The Paul Sellers Plywood Workbench | Episode 1

[Music] I've designed a brand new concept for making a workbench based on a traditional English joiners workbench it's a design that complements hand tool woodworking but one that can be made by a machine woodworkers with an interest in developing their hand woodworking skills I wanted a quick to make solution resulting in the same rock-solid work that you get from one with solid wood but one made entirely of plywood and using only one machine I start by using my local lumber supplier to cut the plywood into panel sizes that I figured out in advance that will both fit my trailer and be easy to manage on my own in this design the jointer is created by leaving precise gaps in the assembled plywood as the layers are pieced together this creates very strong mortise and tenon joints similar to those used in traditional workbench builds but without needing to actually cut the mortise and Tenon's at all the workbench is made by laying the pieces of plywood into the larger cross-sections using this method allows the work bench including legs rails aprons bench top and so on to be made entirely out of plywood because I'm a hand tool woodworker I decided to use a few hand tools to I use these to increase my accuracy to ensure clean out cuts and also where the bandsaw limited in cutting the wire deceptions that said most of these are actually optional and if you don't have many hand tools you'll still be able to follow along with the panel's of plywood size by the lumber merchants I carefully figure out how I can make the most efficient use of my material I label my pieces and make sure I have all the pieces I need then I get my work area tidy and ready for ripping the plywood into smaller pieces on the bandsaw but first I have a couple of cuts that are too wide for my bandsaw that I need to make using a handsaw [Music] I have a tip for you when you cut across the grain the plywood that will help to prevent the fuzzy edges on the out cut so I've got this mapped out at 34 and 1/8 for each hand I'm so I'm using the Machine edges all the time to give me the reference faces I need for the initial cuts on the bandsaw when I get to those 34 1/8 from a 1034 and 1/8 from this end because I had my panel cut by machine so it may vary on yours I'm just saying that because you may be a different size your bench height may be different that kind of thing so I'm cutting through that first level and then I'm going to square over to the other side because this becomes more important especially when you're working with plywood the more accurate you are with your cuts the less planing you'll have to do after because planing in plywood is not a pleasant experience it does work fine but it's not as pleasing as cleaning as planing raw wood so I'm transferring this oh there's my knife cut my original knife cut here going across squared across to there and I've squared it onto this corner so it's exact because it's so important this kind of exactness excuse me a chance to catch my breath again as well so there my knife Nicks my straightedge and there's going to be why I'm going to cut one of these close to the to the knife wall and the other one will leave a little bit more on which I'll plane down to size after so this when I cut through from either side here cutting down here trimming my straight edge there a little bit this means that these fibers are separated from each side so when I cut through I get this non ragged non jagged edge so I'm going to saw here a millimeter from my line [Music] you get near to your through cut start squeezing this here I've got my leg against it here supporting it that's it and I've got another one to do that's exactly the same and that means I've got all my panels ready to start ripping on the bandsaw now that I've got my main panels ripped and cut to size that doesn't mean I finished with the ripping or the cutting it simply means that I've got them to a size where I can put them on the bandsaw and I can start all the ripping down the lengths to get the legs to get the rails to get the sections for the top of the bench the aprons and all of those things but it also means that I am conscious of safety because sometimes a panel can be so unwieldy if you're on your own in the in your garage in your den wherever you're cutting all your plywood up you want to be concerned about safety first I've got my outriggers at the back of my bandsaw ready to catch the plywood as it comes off there but I've got some panels that are 2 feet wide that I round about two feet wide that may be just too heavy for me so I might do a rip at 9 inches so I can get 3 3 inch pieces out of that piece so you may decide to do things like so start bringing your panels down to a size that you can handle and I think you'll find it a much more rewarding experience this isn't about the speed of manufacturing this workbench this is about you enjoying the process just as much as you will and and the memory that you'll get from it as you will from using the banks throughout the rest of your life so that's where I'm going next I've got my safety helmet on which is a visor with an extraction in though it's cleaning my air while I'm working fanatical about keeping the air clean I've got an extractor on my bandsaw and everything is hooked up and ready to go so I've worked out the safety features for myself and I'm trying to be concerned about your safety too but there are things