itself I just wanted to have one more a little bit of strength in addition to the mortise that's going through there and so I have chosen these 5/16 by 6 inch long screws they're actually replacement lag screws so they have tremendous strength and finally just to make absolutely sure I'm going to go ahead and run some dowel pins all the way through the Tenon's for each leg that comes through the top and once more I do want to kind of pay attention and create a layout that looks pleasing and that I can duplicate at each leg and I'm just making sure that I hit every corner with my round a little bit [Applause] and after some thorough standing which is too special to show in this video our bench is essentially complete and now all I have to do is call fifteen of my closest friends to come over and help me move this workbench off of my assembly table now I'm going to turn my attention to the center board that goes down the middle of this Ruvo split top this is what makes this particular workbench unique i am milling these out of two by eights because i need them to be a little taller than the workbench at six i use two by sixes for the workbench and so i'm going to put a look at the top and so i'm milling these out of two by eight this board actually had a twist in it so when it comes to face joint in one side flat i just kind of make sure i hold pressure on one side of it as i send it through the jointer and after a few passes it flattens out but you can see here how it's thicker on one side than it is on the other that's not really a problem though because I do have one flat side on the bottom and the planer will make the top parallel to that the planer here will get it down to size the centreboard that goes down the middle of the split-top roubo bench has two sides to it and in the center there are dividers and pudding and I'm making those out of 1 by 8 pie now it's time to glue those up and assemble our center board so I'm basically going to place a board have a gap that's approximately the same width as the board and then another board so we're going to alternate a board then a space then a board then a space I'm going to pin these down with pin nails these are very short one inch pin nails they're very thin they have no head on them and that will kind of keep them in place so that I can put glue on them and attach the other board to it without too much worry of it moving around and I just want to apply a lot of clamps not because it needs a ton of clamping pressure necessarily above because it needs nice even a clamp pressure distributed over a large amount of area and here's a preview of what it's going to look like and where it is going to fit in the split top now I will just lightly joint both sides to make sure that they are both perfectly flat [Music] and here we are going to plane it down until we get the exact thickness that we need to fit into the workbench it's important to take equal amounts from both sides so that the board States entered the spots in the middle stay centered and I will cut it to exactly [Music] I think putting a small chamfer on the inside than the outside of this board all the way around will make it look nice you and I also want to duplicate that chamfered look on the split open part of the revolver bench and here we'll do a little bit of a test fit and there we go it's sticking up just the right amount about a half an inch and we'll see why that is in just a minute now here I'm also going to put some notches on the bottom side so that it will fit over the top rails so that in one orientation this board will actually end up being flush with the top surface so we'll have a uniformly flat surface and then flipping it the other way will allow it to stick up above the surface depending on the type of work we're doing at the time and we will move back over to the Daito sled to cut these out [Music] [Music] and it's time for another test fit to see if we've got the top just right now and that looks good in that orientation it's nice and flush with the top so we have a flat level bench top for most types of work I've decided I want to put a shelf on the bottom of the workbench and so I'm just cutting some scrap two-by-twos to attach to the inner rails at the lower part of the bench in order to support apply yourself we decided to put them an inch and 3/4 down that way once a three-quarter inch piece of plywood goes up top we still have them recessed down by about an inch so if we throw anything on there that might roll around it won't roll off of the workbench I'm cutting a notch out of a vertical two by six here to go over those two by twos that are holding the shelf that way I kind of have a center board going down my shelves below so it sort of matches the center line of the split top above and I'm cutting the shelf pieces out of 3/4 inch plywood this step is optional and just for look you could simply put a full fresh sheet of plywood at the bottom and not have to do it in multiple pieces like this these different methods are detailed in my plans which are available on my website and there's a link to them again here in the description just doing a quick test fit to make sure those plywood pieces hit and of course she seems very pleased with her job of test-fitting those now I'm just going to attach a couple of cleats to that center board to give the plywood shelf a little bit more support so that we should put something real heavy on it and it's time to do one more dry fit before we get to the finish on our project you could screw the shelves down if you wanted to but I'm just going to let mine sit there I don't think they're going to go anywhere especially once I start stacking things on them and there we have it the build is complete I have sanded down all of the surfaces through the various grits all the way to 220 grit and this is what it looks like complete before I've applied any finish I wanted the centreboard to stand out in this project and so I've decided to diet red this is a trans tent dye which I have diluted with as in sir seal coat sanding sealer and that's how we spread it out you can put various amounts of dye depending on how deep or rich or intense you want the color to look and the remainder of the bench I am going to finish with three coats of Danish oil finish Danish Oil is a blend of a penetrating oil and a varnish which will harden it's got some unique properties because it will penetrate deeply into the wood before it hardens and gives a little bit more protection than just a standard oil finish I like it because it has the same nice rich look of an oil finish which i think is the perfect finish for a woodworking bench so I said three coats but the end grain certainly takes more I just continue to put as much on the end grain as it takes until it stops absorbing into the wood after each coat I let the piece dry for about twenty to thirty minutes and then I apply another coat let that dry and then do the same thing I continue to applying coats until nothing else would absorb into the wood and this was about three coats for the majority of the piece with the end grain taking four or five in different places whenever I do an oil finish I usually sand the wood to somewhere between 150 and 220 grit I did 220 in this case but I never sand to a grit finer than that because it will have trouble absorbing the oil after the last coat of finish is applied I let the piece dry for 30 to 45 minutes and wipe off all the excess with a clean dry cloth if the cloth you're using gets too coated with oil switch out to a new clean cloth and keep going until the whole piece is wiped down so that's it we let the bench dry overnight and now we are going to do a final assembly and take a look at it I wasn't too careful about applying the dye to the bottom center piece of wood there's a little bit of splash over as you can see but that will be hidden underneath those shelves and to recap our benches 80 inches wide it is 30 inches deep and it is 36 inches tall the weight of the components added up to be somewhere between 450 and 500 pounds I think I'm still undecided about that red color I wanted something visually appealing to give it a little bit of character but I haven't decided if I like it or not I think you can see that my daughter there is quite proud of her work there are a couple of ways to use this center board on the split-top roubo style bench one way is to leave it flat like this and then you just have one continuous bench surface the other way is to flip it over this way the center board will stick up a half an inch above the top this let's it act as a perfect backstop to hold your board still if you wanted to plane something on the surface my daughter is demonstrating that there with her expert claiming skills and the slots in the center board will allow you to keep tools like chisels handy and that wraps up this project I hope you guys enjoyed it and if you like what you see please hit subscribe and if you'd like to support this channel please visit our patreon page thank you very much [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: King's Fine Woodworking

Views: 392,187

Rating: 4.9520855 out of 5

Keywords: Woodworking, wood, woodshop, woodworker, tools, grizzly, how to, DIY, make, maker, build, titebond, glue, table saw, sliding, compound, miter, mitre, saw, bandsaw, planer, jointer, drill, press, lathe, circular, jigsaw, DeWalt, router, sander, router table, woodpeckers, incra jig, miter 5000, sled, crosscut, disc, festool, vise, wagon vise, tail vise, moxon vise, leg vise, bench vise, dado, tenon, mortise, bench, woodworking bench, workbench, roubo, split, top

Id: B8eyWCkOMKo

Length: 31min 2sec (1862 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2017