Rob Cosman's Live YouTube Workshop Episode 7

your audio is on just check check check check microphone good I think my microphone is good hi Sue look I'm already being blamed that we're late I'm ed I'm ed I'm already blame me I'm just waiting for Jake to pick up the camera we they have audio we're just waiting for video we're on yeah audio wise but we're lucky to even be here holy smokes who's out here one in gym yeah yeah please make sure your phones are muted who's reading questions I am okay read them a little more thoroughly man why don't you know what I mean by that don't skip over ones well we get a lot Ken you need to have your face on you need to be on there looking at that because you know you know more on the wood side of it so you know what - what what kind of question which questions need to be addressed but yeah I'm ready it's born ready how's my hair you never tell me it's too late cuz you're already on good to go yep hi folks welcome oh this is May May the fourth can't help but smile when you hear that say that may the fourth be with you welcome folks this is our live brought you to broadcast number 7 7 November 7 Wow so we started last week last week was the first I didn't know we were gonna take 2 to do it on workbenches and we spent the whole time mostly talking about the construction of this one today we're going to talk we're gonna finish with the people's bench stick named that but before we do that things that I want to tell you and do we haven't be out there for yeah we have my counts always on mind saying 81 but it's usually low anyway so let me just tell you briefly why we do this three years ago Jake and I started a program called the Purple Heart Project it was a result of Jesse paratus contacting me and not of the blue looking for a dovetail saw and mentioned that we have he thinks my saw was the best Thank You Jess and one know if we ever had any with cosmetic claws because he couldn't afford a new one but if we had any that we sold it less expensive he would save his money and get it and then he went on to say that he was a combat wounded marine we lived in a small disability pension and the government body said ever since he got involved and to a woodworking it was the first time that he found any piece from the physical and the mental pain that he suffers from and that hit me because I had been accustomed to teaching 50 year old business executives in these week-long hand tool courses that we taught and you'd see them come in Monday tight as a drum from stress and then during the week he'd watch this balloon deflate and come Friday they were like jellyfish they didn't want to go home I'd be kicking them out at midnight go I gotta catch a flight to go home so I thought maybe this um we should be doing for these guys so we reached out we helped Jesse that's where I met Luther who's become an integral part of what we do and we are two days away or day and a half away from starting number-10 class we've had 60 combat wounded vets to date come to our workshops we cover all their expenses including sending them home with in Canadian about three thousand dollars worth of tools so they can continue to do this at home and we have done this in Niagara Falls right up until now we have a new shop we have a new classroom I'm gonna take you there and see you let you see it and this would be our first class where we teaching them right here we're going and picking them up at Bangor International Airport tomorrow three are flying in to Fredericton and one of our civilian students who's volunteered to bring them down so we're all going to meet here tomorrow night clock for a what are we here for for barbecue what did we call it know what's on the sign oh the freakin good barbecue we're having shish kebabs I'm excited about that because I can actually eat it so what we do in these live broadcasts we got together and we thought you know we're putting out all this free content why don't we give it a purpose so the purpose is to raise money for our Purple Heart project we don't take a salary out of this we don't take any kind of administrative fees Luther comes in I we fly him in we take care of them over here super Dave over there works with us part of their team and everything that we raise is used to either buy plane tickets for the vets pay for their hotel their food or cover their tool costs what we don't raise we pay ourselves and make no bones about it please don't do not donate through YouTube they take 32 or 35 35 percent that's just way too much so if you want to donate tell us we'd love to give you a shout out and please don't be embarrassed by that let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven so you know people are inspired when they see other people step up to the plate and do something well nice I'll post the link for Kapusta link do it three through our website Rob Cosman com is a right up there in the toolbar top left Purple Heart projects on drop down menu how you can help and we'd be great grateful to have your help but be even more grateful to help you find us some of these guys who need this help this is our single biggest problem is locating these guys who are suffering in silence and don't know where to turn we have a solution maybe not be for everybody but flash over there super Dave but we have helped several and Dave's a great example of of guys who need it and deserve it more than deserve it and it actually works so the other thing you can do is you can buy one of our t-shirts this nice Purple Heart logo on the front wood is good on the back we're proudly promote it and help us spread the word now before we start on the bench come on here I want to show you what we've got where we are essentially ready there's a few minor little things we've been busting our butts just kind of pan around here so we see some of these people so bribed just flew in he's early for the class starting on Monday so we've already got him put to work no that's right cuz he came late we got Jim who arrived two days ago we worked his butt off all day yesterday and he's not going home yet right behind him is Paul now Paul's an interesting character because Paul is Lieutenant Commander said that right in the US in the Canadian Navy and he contacted me out of the blue three weeks ago three or four weeks ago and said Rob I like what you're doing can I help well it just so happens that Luther who's under higher orders is in Africa gallivanting around the continent not here helping us and I said you know what Paul we are down a man we need you I need you for two weeks so we got the head honchos gave him the time off and he arrived a couple hours ago well we'll see and and then we got Super Dave in the back Super Dave 17 years army-navy medically retired Dave came to our class was one of our one it was one of our Purple Heart what do we call them scholarship recipients in the fall of 2017 and that is a great story he ended up contacting us the next spring another time that Luther was off gallivanting we were down a man and Dave Dave just happened to call three days three or four days before and said you know my wife says I should call you see if I can help and I said absolutely so Dave came up David Digg didn't live that far away so he came up there's a funny story attached to this anyway he came up and he and Jake worked together and he was so good I don't mean to embarrass him he was so good we didn't need him the second week cause Luther was actually coming in on Sunday but I went to my said Davis been so fantastic having you here would you come back next week yeah so we did and now we just said well okay now you're part of the team so wherever we go whatever we do a would show anywhere he we fly him in and he works with us so when he first came he didn't know we were gonna take care of him so he loaded up he had the back of his vehicle so he could sleep in it and he had a cooler full of peanut butter and bread we could feed himself for weeks I felt terrible when I heard this but I also it was funny too but no we take care of him bring him in his wife's on here so be careful Michelle's here I'm Michelle zoom right in and give him a big wet kiss she keeps suggesting we keep him longer any time I talked to her and then we have Megan right here in front integral part of the team married to Jake over here we have Ken Ken Anthony Ken works with us great