Building A Roubo Work Bench Out Of Southern Yellow Pine (Part 1)

hey everyone thanks for watching I'm Dave and today I'm going to show you part one on how I built the split-top roubo with affordable lumber and not so affordable hardware I use southern yellow pine two by twelves for this project and I got less than $150 into the lumber I used the benchcrafted tail vise and leg vise for this project so they're not so affordable but it is definitely really nice hardware it took me three trips to different home centers to pick up enough lumber and pick through it all to find enough clean clear straight boards to use for this project I put them in a shed that I have out back and let them dry for about five weeks I'm going to first start by working on the legs I'm cutting the boards down to a manageable size so that I can rip them all down and dimension them out next I'll rip all the two by 12s down the middle so each board will be about five and a half inches wide and then I'll come back and rip off each side which takes off the rounded over corners that you get on dimensional lumber next back at the miter saw will cut all the boards in half roughly to 36 inches I've been trying to think of ways to not show so much joining and planing operations but when making a bench like this with laminated legs and a laminated top later on it's important to know the milling process so I guess I'll keep the process for this video I start by getting one flat face on the jointer and then I'll take all the boards over to the planer and get the other side parallel and once that's done I'm ready to glue the legs up I'm going to try to glue all four legs up at one time so I'm gonna do two legs and one set of clamps and two and the other it was a little stressful but it worked out pretty good I'll let the glue dry on the legs overnight and then I was back to the jointer and planer to get the final dimensions down to 5 inches wide by 4 inches thick then to get the legs to final length I used my table saw and my miter fence and had to take a couple passes my bench is gonna be 33 inches tall so I cut in the legs to a final length to 30 and a half inches that with an inch and a half tenon and a 4 inch thick table should get me right where I need to be next I'll start roughing the boards that are gonna make up the two tops I'll cut everything to a rough length and rip all the boards down the middle and take off that rounded over edge just like I did on the legs after I've rough cut on all the boards I'll let everything sit overnight and then just like the legs I'll take everything to the jointer to get one straight face and then take it over to the planer to get the other side parallel and now I'm ready to start gluing up the tops there's going to be two tops both of them will be made of eight boards laminated together I can glue one of them all the way up all eight boards and then the second top I'm only going to glue six boards up for now I'll keep two boards off to the side one of them is gonna be a little bit shorter to accommodate the tail vise and the other one's gonna be the long front face that's gonna have the dovetails in it the first tops going to come out to be around 11 and 3/8 inch wide so it's just wide enough to fit through my planer I'm gonna start by taking my hand plane and flattening one face as long as you take your time with the glue up it should be pretty close to flat coming out of the clamps it only took me about 10 minutes or so to plane the one side flat and then I'll do the same planing process on the six board top after I've gotten one side of each top flat I'll run the other sides through the planer the tops are starting to get pretty heavy at this point so I called my son out to give me a hand getting them through the next step is to square up one of the ends of the top I'm using a circular saw for this so I'm just checking to make sure that my fence on the saw is 90 degrees to the blade to square up the one into the top I'll mark off a straight line use my saw guide to line up the cut and then make this cut in two passes one note here is that I want to mark far enough in to make sure that I get rid of all the Snipe left from my planer and once I'm finished with the first cut I'll flip the top over line up the saw guide again and make the second pass on the other end of the small top I'm going to mark out to put a big 10 in where the end cap and dovetail and tail vise are gonna go this tenon is gonna be an inch and a half wide by an inch and a quarter long I'll make it by using my circular saw to make the cut I'll make one cut up against the line and then I'll make multiple little cuts that I can come and break out later now I can break away most of the pieces of wood that was left between the saw kerf so way by hand I'll clean up the corners in the faces of the Tenon's using a combination of wide chisels and a couple of shoulder planes that I have the tenon only takes up about half of the top I need to remove it where the tail vise is going to go and the best way I found to do that was with a hand saw so I'll start by ripping in from the end