The PERFECT Woodworking Workbench? | The Nicholson Workbench | English Workbench

what's going on guys Chris with Callaghan today I'm gonna be showing you how to build the Nicholson workbench it's quite a doozy but stick around and check it out [Music] [Applause] the story of this workbench starts with the lumber the nicholson workbench is an english carpenters bench that begs to be made of construction grade material like this southern yellow pine i encourage everyone to read christopher Schwartz's blue book on work benches which i've linked in the comments below it's got plans for this bench and more and has a lot of the history and mechanics behind those classic woodworking benches I'm using 16 foot boards because those tend to be the clearest and the driest of the bunch and then I break them down into manageable yet over sized chunks pursuant to the cut list in the book since these are construction grade boards I stickered and stacked them to let them get to equilibrium before running them through the thickness planer to get them just a hair above the final thickness and these trips through the planer allow me the opportunity to hand plane everything down to finish without going below the desired thickness that I'm looking for after those initial passes I'm gonna straight line rip one side on the table saw with the taper jig and then I'm gonna run the opposing phase through the planer [Music] and then lastly I'm gonna rip that final edge [Music] the legs are angled in at 20 degrees so I set my miter gauge with the backstop accordingly and then cut the legs down to size the legs each consist of two boards that are then glued together in an additive joinery fashion [Music] [Music] and before it glue up I'll hit them with the hand plane to make sure the mating services are dead flat you might also note this shakiness in the old bench here and that's a lot of the reasoning behind building a new one the glue up consists of a piece that is significantly shorter than the other which creates a lap to the apron will nest into that apron that is covered in dog holes is one of the signature pieces of the Nicholson and creates an endless amount of work holding options for the user [Music] using the dado stack I'm hogging out the wastes on the Tenon's that will join the legs to their opposing asides the push paddle is going to make sure the stack isn't lifting the workpiece up through the cut here I'm chiseling down to my marking line using the router plane to clean up the faces of the tenon and that's also gonna help me get the face of the tenon parallel to the reference surface [Music] and you'll notice here while I'm cutting down the tenon that I maxed out the capacity of my dovetail saw so I'm finishing the cup with a spineless bullseye and with that done I have one set of upper and lower rails to join the legs along their width these are obviously going to come together with mortise and tenon so I marked out the mortises and their corresponding Tenon's using blue tape and then started hogging out the waste on the drill press the drill press vise would have been nice here to keep everything in line but for the most part I was able to do it just by scribing a centerline with the marking knife and following it with the brad point of the Forstner since there's a lot of drill press here let me take a minute to thank you folks for checking out the channel in this video please hit that like button for me subscribe to the channel and hit the bell for more notifications comment below and give me a crisp verified through space and time every little bit helps to make this channel better with every video you can also follow me on social media for more daily shenanigans and a lot of snippets for upcoming videos after all the waste is hog doubt I'm using chisels to clean up the mortises [Music] four through mortises I highly recommend marking both the entry and exit points of your mortise and cleaning up halfway and flipping for a sharper result [Music] these are going to be draw both mortise and Tenon's so I'm punching and drilling the entry and exit holes for the dowels first with a brad point bit [Music] then during a dry fit I'd use that same Brad point bit to mark the center of the hole on the tenon itself with a punch I'm coming in towards the shoulder just a touch to create the offset these dowels are going to be pretty beefy so I don't want too much offset which is gonna make pounding them in a little bit difficult I used mostly store-bought dowels but I ended up running out so I whipped up one with the dowel blade and I'm gonna taper one end matching the angle of the legs with a bevel gauge I ripped the top edges of the top and bottom rails to match that corresponding angle for assembly I'm using epoxy instead of wood glue to maximize my assembly time also not all my mortise and Tenon's were perfect so this operates as a gap filler when necessary I used a little sawdust to tint the epoxy as well however that's largely unnecessary because all the joinery ends up being concealed in the file bench epoxy was all nice for driving the dowels in because it didn't cause the joint to swell like glue would so the dowels actually slid in quite nicely [Music] now on to the aprons which will get planed down to final thickness and as a side note don't be scared to pull your planes when you need to [Music] I used the track saw to trim off the ends and then add a little 45 degree detail as well the 45 degree is purely aesthetic and really has absolutely no function it just looks dope and that's cool because my life is dope and I do dope stuff like sweeping [Music] then it's time to glue the aprons on to the legs and you can see that it's