employee he's here of Saturday night he has no lie tonight and he has no life obviously because it's very hungry but and bright right behind him who we already told you as a student coming in and then of course we have Frick on the but I want to I want to say a special low so Angela Anthony Angela Anthony is a cousin to Ken who happens to like woodworking and she wrote me a letter thank you very much Angela and her goal is to come and work here in the shop with us she's under the weather right now but when she gets better she's coming here so so that you'll be prepared and ready I'm gonna send these home with Ken for you this one's on on sharpening and using your hand plane sorry that one is and this was on dovetail so I'm giving this to Ken expecting he'll deliver it for you you'd probably watch it before he does but all right thanks Angela hope you're feeling better now let's go out here mom will show you what we did we've been busting our butt we left here last night at 1:30 I don't know how late it was the night before but we've been here several nights so this is the class essentially ready can you how far can can you come they got my bench a little bit out of position so all the drop-down plugs are in place for bench lamps there's one missing off here we got the extra benches done that we needed we're gonna talk about these tonight we've got our monitor on the wall with our with our overhead camera over here overhead cameras focusing over there on my vice so everyone will have to be a good view and if we need to we'll put another camera over there oh I want to show you these so we had to make we have these Bose speakers for in here can you get that far so anyway so I decided to do something a little bit fancy so we made these little speaker stands this one is a through houndstooth dovetail and then over in this corner which is even more difficult is a half-blind houndstooth dovetail you able to see that can you get that far enough over TVs in the way that's too bad that was really cool that was a lot of fun our bathroom is 90% done we just got to put the ceiling in it our doors our sliding doors are on what else we're ready if you're watching and you're showing up next week we're ready okay come back mom Mac that was Luther famous joke paul says that the guitars on the way so thank you Paul we're gonna figure out how we're gonna get that across so I'm gonna tell you about this but where's Paul's t-shirt Paul Rigney is from from Tennessee and yeah and Paul and we're supposed to have a Pittsburgh our Buffalo Sabres Jersey here too Paul Rigney is a as a woodworker craftsman instrument maker down in down in Knoxville Tennessee area and I met him at the Knoxville wood craft store which is run by Everett who was a fantastic individual and one of the biggest supporters anyway so Paul by and George well George is coming up George's George's Everett's manager he's gonna be here for the net for next week's class so Paul made a guitar I wish I wish I knew enough about the cars tell you all about it but it's pretty cool and he's donating it's up for auction we'll have it here to show and all the proceeds are going to the Purple Heart project Paul's the vet as well I met a bunch of them when I was down there in fact I think I have a YouTube of that we'll put that in on there so you can find it thank you Paul all right fire the questions as we get them someone asked if we were gonna livestream any of the clock yeah we are we're gonna we're gonna livestream some we may do to it we will do each class towards the latter part of the week when everybody's comfortable we'll definitely do that give him a chance to say hello okay we ready am I gonna switch to a bench mode so I want to give you a little bit of history on this when Jake and I and Frick and Dave started the online hand to a workshop in the summer of 2011 yep July 2011 2011 come September come January I realized that these guys were home trying to do this on the end of a table saw or workmate they didn't have a bench and I thought how can you do this stuff without a good solid bench to work on well as we went over this last week building this bench without a full kit of tools is almost impossible to try to do this with nothing but hand tools so I went to work trying to come up with some kind of a bench there could be built with minimal tools at minimum cost and actually be an effective bench now the first idea was that we would what we would do is have an assembly bench or assembly table so that you weren't gluing stuff up on your good bench so use the assembly table to build your bench and then just have it end up being your assembly bench simple as that the top was made out of three out of three inches of MDF now MDF is not my favorite product by any stretch of the imagination I can't stand the smell of it I think it's terrible and in but in certain applications it's actually an exceptional product it's it's bonuses are that it has a tough hard-wearing surface it's dimensionally stable it stays flat and as long as you don't get it wet it lasts a long time so it's and it's inexpensive yeah I mean I think it's thirty dollars thirty forty dollars for this sheet so we ended up making the top out of MDF we need the base out of plywood and the way we built it required very few tools clamps if you look around how many clamps I have just I can't even begin to tell you the value of the clamps on the two sides of this clamp tray there's um it's jam-packed on both sides thousands of dollars worth of clamps I've got pipe clamps there I've got four or five racks of pipe clamps back there and they're just incredible how expensive they are and you can never have enough so to try to build something like this and actually have clamps to put it together it was going to be impossible to so we worked around all of that we end up coming up with something that works so well that we thought wow I wonder if we could convert this into an actual bench and that's when we added a Schobert bench to the end of it drilled some holes for bench dogs and the next thing you know we had this bench that I've often told people I said if I was going to do it again I don't think I would have built this I think I just would have built one of these this has to be flattened on the kit occasionally maybe every four or five years this doesn't and if you destroy the top on this you're out $30.00 gonna make another one in fact I think it could be built in such a way that you could just simply flip it over and use the other side for all right little break for questions here first of all sue has a train and diamond plate in a Shepton stone that she's gonna donate well thank you yeah to the pearl our project so it should be hopefully there in time for our class alright thank Joseph mint yep he donated another $250 and again he wants to give away 12 t-shirts to vets in the chat room so if there are any vets okay so we gotta make sure we get this right this time yeah and and and I gotta tell you Joseph benches Joseph because I gotta say this because he's such a generous individual and he's so behind what we do i I met Joseph because when way back in 2013 or 14 I had a really nice bench that I used to travel with and I didn't need the second bench and I thought one day actually fix that up and sell it so I really fixed it up I put walnut burl on it and it was gorgeous and one night we were just getting ready to film Frick were you filming it I think so I think I said let's spend a couple minutes to show them what I'm doing oh wait wait battery problem again you yeah don't worry yeah I warned him because the light was blinking I'm showing 213 I don't know so anyway Frick did a quick flyby and showed some of the things and then he ended up putting it on YouTube well I got a I got an email from some guy a few days later he said Rob how much you want for that bench and I didn't think people were gonna take it for what I but I was or what I was asking but told them and he said well I'd like to have it and end up being Joseph so he was quite a bit taller than I am so we had to go in and modify the bench add the height Benny we shipped it out to him he lived happily ever after so I met him we've had dinner together out in Seattle when I've been out there and he just is constantly donating to our cause so he sent me a I was complaining one time online when we were filming because