in your workshop that are not in my shop and you have to work out your own safety strategy before you go into it do give yourself a safety protocol before you get started and I think you'll end up with an enjoyable experience I'm going to rip down one piece that's the piece that I have a straight edge on then I'm going to probably plain one edge that edge that's off the bandsaw and then pass it through again and keep planing every alternate edge so that when I get to the end of this I've got one clean edge on all of the plywood those will be registration faces and if I don't do that it means I've got a rough edge on both sides which may be harder for me to clean up or to register when I'm clamping things like that so I want to make sure that I've done that I'm going to be bringing my Black & Decker workmate in that's going to help me to do the planing because remember I'm working without event so I need something to hold the wood while I'm planing those kind of things and I think that's going to be it for now I think we're going to get on with putting this through the bandsaw and starting on the process instead of cutting the long panels I'm going to cut some short ones get the short cuts first or some of the short cuts first just to get my mind in line my body in line make sure I'm on the right page with everything that I feel comfortable with it so that's my next stage so here we go [Music] I'm not really wanting to take very much off here so I just wanted to get down to this crisp clean edge that gives me the registration face for the fence using my leg pieces so I've got a shallow set on my plane I just go until I get a clean cut with using plywood you may need to sharpen your plane up more because plywood is hard on the cutting edge so that's going to be a repetitive process we're going to do that after every cut so I'm just doing the four pieces at once rip plain rip plain rip plain that's going to be the same for the legs the rails and it'll be the same for the bench top too [Music] [Music] this is getting more and more exciting for me because now I'm starting to assemble the parts I've got all the long rips done I have some cross-cutting to do for the rails and the legs but my bench top section is going to be the next part that I focus on I want to glue this together get it into a solid mass because I can use this to support all the subsequent work that I have to do so I want to do that now I've got my pieces cut I've got them in position here it already looks like a bench top so I have to glue these together now if you want to you can just glue them just like you would a laminated top and that will be perfectly adequate what I want to do is screw mine together as well as glue them because it will give me an instant top without having to wait very long for anything so I like the idea of screwing this together it reduces the need for clamps so what I did is I marked out my pieces so each time I run holes in here and run the screws have not got one going into the previous section that I screw so I've offset the holes or the positions of the holes by half an inch so I've got this one starts one inch from the end and one inch from the end here and then I split the difference between them to get the middle one split that again to get this one and split it again to get these here so and then with the next one I just shunted everything over half an inch and that gave me a an offset that I think is going to be great now you may want to not use the screws and the reason you might not want to is because you might want to use a dogging system or bore holes in the top for some some other way of fixing so you may not want to use the screws but I think now I know the position of my holes I know where I could if I ever wanted to drill I've got that position so I'm using a decent quality PVA I want something that can be used externally that's what this is you can use internally or externally and it's a glue that I have used for a long time so I think that's important for you because the plywood is a decent quality so I want the glue to be at the same level as the plywood glue so I want that really solid the first piece here and these pieces go in here the first one is not going to be screwed we're not going to put any we're just going to glue this on because we don't want screws on the external phases of what we're making so what I do now is set this aside just for a minute and every time I pick one of these up I pick an alternate one of these so I'm going to drill through the first one like this and I'm going to use this as my template for all the holes that I'm going to drill so I'm drilling a suitably sized hole in this case I'm using a 3/16 hole because I'm using a screw that's commensurate to that size so first of all I'm going to drill through here that's through the first one so that I've gone one on either side this is five eighths of an inch in from the outside edges and this one is dead center between top and bottom it's not scientific you don't have to be dead-on just close to once you've done those on both pieces you're ready to drill all of the other pieces alternately and you won't need to countersink the screw head because it's they're small screws and they will sink themselves just nicely into the surface but there's my next one it's mapped out I'm going to drill this one as well just the same way but with the offset holes once this is done I'm ready to start going up but