ANCIENT timber to build a MODERN workbench

the Ruba workbench designed by Andre brubeau in the 1700s regarded by many as the ultimate work holding solution for the shop it's been hands down the best tool I've added but ever since I built mine I've had this Burning question I can't shake was the Pinnacle of modern workbenches really designed 300 years ago maybe not [Music] so a while back we had a windstorm out here and we hired a guy to come out and he said I've got this stack of wood in my shop about a thousand board feet came from a tree that he estimated it to be 500 years old it had been down for 75 years before he cut it 10 to 15 years ago it's all quartersawn Douglas fir and we figure based on his calculations that this tree germinated in 1432. when choosing lumber for a workbench the first and most important thing is to choose something with a lot of provenance said no one ever it's clear it's straight it's even more dense than Walnut I gotta admit softwood wouldn't be my first choice for a workbench but this will do just fine [Music] so the first thing I need to do is to take all of these two inch thick boards and turn them into a huge pile of half inch thick boards snapped the extra resin content produces a lot of frictional heat resulting in a lot of snap blades [Music] thank you all right here's where things start to get fun making a wedge and wood a taper that is not difficult but what if that taper smears itself starts out fat goes to thin in the center and it comes back out to Fat again on scale we could certainly do that with the bandsaw but if that taper is just an eighth of an inch over nine feet it gets quite a bit trickier so check this out this is a teeter-totter so in the center it's got the low point and then the wings so out here at the end it makes a board that is 3 8 of an inch thick the center of the board cuts thicknesses to just less than a quarter cool huh now this is pretty subtle over one lamination but as you get 32 together [Music] thank you [Music] all right the base of this bench is going to be curved and in order to make that curve I need something to form the wood around instead of wasting eight sheets of MTF building a solid form I'm going to try something a little different on this one by using a reference board as clamping blocks as sort of a skeleton form I picked this technique up from how curved stairs are formed on site foreign the dry fit is looking good as Jimmy the rest always says you go to school on the first one so I think the primary reason this works really well is because the laminations are thick enough that they don't fold over when they get wet or in other words they're kind of self-supportive I am still using a couple call layers on the outside to sort of buffer that edge [Music] the old added shellac sticks to everything and everything sticks to shellac is always true except when it isn't to mitigate glue squeeze out I just coated the form in shellac okay I'm glad that's over [Music] the scale of this project is admittedly beyond my comfort zone but that just seems to be a masochistic tendency of mine sometimes I wish there's a playbook for how to do all this it's one thing to know how to build the thing but a whole other animal for how to sell it to those who like me love working with their hands and being creative let me introduce this week's sponsor the business in a box playbooks whether you're looking to go full-time woodworker or just a hobbyist looking for a side gig that pays for itself literally the book on how to run a woodworking business a no details spared reference for everything from proportions jointer and wood selection to SEO invoicing and taxes everything they don't teach about woodworking in business school and everything business they don't teach at furniture School sprinkle Business course wants to teach you how to scale eliminate the learning curve saving thousands of dollars in hours on preventable mistakes to learn how to run your own profitable custom furniture business visit the link in the description to save 25 off the entire 100 step-by-step digital playbooks course including SketchUp models and access to a private discussions group thanks to sprinkle business playbooks for sponsoring this build now let's get back to it there's two types of bench tops split top and a solid top when I was first making my bench somebody told me the split tops are for lazy people but honestly I think they're made the same one just glued together at the end I chose the flip top because flip top Sawyer sounds cool I've left the front and the backboards off and then we've got sort of the two halves in order to get those joined to The Arches once we get these thickness I think I'll set those aside and we'll get back to the Arches and figure out how the heck those are getting put together foreign [Music] element that I really wanted to emphasize on this project was the fact that the Arches Nest into the top seemingly intersect with those massive slabs in the application and ability of the Pano router just never ceases to amaze me actually had the opportunity to travel down to the international woodworking Festival last month with mac and John Henry with panel router and it was amazing seeing the scale of this industry such a cool opportunity and Max also provided a discount link to the piano router should you be interested in it after you see all the cool stuff that it does in this video [Music] and now you can see why I left those front boards off the slab in the top the nice thing of the curves of this lab is a bit of an illusion before we can get the arches glued at the top a few things have to happen the Shelf needs to be assembled and ready to glue up at the same time as well as the back side of the main Vise called the leg Vise the front set of that Vise is called the chop and that's what I'm gluing up here [Music] thank you [Music] in order to get proportions right and avoid guessing the curves that I made and designed in CAD I just printed off some templates to transfer over now it's important to get all the joinery done while everything's still square and we'll get back to the shaping of the curves after the tenons are cut on these supports and after I've drilled the holes for the retention mechanism and Hardware of the leg base [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ERS will support the split top between the legs and once again I'm just cutting those ten ends on the panel router and since it was a little awkward to get the legs up into that position I decided just to make a template to Route out the mortises during a dry fit at the top to the face board I noticed that that curve was sort of getting lost in the mix so I accentuated that just a little bit to allow for a piece of veneer to sandwich