this right angle drill I had wouldn't hold a charge next thing you know there's a brand new Milwaukee in the mail from him he he did he had these done for us the Purple Heart Project thing I've got one in the other room and what were you what else were you saying oh okay so anyway so he's just been just been a big supporter of the military and of what we're trying to do for the vets so okay well no so now we have to explain so Joseph is going to donate twelve Purple Heart t-shirts to any combat wounded or any vet any any vet in the chat any vets online tonight so please let him do this for you sometimes you have to be the reason why somebody else gets to feel good about reaching out and helping remember that so just tell us who you are yeah you can just email and then we'll get your contact information and we'll send it to you compliments of Joseph munch mensch yeah say who should get it Jake yep so Jacob Rob Cosmo calm okay yes okay so is there any way to have waterproof mdf it's a question ha yeah if you find out let me know and Anthony asks so Tony ask Rob if the top of the bench gets screwed up over time can you replace the upper piece or glue another piece on to it alright so let's address that for a second first of all we saturate we saturate these with several coats I used to do oil but takes too long to dry in between so now I use lacquer but if you put water on this it's going to it's going to work its way through and it's going to swell up now I actually in repairing some of the benches we had I had to go in and I planed it off the bump because it go back down and it had been there a long time planed it off but then as soon as you get past this tough exterior you get into a much softer core which is the downside of MDF but what I did I took some water thin sign acrylate so that's what it is several different brands and I simply saturated the area where I had planed let it soak in and then just wiped it off and when that dries it sits nice and hard wood Turner's use it all the time if they're turning a bowl and they got into some punky wood which is parsley starting to rot you can go in there with cyan acrylate and it'll stiffen it all up make it nice and hard so I actually will go in here and do that top section with MDF over the part of me with sign acrylate and that'll stiffen that up and make it much more durable so your repairs once again you get a bump or you get a bad scar flush it off put some in put some sign acrylate on there let it soak in wipe it off and then you're back to being good but I don't know how to prevent water from from getting getting through that top layer I just tell everyone said you cannot let this get wet and that's kind of dangerous because on this end we actually have our sharpening station so however having said that with some of those benches out there we've had for how long four years so they've been through eight or nine maybe even ten o'clock ten week-long classes and they they're still going strong so I'm kind of putting the cart before the horse but I want to answer the question since it was asked Jake and I made the mistake where the kick and I made the mistake of drilling these holes on a three degree angle if you don't have your bench dug holes on a bit of a slope so these ones have to go on that's that angle and this one has to go in the opposite angle if you have them simply straight up and down as soon as you start to wind in your bench the the bench dogs are gonna splay back like that and what's gonna happen to your board your board is going to pop up so your bench dogs always are counted towards each other slightly so it's a bit of a pain to go in there and you have to draw on that three degree angle and then Jake said to me when they said dad did you notice the face of these bench dogs are candid so it's already built into it so if I was doing this again if you were to bore these dog holes straight down perpendicular to the face that that problem is compensated for here and when this gets beat up you can simply take it flip it around and use the other side now you've got some holes underneath where the you bolted in the vise but that would be easy enough to fix if I had a hole in there you simply bore a hole a little bit bigger put in a dowel Badal well flush it off and you've got a nice flat surface I may not be the prettiest but it's still usable or go out and buy another sheet of MDF and and redo it you're out $30 have you heard of a type of MDF called exterior well interesting that you should ask this is the first time that we used their MDF now has two different grades the regular and what was the name of the stuff that we have can't remember no no it's the premium stuff it's probably 20% more and what they've done is they've come up somehow they've made it so that when you they did it for the cabinet door industry because they use MDF a lot on painted cabinet doors so you're going in and routing the edge and then finishing off the finishing it off the door well if you do that on regular MDF that edge will soak material in ten times more than this surface so you've got to go in and soak soak soak soak soak until you finally saturate it to where it'll look like this when it's done and this new stuff Ranger board it's called Ranger board which I'm sure is just a prod at brand and that stuff is designed specifically so it won't have that problem can't really tell you that we noticed a whole lot of difference doing it but so yes that's I assume it's the same thing it's a little bit denser oh we actually he told us it's all pine fiber whereas normal MDF is mixed wood fiber they use all pine fiber in making Ranger board so I know I don't haven't dug into it to find out how that makes a difference but that's what I do remember him telling me any other anything else I've even introduced that I don't even started the whole process yet quick or else I'm you know we had another donation from David Ducharme hundred dollars David thank you David is one of our class members from to class that go from Pennsylvania yeah thank you David dave is Air Force former vet a former bet your once you're once you're out of the military now you're a vet right yes team okay good thank you he'll see how how heavy is that bench let me asking that question yeah well you get to that yeah Dave you've moved this enough they could get what your guess yeah with that with that base on it and the Vice yeah it's over 200 and I would be willing to bet that it's probably in the names of I don't think it would be 250 but I'll bet you it's close to the 250 in this to 200 and I'm just saying it to be obstinate actually there's another vise sitting in there too but yeah heavy when when that when the when the the wheels are down anybody the air force that might be react to that when the wheels are down and you're planing you're not you're not okay so I'm gonna be serious here so I got to put a fair bit of work in that to push that so when the wheels are down you're playing this is not going to move around your floor actually I was worried about that because that floor treatment we have is kind of slick and I don't know what it's going to be like when we actually start playing we may have to end up putting some rubber underneath them but it is heavy it is definitely heavy okay anything else well kyle is asking pal who Kyle well it's just at Kyle's Kyle Hiller's workshop is his username so file name is Kyle Hillier obviously he just wants to know how much and what is the bench vise but we're gonna kind of cover all that but I'll just tell you quickly the bench itself the top and the base you can do for under $100 the vise is 250 I'll tell you about that because it's the best commercially available bench vise that you can find it does not include the jaw so can somebody with good with math anybody any mathematician I throw these numbers I've gotcha you ready so $100 for the MDF and the plywood the bench dogs are $25 a piece so that's an extra 50 the bench vise is 250 includes the handle the the jaw and here that piece of mate you could probably do that for another $20 the the sharpening station wouldn't have more than five dollars in material the tray underneath probably ten dollars worth of plywood if you're talking about these these the mobile base what was I think they're $70 the finish that we have on it it might have $15 and finish bench lamp another 