about to nest into this little lap that I had mentioned before [Music] I'm using the blue tape and CA glue trick to help clamp the legs upward and in the apron honestly this method isn't all that effective and doesn't allow for enough pressure reapplied so I'd skip it all together if I had to do it again next I'm going to pre-drill and set some 2-inch screws to the leg into the apron itself to hold everything in place the screws are probably unnecessary but benches take so much racking forces that it just makes sense to have a mechanical fastener there and here I'm just repeating everything on the opposing side after it comes out of the clamps I flushed the aprons to the tops of the legs with a hand plane [Music] [Music] I'm marking where I want my dog holes using a 12-inch speed square I want dog holes to run vertically but also at a 45 degree angle across the width of the apron I'm just freehand drilling these with a 3/4 inch Forstner but you can use a press guide for the most part if you keep your eye on the bit though with the Forstner you can get a pretty straight hole and as you can see the three quarter inch dog holes work great with the whole facet they were intended for [Music] again matching the angle of the legs I'm ripping a strip that will be a cleat which attaches the top to the base this cleat will get glued on to the legs and I'm going to set it in place with a combo of CA glue and wood glue the CA glue holding it in place long enough for the wood glue to fully cure and keep it secure [Music] I'm not doing a wagon advice on this Nicholson like in Schwartz's books so I'm going to build up some material on the end to accept a record quick-release vise here I'm using the router to hug out material to accept that and cleaning it up with chisels the idea here is that I'm going to glue in one board at a time and clamp each board to the next to build a block to accept the vise Hardware [Music] this end will also get 2 right angle brackets which again a help against all the rack'em forces of bench takes regularly [Music] to fit the Vice I'm going to mark the jaw out and more to sit into one of the boards in the block once again using a router and chisels to clean everything out [Music] [Laughter] accommodating for the vice group rude tricky had I to do this again I would have cut this out ahead of time with the bench unassembled also if you're making a longer bench you probably won't have this problem at all but since I'm tiny shop guy the 8 foot Mickelson from the book is actually compressed to 5 feet so Spade bits a jigsaw and a rasp got me to a point where the vise screw can fit the bench and slide effectively now I'm boring into the block for a through bolt to mount the vise from the bottom [Music] and then there's also some Fifi lag screws toward the back of the Vice which is going to ensure that this thing is going nowhere I'm capping the jaw with a piece of scrap oak and using the Brad point bit to mark the center of the holes pre drilling and then firing a screw and to fix everything in place this whole face will ultimately be screwed in instead of glued in the event device ever needs to be changed or removed for the workbench top I've ripped a number of different boards for the clearest sections and I'm bringing those together with the Domino since horizontal alignment isn't really an issue I'm going to fix the Tenon's in with a small more - setting and then use the medium mortis setting for the receiving mortises this ensures that I have vertical alignment but allows me a little bit of wiggle room left to right while waiting on the glue to cure and through the assembly process during this process I actually ran out of this size Domino so I made a couple as well [Music] doctorates out of the clamps is onto planing to flatten the bottom and then trimming the ends to size [Music] from the underside I'm attaching the top using two inch screws after the top is secured I'm going to go ahead and work my way through the hand planes until the top is flat to make sure the holdfasts on the top have a little thickness to grab on to I'm going to double up the material in spots where I'm planning on drilling dog holes those will be glued and temporarily mounted with 2-inch screws before replacing those screws of Miller dowels I'll actually be replacing all the screws into the top of the workbench with Miller dowels and as you can see the bench is already getting pretty weighty and here I'm just flushing up the workbench top to the apron [Music] if you happen to be watching this video at your day job I apologize because these curls from my low angle block are absolutely not safe for work [Music] for my leg vise I'm modifying a leave Ally tail vise screw by putting a hand wheel on it this is entirely unnecessary but I just like the look I actually had to take the wheel to a machinist to get the holes board right and then had some adventures driving in this roll pin there's plenty of decent leg buys hardware available out there where you don't need to customize your own this is some scrap rosewood for the opposing quick release vise jaw and I'm going to mark it similarly as before drill out the holes and then shape it down with a round over bit in the router [Music] the bolts I had on hand were a little long so I cut them down with the angle grinder threading the nut on first allows for repairing or reshaping damaged threads on the end when unscrewing the nut [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so as I said Millard owls will be replacing all the screws in the work bench top and that's because over time I'll want to flatten the top and I don't want to risk making a screw with one of my planes