I'm going to do all of the pieces alternately just like this and stack them in their relative groups [Music] [Music] those are my template pieces so I can use those now to drill all the other pieces so I'm going to drill them alternately by putting them together drilling through and that will take me about 10 minutes or so I think [Music] [Music] I'm going to set that one aside and have that as a face piece because it's got a good face on it [Music] I'm just tearing off the spell team that's come from the drill passing through so I've done that on each one and what I've also done is I have set these alternately so that they are staggered so I know exactly where they are one more I was probably a little heavy-handed with my drilling it's not going to affect anything it's just it's actually typical for plywood drilling through it but these would hold off the screws are off the bedding really between the glue so I want to make sure I've got rid of them plywood is notorious for splinters - I don't know if you've noticed but I've been putting that edge that I planed originally when I planed each edge I've put those down so that they're all on the same face so underneath here they will form either the top side or the underside but they will be registration faces that will help me to make sure at least one place is perfectly aligned this last one is my my finished piece this is the one can you see on this this has got like a jigsaw piece here on a sheet of plywood usually you get what they call a finished face which doesn't usually have these in and these are patched over - of a nut or a void in there so they stick those in it's a stamped in thing so before the plywood goes together this last piece is where they insert this side is not clear see here I have a little bit here and so I'm going to put that at the bottom I'm thinking this through so this one also so they didn't have a good face on both faces on a single face he had it on a poor face on both of them so I'm putting this in place here that's going to be my last piece to glue in place and that one will be glued on so there won't be any screws visible in that one so I start here now so I'm actually I think I'm ready to glue up so let me get rid of some of this drafts here I don't want this in the glue when I roll my glue out I'm just using a sponge roller with no nappies just solid sponge and this next bit should go very quickly for you I'm going to start driving the screws doesn't matter which way you go and it's surprising how much glue takes about quarter of a gallon of glue to make this bench if I remember rightly so there is so I'm going to start here I'm going to drop this on top of this one and then work along from there this is a good outside face it's actually better than the one I chose it's got two good faces so let me bring these in as they are got my screws at they're ready takes a lot the screws have not counted it I've got my driver there ready so whichever one you want to glue is up to you this is very repetitive this whole bench is very repetitive so we're going to go along here with sufficient glue to make sure it's covered and the screws will be the clamps in this case but you can also add clamps after you've got this rolled out and screwed together you can still add clamps afterwards if you feel like you want to I think I've got my screws placed sufficiently to close off any and all gaps nice and even flip over make sure you get that registration face against the same registration face underneath I want to start one end here so I can flush this up and I've got these dead two lengths so the underside is more important than the top side drive that first screw that's perfect maybe you can work along so I'm flush on the underside here so drive this one make sure it's seated you don't this sticking out because it will hold the plywood off the next piece and just work along leveling the bottom edge or the planed edge as you go and when you finish this especially if you flush the ends and get the bottom right you should end up with a fairly well it will be straight not twisted this should be exciting for you when you get to this stage so I'm tweaking this as I go to make sure I'm level and even if it's slightly off have a hammer ready just to tap it against the opposite piece so I've got screws that a shy of the other side they're 30 mil screws next one so this is going on here flip over roll out and we repeat that all the way through until we get to the opposite side [Music] [Music] just about how to charge but I did Drive a lot of screws now that's done I actually realized towards the last one that I only need one good edge I didn't need two so I read I drilled an extra piece so I've got my good edge on this edge here and it's looking very nice I'm eyeballing from one side to the other and I've got no twist so there it is what I've really created is a stage for what I do next so it's very simple a little bit tedious I do feel an aching my neck and my shoulders because that's a lot of drill drive in there but I know you'll enjoy the process kiss Luke what you end up with [Music] you

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 414,469

Rating: 4.8962088 out of 5

Keywords: plywood workbench, paul sellers, woodworking, hand tools, workbench, crafts, workshop, plywood, craftsman, joinery, woodworker, handtools

Id: 53PrmkFpdI0

Length: 29min 19sec (1759 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019