20 bolts how much on the bolts six dollars six dollars for for the bolts and the legs that hold it to the bottom you got staples that's how it's all together and glue say you said spend another $10 on staples and glue I don't think I'm missing anything Dave $556 I wouldn't salty for that but if you made your own that you would probably do you'd probably be Canadian American American math yeah but are you talking to American prices or Canadian I would say American American okay can I go yep someone to know where the bench laps lamps are from but I said they're for my quiere specifically yeah yeah we're gonna start carrying them because not everybody has access to them we're gonna start carrying them just because they're great bench lamp I'll talk about that too ok so mostly what I do is hand work I do use power tools but my bench is mostly done mostly hand work so we had to have the bench had to be stable it had to be heavy it had to be flat this is your reference surface so everything you build at some point is going to touch this and the outcome is going to be determined by how flat this is we had to have good bench dogs you had to be able to securely hold things you had to be able to cut dovetails and you want to have your work securely held in place you got to be able to see needs a good light and if you're in a garage you've got to be able to move this back and forth so the mobility factor is a big issue so let's start with the base the base is held this is there's a mortise and tenon so this leg is mortise into this foot and something similar up at the top if you're new at this and you're trying to do that in solid wood that's almost going to be impossible for the simple reason that it's a lot bigger than you normally would work you're going to need bigger tools it's a lot of heavy lifting and I don't mean that's just in the figure and it's in the literal sense but you're just you're cutting a big joint now the other problem was the shortage of tools the average guys getting started doesn't have I mean you scan around my shop I have every tool that you can imagine I have multiples of them I mean you can see one two three four five there's one you can't see I have six band saws who needs six band saws obviously we do and drill presses there's probably 18 drill presses in here you don't have all that stuff so what are you gonna do and how you gonna build it so we took all that into account so let's start with the base the base we made out of Baltic burt's now the first one I did I didn't use Baltic burst I use regular plywood regular plywood the in terior core is really crap and not very good at all and you don't want to see it on the edge but if you spend a little more money and you buy what's called Baltic birch often called Russian birch the nice thing about it is all of the plies are the same thickness and they're all the same wood they're a birch so you have if you have any voids at all there are very few when this is all glued together this is like having almost a three-inch thick piece of plywood and it is super strong so if I can grab some pieces over here I'll show you how we did it the nice thing about a glued surface is once the glue has dried it's stronger than the wood itself which simply means that it becomes two pieces become literally one piece can cut that into three pieces for me place three equal sized pieces actually four if you can pardon the noise for a second so I start by taking my four by eight sheet now this stuff comes in five by five but you can also find it in four by eight five by five unfortunately is more common but you're really wanted in four by eight and we rip it into three and 7/8 inch wide pieces you can't get four inch pieces or are you gonna be left with some waste at the end so you can use table saw you can use the skill saw whatever we're gonna be actually just produced a video where it's half done not finished yet we're doing a video on how to build this and it's all step by step and it'll be about three how long it's gonna be freaky three hours I would say it'd be between three and four hours and four hours but it'll be it'll give you everything you need to know I'm just gonna kind of give you the highlights right now I'm just waiting for Ken to make that next cut so we won't get interrupted doesn't know it doesn't be a perfect Tim just eyeball it yeah I just need the pieces just for tape on free glue pardon Titebond three glue is that we use tape on three yeah yeah I like it thank you so the way we did this is you had your foot was on the bottom so this piece down here okay there's the first piece then you have an upright then your next piece is gonna sit like this if you can imagine this piece going all the way now what you're doing is you're gluing these pieces all together as you build it but because you don't have a thousand clamps you quotin you buy an inexpensive staple gun so this is called a quarter inch crown staple gun that means that this staple this court at the crown is quarter inch wide I don't know what gauge this is I'll tell you in a second it's written on the side eighteen gauge and I don't know how much that matters but and you want it so that it doesn't pass all the way through to pieces so this stuff is considered 5/8 it's a little bit less than 5/8 but when I staple that it doesn't go all the way through so as you good and you glue the entire surface and then when you put that on there you staple one two three four five six seven eight and then once the glue sets then you no longer need the strength of the staple but it stays there obviously and now you've got two pieces becoming one so this would all be glued and then you would put your little piece out here and then you would put your next piece in here that would go in between the next upright and then you would put another upright in here so now you've got two lengths and you'd put another piece here and another piece here and then the next piece would go all the way across so what you would have done is you would have created this mortise you know hole and you would have created a tenon and it would look like the tenon would have looked like this on the other piece right because the way it was built in it fit right in there but it's all being done at the same time so when you're done you have this trestle right here that is solid as a rock now a couple little tips I keep all of my staples on the outside so when I have to come in and drill oles like this or up here I'm not having to drill through staples didn't remember that didn't think about that the first time we did this and if you're careful you can keep these fairly close but there's always gonna be a little bit of creeping however it's not hard to flush that off and we cover all of that and showing you how to do that on the video so you end up making two of these obviously one here one down there the stretchers in between are just three pieces glued together and then you end up drilling a hole through here and you drill a hole if you can look up underneath here Jake I drill a an access hole right here the hole come for the with the bolt comes all the way through and that allows you to get in there and put in that on there and tighten it up and when it's tightened up it's it's nice and solid doesn't move so that's essentially how your base goes together it's not hard at all we cranked out quite a few of these but it's you you want this you want this to be deep enough that's enough surface area here so that with this stretcher in this stretcher this thing is not going to rack at all you can't move that side to side and you'll also notice on the feet you see how I've how I've recessed the underside right here so that you're only sitting on this pad and one on the other side if you didn't do that you've got that big long flat piece and then on a garage floor it's probably gonna rock and you're having to shim it it's a lot easier to get it to stay nice and flat if you've got four pads that the whole bench is resting on and if you had to shim one it's not a big deal easy to do hi yeah any questions on this yet a couple of people asking when the videos coming up but I'm explaining that now okay we're only filming the staff so any questions on building their Bay the sub assembly the base assembly the base no no okay all right now this is critical because the other problem you're gonna run into