and then I'll flip the top up on its side and cut the rest of the tenon off then I can take my chisel and just clean up the shoulders of where I just got done cutting here I'm cleaning up the end cap that I made for this top it's just two boards glued together I'll run it through the jointer and then flush up the ends on a chop saw next I need to mark out where the mortise is going to go on the end cap I attached a board underneath of the top that stuck out a little bit past the end and then I could reference the end cap on to that surface this way I can take my marking knife and just kind of pricked lines into the endcap then I was able to come back with my square darken in all the lines and mark out all the waste then I can cut out the mortise and the end cap using my router since the router left rounded corners and the mortise I took my chisel and squared them all up after cleaning up the mortise I ended up getting a really good tight fit the next thing I needed to do was mark out where the tail vise was gonna go the best thing to do here is follow the benchcrafted directions but I'll run you through how I did it with all the pieces of the screw put together I extended it all the way out to the end and Mark that out then I marked just the quarter inch past that line then I marked where the end of the screw was gonna sit I clamped the two last boards in place that are gonna go on this top then I put the rails in place and the sliding plate I ran it back and forth and make sure that the rails were exactly where they should be and then marked out where the rails sit then I marked out the area between the two rails and then sat the sliding plate and nut plate on the end of the top and marked out how deep the nut plate was going to sit into the top then came the daunting task of having to rout out all the waste between the rails and as deep as the nut plate sits on the top this took quite a while I used a two and a half inch long router bit and just kept taking small passes about a quarter of an inch deep each time next I had to drill a hole in the end cap that the tale by screw would sit in benchcrafted gives you a template to follow but a couple things to remember there is to make sure that you scale the template properly and if your bench doesn't come out to be exactly four inches thick the template may not work so it takes a lot of measuring and checking to make sure you got it right I didn't get a good video of this but I did also have to route out a shoulder that a washer is gonna sit in at the end of the vise screw after that shoulder was cut now I can install the vise screw loosely install the nut plate and sliding plate and run it back and forth few times to see how it's going to work then I can start preparing the end cap to put the dovetails in to make these dovetails or Condor tails I'm following issue 191 a popular woodworking magazines article they have a really good article on how to make these tails for a workbench I start by marking out how deep the dovetails are going to go into the end cap and then I transfer that line to the end board that'll have the tails on it next I mark out where I'm gonna put the tails I use this homemade dovetail marker to draw the lines and get the angles right then I darken the marking knife line from earlier and Mark out all the waste here are making a jig out of some plywood and a screw that I can use to cut these dovetails out at the bandsaw basically I'm just taking a scrap piece of rectangled plywood cut in an angle out that matches the angle of the dovetails I drew earlier and then I can take it over to the bandsaw set it up against my fence and cut the dovetails out on the end board this method really makes it easy to get good straight tails cut on a long board like this once the cuts are done at the bandsaw I can bring it back over to my workbench and cut the rest of the waste out with my hand saws and coping saws once I've got all the waste cut out with my saws I'll use my chisels to clean up to the lines and make sure I have good crisp shoulders the next step is to cut a shoulder into the tails so that I have an easy way to register this board against the endcap board you could use a shoulder plane for this but I had the router already set up so I used the combination of the router and my hand chisels to clean up to the lines now I can transfer the tail lines over to the endcap board so I can start making the pins having that shoulder on the tail board really makes it easy to register the tail board against the end cap here I'm using my router to cut out the waste for the pins this was a little nerve-wracking because I had to do this freehand and I was worried about ruining the end cap that I put so much work into so far the magazine article has you clean out just a small portion of the pins with your router and then clean up with the chisel and come back with a pattern bit to clean out the rest but I wasn't able to find a pattern bit the right size so I just cleaned out most of the waste with this router and then all the edges and shoulders with my chisels I tried to follow the magazine