in between foreign in order to mortise the supports into the top again I made a template on the Pano router this time kind of boring into the template to allow for a guide bushing to ride in there and that worked really well [Music] one of the supports that have integral tenons as well but with the way the curves came together it really wasn't an option for assembly so instead I decided to do floating tenons with the Domino and that worked out pretty well for the three corners that had supports and placed the support on the fourth Corner as the stationary face of the leg Vise the top side of which is going to be mortise using a dovetail shaped Tenon and that keeps this jaw of the Vise flush with the front of the bench foreign [Music] [Music] mortise is cut into the face of that curved leg to accept the curved jaw of the vise [Music] thank you [Music] as always a little fine tuning and finessing is necessary to make for a gapless fit there's this really awkward size of hole that needs to be cut every once in a while that's bigger than an inch and a quarter but usually not something I have a forstner bit for and one of my favorite things for the painter Rider is cutting out odd size circles with the combination of bearing sizes and bit sizes with a custom template up on the fence you can make pretty much any size under four inches that you want [Music] it's a little tricky trying to figure out how to get some of these components centered on a hole that was already cut and just using a little support block and making a Tenon at the end of it I was able to basically create a centering block to mount all the hardware through that hole [Music] thank you all right I'm biased as hell but that looks sick let's get a final level cut on the legs and we'll go ahead and make that Autumn shelf so we can get everything glued together foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] you might have noticed something and you guys I tried I tried to be a split top guy I wanted to like it but I just think split tops are silly I don't get them I don't need to put clamps in there I don't want it for work holding and I never want a planing stop that's 10 inches away from me since I'm using hold fast I think a strip down the center is going to be just fine for holding stuff down anywhere in the bench I cannot see any benefit to a split top long story short it's a solid top as it should be I'm sure there will be plenty of strong opinions in the comments below looking forward to reading those I know you love your clamps in the center foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] all right that was looking pretty good for now obviously so this section here is called the chop the the Chop's gonna need some more shaping first I want to get the floor installed while it's up here the Shelf down here and then we can bring it down to the ground and get the tail Vise installed and wrap this thing up let's do it [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] all right for reference definitely some room for improvement I'm not quite sure what's wrong yet I know it looks like this plate is rubbing on this one um almost like this assembly needs to back off just a little bit we'll have to revisit that I'm not really sure what's going on there for now let's move on to installing this dead sexy hnt tail device from hardwood tools [Music] all right this is the point of every project that I absolutely dread and it's where I can no longer lift anything so I need to figure out how to get this on the ground well that wasn't very dramatic last time I dropped a 600 pound bench on my toes [Music] the owner of hardwood tools Leslie is a hell of a Furniture maker and one of the few places that you can pick up fine handmade tools on the internet she also writes a handwritten note with every sale which I think is just above and beyond if you'd like to purchase this Vice or anything else on her website I believe the only discount code in existence is listed in the description below check it out foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign stretch let's go ahead and get the front face of that Vice AKA The Chop we'll get that shaped and figure out what we're doing for a hold Downs now that I eliminated the split top [Music] oh hey also huge thanks to everyone who's supported the T-shirt drop last time I really appreciate that sold a ton of them and couldn't be more impressed with the quality of the teas so I hope you guys all liked them too really appreciate all the support there thanks so much foreign [Music] ER furniture for card scrapers from Heartwood tools absolute Game Changer seriously I've never been able to pull like a reliable repeatable Burr on a card scraper but this thing it does the trick [Music] foreign [Music] pegs dogs or prairie dogs in this case on the front of the bench will work great even if this was a bit of a departure from the original plan it still looks like a split top but I've never actually seen the hold fast holes down at the center strip before so I think this still qualifies as the Sawyer style or Split Top Sawyer as promised I never liked how my hold fast ringed out my dog holes so separating those is a big Plus in my book The spacing is dictated by the reach of the hold fast down the center and the throw of the tail Vise along the front of the bench I ended up smoothing out the leg Vice action by adding some weights to the vice jaw or jaw to balance out the asymmetric design foreign [Music] will tell whether it's earned its place next to the rubo as for looks I think it turned out pretty bitching yeah yeah thank you [Music] yeah yeah [Music] I made you plans for this one as I remember getting a lot of requests on the OG rubo so let me know if that's of Interest they'll be available in the description once I have them uploaded thanks to paint a router for supplying the material for this build if you're in the market you've seen the versatility and it's time to pull the trigger you won't regret it don't forget to sign up for sprinkle Business course if you want to make money woodworking share this with a friend if you enjoyed the build and if you think I have earned it I'd certainly appreciate your subscription we'll catch you on the next one peace

Channel: Sawyer Design

Views: 557,146

Keywords: woodworking projects, bent lamination, custom furniture, heirloom furniture, how to, modern design, woodworking, diy woodworking, artisan videos, unique furniture, craftsman, woodworking tools, furniture, modern furniture design, wood working, woodworking art, amazing woodworking projects, furniture design idaes, modern furniture build, modern furniture making, modern furniture, Yellowstone

Id: HzZfm6xuMBs

Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022