is when it comes time to gluing up the Bay the top how are you gonna glue it so it's nice and flat and what are you gonna how are we gonna how are you gonna glue it period so I go ahead and I assemble I assemble the base I got a lot to talk about you're at 40 minutes already so here's the base all put together now hopefully you have a table sign you don't have a table saw it's gonna be a little more difficult but with my table saw I put the bottom side of this against the fence and I ripped the opposite size so that this and the base and the bottom of the of the trestle are parallel and I do the same thing with this piece so when I'm before I assemble this this trestle on this trestle have parallel surfaces on the bottom and on the top and they are the same height okay now when I put this together and one of the little tips that we learned is if you're using a 3/8 inch bolt you don't drill a 3/8 inch hole because trying to get a 3/8 inch bolt through that 3 inch hole is a you beat the beat it to death so we actually stepped it up with two we use 10 mil we got a metric girl ten millimeter drill which is just a little bit oversized makes it so much easier it also gives you just a little bit of leeway because you want that to be flush you want that to be flush this this and this what you want to do is you want to create a flat surface up here that you're actually going to use to assemble your top now I've noticed that one's not flush right now but what I can do is I can take my mallet and there should be enough play in that yeah there is your mic yeah everybody requested so the question Anton talk the audience ask them questions can be heard yeah you're quiet bunch tonight so once I flush this up get all in flush then I want to sight down this thing so I would get somewhere and I'd use it like a pair of winding sticks and I would sight down those two top edges and you'd be surprised at how accurate you can get by doing that and if that's not enough for you you can use a pair of Mining sticks I'll dig them out and show you exactly what I mean lining sticks are nothing more than two parallel pieces of wood that are used to exaggerate any winder twists because they just lengthen the reference surface so you'd set a pair there one there and one there and then you would sight down and using those white corners you could you could eyeball that and it'll tell you if these are parallel can you get down there Jake and check that out join me to give you a dark background hold on can you see it okay so I can tell you right now that that's probably these two edges are probably parallel to within a thousandth of an inch that's how accurate you can get by using a pair of winding sticks so now that this is a nice flat surface can Dave would you grab one of those pieces so I've taken my took my sheet of MDF now I've got to be able to get three pieces out of one sheet of MDF my bench is 16 of these benches are 60 inches long most people don't have the room for anything bigger than that so I take that sheet and the first thing we do and you can do this again with a with a circular saw or a table saw we cut the ant well how much did we cut off the end and well it's 96 inches long a ninety seven actually MDF always comes an inch longer an inch longer an inch wider so if we had a 97 inch piece we cut a 60 which left us approximately a 37 inch piece so first thing we'd the first cut we made was we cut a 37 inch wide piece off of the end so now we've got a piece that is 37 inches wide by 4 feet or 49 inches long and then we take what's left and we rip it into two 20 inch pieces so this piece is 20 inches by 60 and the next one's 20 inches by 60 Dave wanna bring me the two short ones then we take that piece that first piece we cut off which is 48 by 36 and we cut it into two pieces that are thank you 36 36 by 20 and then we cut them down to being 30 by 20 so when we're gluing this up we're going to glue these two together and then our final piece which is full-length is going to go in the top now your sandwich in this but when you're but it's all glued together you've got compression and tension it's going to stay nice and flat thank you Vanna okay so there's your top now I spread glue I took an old scraper blade and I cut notches in it and you when you're doing this you've got to be quick in fact if you're doing it by yourself I suggest you only do one layer at a time but if you've got a hand you can you can spread glue over all that surface put the piece on spread glue over the next piece put the piece on and now if you can afford it go buy another sheet or have already bought another sheet and cut some more pieces because the more pieces you can add to that we call them calls a clamp when I put a clamp on this and clamp it like that the pressure from the clamp is going to go out at about 45 degrees so the more calls or the more material I have on top of that the farther out the pressure from that clamp now it'll be decreased pounds per square inch but the effect of the clamp will be stretched out over a much wider area so I can get away with if I had calls that were up to maybe here three more layers I'd have one clamp here one here one here here here here here might get away with a dozen clamps you gotta be able to you got to have spend some money on a few things and that would be it if you want to reach across the middle you can simply take a strip of wood but a quarter of an inch thick thin strip and lay it down there and then take some pieces of 2x4 that have straight edges and set a piece of 2x4 here and one here and one here and now when you clamp the piece of 2x4 by the time it pulls tight here the pressure it's applying because of that quarter inch strip is going to put a lot of pressure in the middle you're gonna clamp to the underside of these stretchers so that acts as your big call on the bottom but it also acts as your base and keeping this thing nice and flat it really works and it works extremely well once the glue is dry there's no way you're ever going to keep these things in perfect alignment they're gonna creep a little bit now one of the things that Luther idea that he read about was after you put your glue on just take a salt shaker and lightly spread spuds salt all over there this is what the salt will do it acts like a grit and it'll help hold the pieces for from moving but it'll eventually dissolve as well did my own jury's out on that still are still debating whether or not that is a help or hindrance because we had a problem with some of the ones we just did where the gap didn't close and I think we may have had to either to course assault or too much salt because we kind of had a little homemade salt shaker but I think if it's done lightly it's just enough to keep it from creeping but it will dissolve and still allow the glue to set up and you'll end up with a and the homogenous three-inch thick piece of MDF if you can't access yeah that was our salt shaker so you know a little bit like that and you had weight to my salt and I think we may have had too much in one area that it didn't allow it to close if you can't access if you can't get one inch MDF you can go out and you can buy three-quarter the only difference is you're gonna have three glue joints instead of two and the fact that you can get one inch just makes it that much that much easier to do you know so someone actually also asked would 1/2 inch MDF still work if we have some extra on hand considering we stack to the same top thicknesses or as one inch critical for flatness well this the thicker it is the flatter it's gonna tend to be I would think I don't think I'd want to do it with half-inch that's just too much that's six pieces five glue joints the nice thing about this stuff is it just it's big enough and heavy enough that it'll hold its it'll hold its shape I think half inch would be too flimsy I mean I didn't I used to do mother to three-quarter I must refer to him one inch I'd go thicker than that but this stuff is a bear to try to move around you get a sheet of this oh it weighs a ton and your arms are stretched out it's just too hard to handle so once that's done then you just got to trim it all off and if you want it's it's hard to move this when this thing is all glued up this is a big chunk you can do kit you can use a flush trim bit on the router and you can run off of one side and go all