Joinery for Knock-Down Workbenches

every woodworker needs a strong workbench but a lot of people also need a bench that comes apart quickly and easily maybe they need to transport it a lot or maybe they don't have a shop and they actually have to take the whole bench apart when they're not working and you know if you need a bench that's strong but also disassembles quickly and easily that is a tall order that is going to require some clever engineering i think we all know if we need clever woodworking well i am well adequate i'm good enough [Applause] people ask me a lot of workbench questions and recently i get the most questions about will myers moravian workbench the moravian bench is a copy of an actual job site bench from the 19th century it assembles and disassembles with astonishing speed no fasteners and no tools except a mallet how is this possible the secret to this amazing modular design mostly comes down to one very clever joint where the stretcher that's the long part meets the leg is this fantastic connection this is called a tusked mortise and tenon it's a lot like a standard mortise and tenon but with the addition of a tapered key that holds the joint together the moravian bench makes good use of this joint but plenty of other benches use it too a lot of european work benches were also made to be portable this one is a classic danish design and you can see that the main joint is the tusked mortise and tenon i'm sure this bench is easy to disassemble and move but the builder used big heavy components with lots of surface area and i bet this bench is very stable when it's assembled here's how the joint works your workbench leg has a big mortise cut all the way through it and the long stretcher is cut into a tenon which goes all the way through the leg with lots of room on the far side then a smaller mortise is cut through that tenon and a tapered key is tapped into that mortise to draw the joint together and tighten everything up if you need to take the joint apart just knock out the key and the whole thing is quickly disassembled honestly explaining it is probably more difficult than cutting it we'll cut this joint from a couple pieces of construction grade 4x4 even though this isn't furniture construction it's still useful to plane a face and an edge as reference surfaces and mark them so it's easy to find them again since my wood is about three and a half inches wide this one and a quarter inch chisel is perfect it's about a third i'll set a double pin gauge directly to this chisel and gauge my mortise line then i'll use the same gauge to strike my tenon lines on my stretcher this is a very long tenon so be careful that the pins don't drift into the grain and carry those gauge lines right across the end grain i also like to run a pencil through these lines especially if i'm working in a pale wood believe it or not this is exactly like cutting a furniture joint so you still want to strike knife lines at your shoulders chisel them into a clean knife wall and use that to guide your back saw into a nice perpendicular cut to saw the cheeks i'll stay right on my line and rip down until i get to the maximum depth of my back saw now i have a nice straight cut established and i can come in with a panel saw and not worry about drifting off my line the panel saw is the traditional choice for cutting extra large joinery and it works great of course you might have noticed that big black rectangle in the upper left part of the shot that is a filming light maybe i should move it ah that's much better on this channel we demand the highest standards of film production i stayed right on my line during the whole cut so the tenon comes out nice and straight and doesn't need much trimming we can go directly to the mortise i'm cutting the mortise with a big timber framing chisel but you don't need any specialized tools a standard bench chisel is more than enough for this soft pine construction lumber and if your widest chisel is only an inch just use that bench building is a terrible time to obsess over having exactly the right tools get the job done with whatever you have i chop in from both sides of the joint clean out most of the waste and then chop back to my knife lines i leave this step until last so i have a little bit of waste to lever against the inside of the joint is quite rough so i do some light pairing test fit the joint pair a little more and there's a good fit the joint has very little wiggle room but it slides together easily making it super tight wouldn't accomplish anything i've got a nice piece of maple and i'm re-sawing it down to the width of my mortise chisel i cut the piece fat and slowly plane it down to get a good fit it can be a tiny bit narrower than the chisel that will actually help now i pencil in a 5 degree angle and a curve at the top to prevent splitting when i hit the piece the completed key makes it easy to lay out my mortise in the big tenon you can see that i'm sliding the key back behind where the leg will be that way the key can't bottom out in its mortise until it pulls the joint tight cutting the second mortise is even easier because i can use my regular mortise chisel and that extra heavy blade plunges right into this soft pine i'm especially careful right at the end because i need one wall of my mortise to match the angle of my key it's not difficult but you do need to go slowly and now the whole joint comes together pretty smoothly now what makes this joint so great is how easy it is to put together take your stretcher slide it right into your leg then take your tapered wedge and put it into your stretcher mortise and then give it a few taps with your mallet here's how it works the wedge obviously is tapered and we've cut a corresponding taper into this mortise so as we drive the wedge down it draws everything together and creates a very tight very solid joint now this is great but as i was building it i figured out a way i could make it even better let's go back to that danish workbench and go back to the close-up of the leg stretcher joint you can see how the original craftsman used a wide plank for his stretcher where i just used a beam that's really important because it gives him a very big shoulder above and below the joint if we come back to my joint you can see that i've just used this four by four post and that means my shoulders are here on the sides that's fine but it's not great because as you're using the bench a lot of the force is this way the leg wants to bend back and forth and the stretcher basically has like up and down pressure on it so having the shoulders over here isn't ideal much better to have the shoulders on the top and the bottom where they're really going to resist that tendency to rack up and down so if you're going to make this joint it would be great to use a wide plank for this something