article the best I could and then - the pattern bit stuff and as a result I ended up getting really good tight fitting dovetails in addition to the dovetails I'm using 1/2 inch lag bolts to hold the rest of the end cap on so here I'm just drilling out where I'm gonna put those lag bolts to allow for some seasonal wood movement later on I'm gonna oblong the hole that the lag bolt on the end is gonna sit in and here I'm just getting the pilot holes into the top these are pretty big half-inch lag bolts and I don't want them to split the top next I'm going to apply a little bit of glue to the middle of the tenon and then stick the end cap on and install the lag bolts now I'm ready to apply a little bit of glue and install the face board or tail board of this top as well as the short board where the wagon vise is going to sit when clamping everything together I made sure to use a piece of to buy material that's going to be about the same size of the dog block to slide it up and down the slot between the dog strip board and the tail board this way I'll make sure I have an even gap all the way up and down the top next I need to drill a couple of holes where the flange is gonna go for the screw on the tail vise then I'll use some sandpaper just to clean up all the marking lines and stuff I had on the end cap next at the bandsaw I'm going to rough out what's going to be the dog block that mounts into the tail vise I left the tail board a little bit long so after the glue is all dried I can come back and salt that off with my hand saw and then plane those last two boards flat with the rest of the top next I'll loosely install the tail vise hardware and Mark out where the rails are gonna go I'll use the rail itself to measure out how deep I need to make the router cut now I can go in with the router and make the slots that the rails are gonna sit in this is another nerve-racking operation that I had to kind of do by freehand because there's no good way to get the fence at least on my router setup in a good position I've seen in some people's builds where they have the Festool router has a really good fence system and that would have made this job a lot easier but I didn't have that on this job once I finished routing everything out and cleaning out the corners with the chisel I can install the rails loosely and put the sliding plate in and make sure that it runs freely up and down the rails once I'm happy with the fit then I can drill some pilot holes and install all the screws that hold the rails down now I'm ready to final install the vise Hardware I'll install the washer and the flange to this group and I can install the wheel to the screw by knocking in the pin then I applied a little three-in-one oil to where the washer and the flange sit on the screw then I could install the screw in the wheel to the bench top install the bolts and nuts through the flange and then just sit here and admire how well this thing works this tail vise runs so smooth I'm so impressed with the benchcrafted hardware my last bench just a couple simple screws that were about $50 each for the leg vise and tail vise and they work great and they hold work probably just as well as anything else would but just how smooth and easy this thing runs is gonna be really nice and I'm glad I spent the extra money to get this hardware the last step on this top is to install the sliding bench dog I snuck up on the fit by test-fitting it and then bringing it over and hand planing a little bit and then going back and fitting it again until I got a really good fit that wasn't too sloppy but still allowed the vise to move real smooth and that just about finishes up the top assemblies I think this is a good stopping point for this video in the next video I'll build the base and the leg vices and get everything wrapped up so please subscribe if you're not already subscribed so you don't miss part two and give me a thumbs up if you like this video also leave some comments below tell me what you think

Channel: Twisted Woodshop

Views: 247,070

Rating: 4.9482303 out of 5

Keywords: Workbench, woodworking, woodworking bench, benchcrafted, tools, hand tool, affordable workbench, dimensional lumber work bench, tail vise, leg vise, hand tools, bench, how to, diy, roubo, vise, work bench, workshop, roubo workbench, how to build a workbench, woodworker, handtools, how to make a workbench, hand tool woodworking, diy workbench, workbench build, traditional woodworking, woodwork, woodshop, woodworking tools, hand plane, southern yellow pine work bench, Split top roubo

Id: CpRfl9bzaxk

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/stanley604]

Nice Roubo. I envy woodworkers who have access to SYP (although Doug Fir is a decent substitute out this way).

[u/drewharbin]

I totally wish that I could budget benchcrafted stuff for my upcoming bench. I've already got a stack of SYP ready to start milling up on Sunday for my Father's Day gift from my family. I grabbed plans from Jay Bates for a solid top, but I might leave a board out and make it a split top. Any suggestions on how to go about securing that?