the way around actually you can make once a little they have one piece a little bit smaller than the rest and hopefully it will stay inside of they taller the wider pieces and then you can use your flush trim bit to reference off of the face of the thin small piece and trim the rest of it anyway all that all those ideas are gonna be in the video I'm just trying to give you a bit of an overview question yeah I got a few Paul asked can you use hall ho Paul Humphrey asked Paul can you use hide glue to allow more time hide glue yeah no experience at all with hide glue Paul I have used boat glue which is a two-part well I of water and powder gives you about an hour's open to open time but now then it's just such a pain to work with that stuff we use a tight bun if you've got one other person helping you you can spread it get the second piece on there spread the glue on that one get the third piece on there and glue and clamp it up but that I know I've got a lot of experience we've built at least 30 of these benches if you're working by yourself I guess I said you might want to just do one at a time so glue this priests but treat it as if you're gluing the whole thing once the glue is set take it all apart glue the second piece and do it that's probably a smart move for the first time you're doing this 1111 Bravo to PS what about dowels for indexing well it's just so all the dowels do is provide the indexing nothing for strength I'll tell you what we do and neglect to tell you this is you can put we can put pipe clamps pipe clamps see the pipe clamp will cover both joints on one end and on the other and you can hold you can hope the Hobart in place and keep from moving this way but we still had it move sideways on us a little bit and it gets a little bit of a mess when you've got so many clamps around there but but I want to put dowels down through the only problem with that is you add a little bit of extra friction if you didn't glue them you'd be okay you could do that but then you got to line them up you don't want em showing up on the top side yeah I mean it would work but it really the salt idea is a good idea because I think when we did that we had very little movement you're gonna figure there's no way you're gonna put the joint together and have it perfectly flush so you're gonna have to deal with a little bit of it but it's not hard it's the meaning it's not hard to deal with after the fact I stand those on their edge and I use a belt sander to smooth them up after I've run them over the table saw yes Jim same thing yeah I just I'm trying to you know none of these things are making it any stronger they're all for the convenience of keeping this pieces from sliding around so if that's all they're trying to do I want the very simplest and the simplest is the salt and a clamp that covers both ends but seems to me when we the first time we did them with the salt we didn't use anything we just lined them up put a little bit of salt on there put them together line them up and then put the clamps on them and I don't think they crept at all it's worth experimenting with you just but don't use too much salt just sprinkle it lightly and and don't be scrimpy on there glue either make sure you've got a good even coat i that nuts trowel that I made leaves a pretty even coat and the reason why the nuts towel is a it's going to give you a measured amount but you can take that thing and you can you know you've got a big puddle of glue in here and you can use that to move it all around and it's actually not very messy and it's quite fast yeah yeah I've had people talk about trimming it with hard wood putting a piece of something on top again the idea on this was how can I give a bench with least amount of expense and as quickly as possible this is a weekend project so I want it to get to a point where it is a useful bench so I don't want to add a whole bunch of superfluous stuff although I have since but would I go in and do that if you went out here and we can't because Jakes Kord isn't long enough but if you went in and looked at those benchtops I mean there's some dings in them but there's nothing that makes any of them unusable and if you're if it's your own bench you're gonna take care of better care of it than strangers would so it really is not it's a whole lot more durable than you probably think and all of these imaginary problems that you're coming up with really don't exist so I wouldn't bother and I wouldn't bother capping it with hardwood either just you don't need it you don't need it Tony wants to know when doing the glue up are you gluing one surface and then doing a rub joint or gluing both surfaces well we've done 30 of them so we now do both surfaces we glue it put it in place glue the next one put it in place clamp it up but we had three or four hands if I was doing this by myself for the first time I would glue make do one layer glue it put the second one on top clamp it all up with the calls on there wait for that to dry then take it apart glue the second one put it on there and just now you're not trying to manage a drying glue joint while you're putting in the second one on just a whole lot easier so do one at a time you're the least bit nervous about it again it's I think he's our relative same last name but it's not a med they're both in here yeah is it med they're the mentor okay I got to show you something stop right there look at this so a med my friend who's coming with John his friend to October workshop a med sent me these the other day this is awesome handles for my IBC chisels vera wood which will turn green cocobolo that pretty Jake remember that one African no no not African Blackwood is that African Blackwood ever no Blackwood Kingwood amid tell me if I'm if I hit one oh sorry King wood which is some of the prettiest King would have seen this is black and white ebony gorgeous stuff this my favorite is snake wood this one is Indonesian Malaysian Malaysian rosewood African Blackwood no Madagascar rosewood glad you memorize them all this is for Ally Nelson handle this is pink ivory and then we've got some more actually amid we only picked up half of the time we've got the other half to pick up next time we're down there thank you very much by the way they were awesome so so the question was and it's from his nephew by the way his nephew go ahead can no no I mean that's the that so the disadvantage of MDF is in well I'm assuming that if you clamp if you clamp something in if you clamp something in device I mean solid as a rock nothing's gonna happen by the way most people put way too much pressure on that vise but no nothing moves so the disadvantage of MDF in small pieces it's not very strong in big thick pieces like this it's super strong now my bench holes we need to talk about that too so your your bench holes has to be have to be properly spaced I probably wouldn't put them much closer than that and just to tell you these are these are on three inch centers so right up here I have them on three but yeah well we had we had hundreds of lot of these things to get built in fact I didn't even I I stopped in the class that we teach we use our longest piece of wood that we use is 24 inches so I didn't I should have taken these all the way down I didn't do it but we can go back and do it easy enough yeah I would probably have stayed three inch centers probably back to boat here because you'll notice how far away I was you know in order to clamp that piece in place I had to leave a great big gap here so if I'd had a three inch Center I'd have been a lot closer to there when it came tight instead of way out here hold fast I know I don't use a hold fast and I I don't know how bad it's gonna beat them up but I'll tell you what I do after you've drilled your hole this is a one inch hole this is a the shoberg bench dog which I like the aluminum ones not them not the steel ones you hit this with your plane you're not going to destroy your plane this will give first it requires a one-inch hole I bore the hole and then I use a quarter round bit 3/16 quarter round bit because MDF is if you leave a sharp edge like that on MDF it's gonna get damaged quite easily cord around it like that and it's less likely and then I go in and I'll saturate that top inch or so with the sign acrylate they're really stiffen that up make it hard if I was gonna want to use one of these