like maybe a 2x6 or a 2x8 just construction lumber and then when you want to take this joint apart well just a couple of hits with a mallet takes out your wedges you can pull apart the individual joints you can have a whole bench taken apart in less than a minute not bad right but i know what a lot of you are thinking rex that is a very nice joint i might even want that joint on my bench but there is there is a lot of joinery there a lot of chopping mortises and stuff and you know a lot of us we're not going to know how to do that until we already have a bench so for all those beginner woodworkers out there don't you have some sort of other joint that works the same but is easier to make well as a matter of fact i do there's another version of this joint that works especially well with a laminated approach so i've prepared three white pine boards and they're going to be the leg of my imaginary bench the leg needs a mortise through the center a lot like i did on the last joint but this one needs to be angled in two directions at two different pitches so just cutting those angles into the center board is a really easy way of creating my mortise conveniently these huge knots are right where i want to put the joint so i'll cut them away the top of the mortise is angled at 6 degrees and the bottom is angled at 16 degrees that might not make much sense while i'm cutting the pieces but as i begin laminating the leg together you can see how i'm forming that double tapered mortise just by sawing at different angles now my stretcher needs this triangular notch to help it lock into the leg cutting the short side is easy but that shallow angle is tricky to start so i'll make a little notch with a chisel to give the saw teeth a place to bite down then it's a straightforward rip cut this joint also needs a wedge and again i'm going with hardwood i need the slope of the wedge to be very straight and refined so i'll joint it with a jack plane and then finish it up with this lovely little wooden smoother that one of my viewers built it's the perfect tool for delicate work and a light cut before i finish laminating the joint together let's look inside and see how it works the notch allows my stretcher to hook over the bottom wall of the mortise then my wedge comes in on top and provides downward pressure to keep those angles engaged and keep the bench from racking as you use it the parts have a tight friction fit and the whole thing holds together solidly real quick let's laminate on the last board then we can watch the joint in action this joint is sort of similar to the other one but it works pretty differently in this case the stretcher has that notch which causes it to come in here and hook over the edge of that mortise then i bring in my wedge and tighten that and this time the wedge is providing downward pressure it's forcing that notch into the corresponding angle that we laminated into this mortise that downward pressure also draws the joint together and because the stretcher is hooked over the edge it makes things very stiff very resistant to racking i also want to point out that for both of these joints i'm using hardwood wedges with a soft wood main structure the hardwood resists getting knocked around with the mallet but the soft wood is sort of springy and it deforms more easily than hardwood so a hardwood wedge is gripped really tightly in a soft wood structure now just like the other joint this one comes apart very easily a little bit too easily and it's very easy to take apart and put back together again but when i was building it i just made it out of this thin soft wood planking because that's all i had in the shop after having built it i'm sort of surprised at how well this thin planking works it's pretty sturdy so if you want to build a takedown bench and all you have around is some thin pine boards give it a shot you can probably make that work for a lot of woodworkers the bench is sort of the first major project so it makes sense to plan it out carefully and then even physically practice cutting some of your joints that way when you go to do the actual build you know you can handle the most demanding part the joint where that long stretcher hits the leg that joint is under more stress than any other part of the bench and if you can cut that joint well the rest of your build should go smoothly now both the joints i've shown in this video are going to give you an excellent stretcher to leg connection but the first one i showed the vertical tusk tenon that one is much more common in historical benches this other one with the horizontal wedge you see that one in historical benches but less often i don't know if that means it's not as good of a joint i'm not sure i just want to point that out now i get a ton of questions about will myers moravian bench and although i've never worked on one i'm an enormous fan of the design it obviously comes apart very easily and it looks very sturdy and very efficient if you want to learn more about building that bench you can check out myers website eclecticmechanicals.com which i will link to down in the description will has uh pdf plans that you can get for free he's got articles about the bench he's got a build dvd that you can buy he sells vices and hardware for the bench it's really a one-stop shop now will and i have no affiliation we've never met and he has no idea that i'm making this video but i still recommend you check out his website now as good as the moravian is it probably isn't a perfect bench for like a beginner who needs a takedown workbench it might be a tiny bit complicated for them to build so i'm always thinking about ways that i can make my own takedown workbench design that might be a little bit easier a little bit more beginner friendly and i'm always thinking about that often when i'm spending time with my family i'm supposed to be thinking about them but anyway this video would never be possible without my amazing patrons on patreon if you'd like to be one of those people you can go on over to patreon.com rexkrueger and check out all the rewards i have for the people who make these videos happen and even if you're just watching this video even if you're just a viewer i appreciate you just as much thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 125,037

Keywords: joinery, joiner, workbench joinery, knock-down workbench, knock-down, joinery bench, workbench ideas for garage, how to build a workbench for garage, bespoke joinery, woodworking projects for beginners, panel joinery, furniture joinery, diy for women, traditional joinery, knockdown workbench, knockdown work bench, knockdown workbench design, desk for a small space, fold down workbench, work benches diy, knockdown bench, diy folding workbench, Rex Krueger

Id: soJZ1u3cozc

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021