these dowels come with a step drill bit that matches the topography of the dowel itself you just drill add glue set and trim the excess [Music] [Music] the leg vise will also be made from rosewood and I'm bringing these two pieces together with the Domino once out of the clamps I'll cut it to match the same angle as the legs and then I'm going to clamp it to the bench and Mark out the vise screw the top edges as well as the parallel guide [Music] I'll use the drill press to drill for the vice screw itself but I'm going to freehand for the parallel guide which is going to attach with a wedged mortise and tenon the mortise is slightly trumpeted on the side opposite the receiving end so the side that's facing towards you on the bench so to achieve that I'll just chisel a little inward at an angle rather than go dead square and then I'm going to shape the entire leg on the table saw using some huge bevels to just provide some interesting embellishments to the vise itself [Music] the parallel guide is made from ash and I cut the tenon itself on the table saw before drilling holes in the tenon to allow for the wedges to be driven in and flex outward with some scrap mahogany I'm freehand cutting some wedges and then on the drill press I'm going to drill holes for cross pins in the parallel guide then everything gets glue and the wedges are tapped in and later flush trimmed inflamed [Music] [Music] [Music] the vice screw and hand wheel are then mounted to the bench and then like I did on the aprons dog holes will be drilled through the top I'll be free handing these again but since my Forstner bit only goes so deep I'll max it out and then switch over to a spade bit for the last little length [Music] instead of gasket material two line devices I'm going with leather and we'll use contact cement to apply a layer on each side a bit of time to marinate and then steady placement and pressure and you're all set shout out to my man Brian from Rowan and which for hooking me up with some scrap leather for this I've also heard that you can use wood glue to apply leather as well but the leather guys I've talked to you swear by contact cement so that's what I stuck with in this application [Music] and here I'm just trimming away the excess material so that way it's gonna be nice and flush for the top of my vice as well as the bench I ran some l-shaped stretchers along the bottom rails to start a lower shelf secured with countersunk screws then to nail the inside measurement for the slats I'm clamping two pieces of scrap which will give me a measurement to crosscut some timing group boards to pre-made tongue and groove is not mentioned in the schwartz book but I was eager to wrap this up so a couple 12-foot boards did the trick I capped the ends by ripping a fit to size tongue strip as well as a fit to size groove strip that will go on either end [Music] and after getting it all in a place I just tacked the corners in with a brad nailer for a plane stop I picked up the Lee Valley aluminum adjustable plane stop and hog doubt the mortise with a chisel Schwartz mentions these in his book and talks about the unruly bottom shape which makes these a bit difficult to install this wasn't the worst but I would suggest marking out from the underside and drilling a hole larger than the screw pose and working your way back from that it took a bit of trial and error but eventually it nestled in quite nicely [Music] I'm not going to get complicated with the finish since this thing is going to get often used and abused so I'm going with Danish oil and I'm going to use the entire can just wipe on and wipe off and all the little crevices you can get in [Music] after you're letting it dry for 24 hours I got to test out the bench and all its little features and neat I say I am thrilled with the performance you can actually clearly see in this video that there's no more bench rock and I have a ton of different workholding options for pieces of any size this bench is going to be in the center of the shop and double as table saw out feet as well so I'll actually have two functional sides of the bench and a myriad of workholding options without it being pressed against the wall the vices are strong and secure and I can't wait to get deeper in the hand tool woodworking using all the advantages of this bench provides this is my first time working with holdfast as well and I can definitely understand what all the hype is about overall this was a pretty daunting build that forced me to learn a lot along the way I strongly advocate for everyone to read Christopher Schwarz his book on work benches and even get the updated read edition for more insight and know how the history and the why behind these benches is valuable to the growing woodworker and at the end of the day these benches are like lasagna and should be made not by thanks for watching if you haven't already hit that like button subscribe comment down below hit the bell for more notifications you know the drill and once again thanks for watching and see you next time here at cow dog craftworks [Music]

Channel: Cow Dog Craft Works

Views: 221,822

Keywords: english workbench, work bench, woodworking bench design, workbench, woodworking bench, workbench build ideas, workbench build with vise, nicholson workbench, wood work, woodwork, ultimate workbench, perfect workbench, nicholson, nicholson workbench build, nicholson workbench design, nicholson workbench plans, massive workbench, drawbored mortise and tenon, drawbore joinery, christopher schwarz workbench, roubo, small workbench, leg vise, woodworking workbench, workbench build

Id: hXYrzk6oiXM

Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020