with a hole down I would probably go in there and I would soak that whole thing really well with the scien acrylate to make it as stiff as possible but I don't use a holdfast so I can't tell you how it would react that way sorry we have a donation from William ed us for $100 thank you William appreciate it Dave big thank you from your side okay question what about topping it with hardboard I you know if it's not glued to it then you always have that what's the word I'm reaching for ken well you know when you when I pound when I'm working on my bench and I'm holding something that I'm chiseling it I want it to be rock-solid so I don't want anything giving underneath so if you're putting hard board on and gluing it on to avoid that well then how you gonna take it off if you had to if you destroy it so I that's why I don't do that I just leave it right like this and as I was mentioning I've said this but if I board those holes so that they were perpendicular to the face I could easy to flip this thing over and use the other side when the top side got beat up but that doesn't get beat up that often in fact we have not had to replace any of those bench tops yet okay all right let's keep going so we've got the top done it's all glued up we've got the base all done let's talk about the vise because this is this is the part that you're gonna say I don't want to spend $250 on well I'm gonna tell you right now if you scrimp you're gonna pay for it that didn't make sense or that didn't sound like it made sense but it does if you scrimp on your bench on your vise you will pay for it every time you use it and you will curse it so this is the shoberg adjustable vise we carry them on our site you can get them through woodcraft or whether they're back order in the wood crafts that we still have some tell me that isn't advantage here's what you get there's no vise jaw you got to make that yourself I actually did a review of this on youtubes the bagel the biggle I don't know how I end up with that but the biggest single that was ever stoned to put to together advantage to this is the fact that they use rectangular tubes instead of round tubes so with the rectangular tubes you have a piece of what I call the step yeah it's a it's some kind of a composite but it's slippery you've got a piece over here and you got a piece over here then you got a steel bar right here and you've got two set screws with locking nuts on them so what you're able to do is loosen that locking nut and squeeze this over so that you take all the racking out no in case you don't understand what I mean racking is when you clamp something in the vise and because of the way this style of a vise works the more you tighten the more twists this way and leaves this side loose and this side tight and the natural tendency when it's loose is they tighten it even more well all that does is create even more racking and make this side even more loose so then of what I've done here is used a big heavy jaw so that when you put that in there that'll tighten all the way across and it holds it nice and firmly if you tighten up those set screws you can take almost all that racking out and it'll perform extremely well this is the best commercially available vise that I have ever seen easy to install that's the big feature to install it there's two little tabs so you turn it over like this on the bat on the underside of your your bench and what I did is I get it in position with the jaw in there so it's holding it something like that give it a good whack right here and that's gonna leave a small dent because you have to bore a hole right here not very deep to allow for this nut which sticks up above these two mounting flanges then with it still in position I take my steel hammer and they give it a whack right there and right there there are two little tabs that resist the effort that when you are winding this in there's a lot of pull on it and cut two little slots eighth inch slots with a router in a straight bit you can carve them if you had to that these little tabs drop down into once you've got them in place I tighten it up pulling against these tabs and then I go in and I bore for holes or pilot holes on each side and I use 5/16 where are they Jake had them right here on the floor no tell me they're right here I just had them the other day they are there these are two and a half inches long yeah so and that's a 5/16 leg and that's not it's a quarter inch it is a quarter one two three four on each side the whole operation probably took 15 minutes and then that's mounted you know it's on this part by the way I've designed this bench is this section overhangs the base buy enough in order to mount that underneath and not have any obstruction couple questions real quick yeah what is the job made out of the jaw well you mean the vise device job face so - piece of maple but you could use anything you want and if it's a softer wood you may have to compensate by making it a little bit thicker and when you cut this a few things that you have to do you have to cut around so if you look over here now you stay there Jake I'll bring this over while you're walking Nick Brown bought a t-shirt Thank You Nick and it's six minutes and what Meghan wants to go home and it's six minutes back oh you mean you're tired yeah Nick's coming to our class next to local okay so when you when you fit your jaw under this you you want it to sit here so you've got to cut a notch for this you got to cut a notch for this you got to kind of match for this you're going to have to quarter you're going to have to round this corner so it'll fit down in here and you're also going to around the where you've cut the notches to get over here there's a weld in there so you've got to round that over to and there's a weld on either side of there you got to make sure that your jaw your wooden jaw sits nice and flat here and here and here and the cup against this so there's eight bolts or eight screws that hold that in place easy it's not hard I heard it all so if you only had one vise would you put it on the end or the side well when we very first built these we put one vise here as a face vise and one vise down here is a tail vise well that meant you had to go in and you had to cut through that that stretcher to allow because the Veit that vise has to go way in there plus it doubled the price because now instead of 250 you're spending $500 and vices and we thought you know what why can't you cut dovetails down here that's all we're using the face vise for well you can you can cut dovetails down here and you can use it to hold your pieces in place that you're planing so we did away with put having a face vise and we just use the tail vise so that one vise will do everything you need if you don't mind spending the money you're gonna add one over here but be prepared to have to cut through that that stretcher and you want to do some planning beforehand or else you're gonna end up cutting through the staples and that'll ruin your bits real quick do you foresee any sag or overhang down the road okay good question so here's what I do to avoid that when we bolt these in place we have four lag bolts one on either end one here and one there so when you bolt this to that you're essentially having all this material to prevent this thing from sagging and no we have not had an issue you fire your questions faster also I'm gonna keep going no keep going okay so what we've done since we've added this tool tray underneath because our guys are here they've got all their tools and this is a relatively small bench well it's just a shelf just a place to store your tools this is our sharpening station over here if you follow my if you if you like my style of sharpening I use that that low Bend that low tray so my stones are sitting on here what did we do what did we cut here Dave three a three degree slope two degree slope on this block of wood underneath so that all of your slurry is running away from your bench I'd actually line that with with something just up in here just to keep it off of there keep the mess from being all over into your bench okay so we've got that I told you how we attach the bands so IIIi cord around everything just so that's a little bit easier in the hands Oh Baltic birch is terrible when it comes to splinters you definitely have to cord around that or else you're gonna get look like a porcupine yeah a little bit of sanding and I put a finish on I spray it and it just helps to keep it clean why not so we've got detached we've mounted our vise we've drilled for our dog holes bench lamp really critical gotta be able to see so and by the way if you notice we put two strips of two rows of bench dogs on this we don't normally do this but we this is built so that either left hand or right hand can use it so if your right hand you're planing this way if your left hand you're gonna be planing this way you can cut dovetails either way it doesn't matter so normally because if I'm right hand using this I'm never using that dog strip out there I'm only using this one but this can be used left hand right hand so the gentleman who asked its Campbell MJ the guy who asked the question about the SAG yeah he was actually asking about the vise and sag no I haven't had any I haven't had any problem never I mean how many years in a we know when was the first time we built one of these no because it was it was when we when we did the we started the power to a workshop in January of 2012 Creek I love it no that was powerful yeah twelve so and this was the first thing we built so we haven't had a problem so I don't the problem haven't had any sag we just had a donation from Michael Byrne for $250 thank you Michael thank you we appreciate that we'll put it to good use okay bench lamp what I'd what because this this is what brought up the double-dog whole strip if it what if you're all if you're right-handed or left-handed you're only doing one strip of dog holes I drilled another hole on the other side over here and I we're gonna start selling these but the the weakness the weak link on this vise on this bench lamp is this thing if you cut if you drill a half-inch hole and put that in there it's gonna eat that half-inch hole and this ends up getting broken so we turn this little mushroom just to give it some strengths and then using the same one-inch hole and I drilled a hole right about here that you can set your bench lamp into and it'll reach out around and you get everywhere you need yes the mushroom pivots thank you Jake instead of this fragile piece pivoting inside that half-inch hole it's the one-inch mushroom that pivots inside the bench dog hole okay a couple more things I want to throw at you lag bolts no big deal there that's what's holding it the bench top to the base stove bolts no big deal there you do want to cut big enough holes inside so that when you put a washer on there it you can actually get it in there and it doesn't have to bend too much or conform to the inside of that circle the bigger the hole that closer to being flat that is I told you about the sharpening station I told you about tool tray underneath last thing I want to talk to you about is I really like having a tool tray so on the back of my bench we talked about this two weeks ago I have a tool tray I'd much rather have I mean it looks like a dump right but I'd much rather have stuff being dropped in here than being dropped on the floor can can I just before you moved a tool tray yeah one more question but the dog holes okay shoot where did it go sweet 3/4 or 1 inch you asking me are they 3/4 one-inch yeah that one there was another one too but answer that one first these are 1 inch these are shoberg bench dogs and they are a 1 inch diameter hole oh the other one was odd because everything else about this thing is metric how far in from the edge of the bench did you place the dog holes that's my okay that's a good question because you've got to be able to clear the stretchers underneath you don't want to just from the edge he said the edge here so mine are instant 3/4 centered I mean you're doing most of your work right here people always say and this bench is 20 inches wide well 20 inches is a wide bench your your not going to be able to plane over here very effectively so most of your work is probably going to be done within 12 inches of this edge so I put my bench dogs right here close if I'm if I'm planing something on its edge and I need to have a clamped in place I'd much rather have it there than sitting over there so it's nice and close and handy to me and you got to make sure you have to be aware that you don't hit you don't put this together so that you look down the hole and you see part of the hole obstructed by the stretcher because then your bench dogs not gonna fit in so you got to be far enough away you also take that into account where you have your your trestle you got to have that in between Jake that's the reason why we weren't that's probably the reason why we didn't continue the three inch spacing we had to allow for that okay two more two more things we have I'll just grab one real quick and show you what I mean we often have people that are tall come to the class so rather than build a tall bench that isn't suitable for everybody we'd do a normal sized bench which by the way nobody's asked but I'll tell you the height of these thirty four and a half inches and then we just whip these up real quick and they slide on underneath and that gives you an extra four inches in height so we've got a bunch of these on our class next week we've got a bunch of tall guys and then we got Charlie coming the week after I think Charlie's over six six and six eight so Charlie we have to have two of those on there for you so the last thing I want to talk about is the tool tray and here's neither of these fit any of our benches because this was on some of the very early benches that we made that we've since sold but whatever thing you want to come up with ingenious way gives you a chance to show off your dovetails a little bit so this would fit on the backside and this is modified after the fact remember so if I pull this out from the edge I would have that sitting somewhere like that and just screwed from the underside the plywood into the MDF but this one is too long for this bench I actually have a little ramp in there because it makes it easier to clean so you'd be like that and then you can clean it out easy enough and acts as a catch-all anything else I don't know if you said this yet this guy tuned in late but he said what was used to drill the bench dog holes was it drill yeah you can't find these at your normal hardware store so you're gonna have to go to a specialty woodworking store but this is just a great big one-inch diameter Brad point it's got to be good and sharp and it takes a lot of torque now this is turned down to a 3/8 shaft so you can put it in a normal a normal drill I kind of wish they had you know had the three flats on there because you can see that scored a lot of torque we've used this a lot but you're drilling down through that three-inch three inches of MDF there's a lot of friction on there but it's 55 yeah yeah they're not cheap I guess the hundred dollar bench is really starting to get expensive you'll use it on other stuff oh I don't know I've never used 3/4 bench dogs but I mean I want good bench dogs I don't I don't think there's any reason why one inch would be superior to 3 3/4 inch when it comes to this if you could get ones that are like I said have that angled face on there and then they've got a nice spring on the side that keeps it in position wherever you put it no what we did is we where's our it's right down there Dave remember we were doing a whole whack of these so we went in we tilted the table on the drill press at 3 degrees and we made a guide out of three pieces event 1 inch MDF and we made it so we could use it on both sides so we clamp that in place we clamp a police under piece underneath here to prevent it from blowing out at the bottom and just drill down through this using this as a guide and then if you're doing the opposite side which is your for the lefties we flip it around like that so all you need to do is just get a block of wood that you drill one hole through remember you don't need to do what we did you don't need to be on three degrees because that's already compensated for on the bench dog so just on your drill press get a block of anything drill a one-inch hole on it and just keep moving it along and using that as you're your guide to drill down

Channel: RobCosman.com

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Length: 78min 57sec (4737 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019