Workbench Completed with Rob Cosman

hi I'm Rob cotton welcome to my shop I want to show you the bench that we just completed we've been doing working on this during our hand and power to a workshop for the last year didn't take a year to build but it took a year to film consider we only do an hour and a half a week which is three half-hour episodes built this out of maple and mahogany and I'm going to get to correct my cameramen to go through and highlight some of the stuff so let's hit the easy stuff first the core is 3 inches steps it's maple all the pieces are glued with double splines there's two long running splines and that's primarily for alignment so that when you're gluing these hole all these pieces up they they stay really flush at the top and what I do is each piece I hand plane before I glue it up so that I know which direction this particular piece needs to be planed in order to get the best result if you do that with every individual piece then when you put it together the final finish is just a very small amount of work mochila smoothly I built this after the traditional Scandinavian style bench which both Frank Claus and tape Fred made pot have made popular I use this Scandinavian style shoulder vise up here but I switched news what was called a wagon wheel vise back here I've done several benches and this is a whole lot easier to build and I like it I think it functions a lot better but I made a few small changes and I'll point them out I did this for a friend and I really wanted to dress it up and make it a beautiful piece so all of the horizontal surfaces and you'll see them so frickin going from around here actually start right here all the horizontal surfaces I glued an eighth inch piece of bird's-eye and I dug into my best stash to get some of the prettiest in the most heavily figured wood I could find so all the horizontal surfaces including down here it's a base those stretchers are encased in Birds Eye all the way around it's that's hard maple underneath Birds Eye skin top and bottom and inside and we even we did up here I even threw it in the in the bottom of the tool tray I figured it's not getting hard use and I wanted to make it really look nice so bird's-eye here bird's-eye at the bottom now let me go through and show you some other things this is simple but yeah a bench lamp especially as you get older to me anyway it's become one of the most valuable tools if you can't see the line how can you saw to it and benches that I've built in the past I simply drilled half inch holes along the back of the tool tray and the bench lamp would sit in there but I was amazed at how it would Hollow it would ruin those holes after a while so I made this little mobile removable clamp and then I turned a piece of bird's-eye maple in the shape of mushroom so that it doesn't wreck the small half-inch a base that these lamps come with they're not very sturdy so this way its stat stays stationary in the wood and it's the spigot that actually turns inside the mahogany sorry so what else did we do well if you look down in here these ramps on the end of either tool tray are simply designed to make it easy to clean up it so if you're hit using a bench brush you can just sweep the stuff out but this solid core is going to move seasonally so you've got a why does that whole thing is 17 inches and you're talking about a 14-inch piece that can move maybe as much as an eighth of an inch from the drive point of the year to the most human point so when you build with using cross grain construction this piece this end cap the old is no expansion this way but this piece there is so when you put these two pieces together you have to allow for that so what I did I have three splines three I can't remember the quarter inch or half-inch I think they're quarter-inch splines on the end of this core and the three splines ensure that you can maintain a nice flush joint up here the first two or three inches I actually glue this bolt has a captured knot back up in here Frick you may want to go underneath and just have a quick look at that so we've got a bolt sitting in and as a knot up in here and I just use a router to cut that recess and that knot that bolt is 3/8 of an inch in diameter and it's sitting in a 3/8 diameter hole both through the end cap and into this piece so there's no movement here at all you don't you can't afford to have this dimension change as a result of the expansion pushing into this section because it will bind your your vise and you can't have that so all the expansion has to go out this way so from here over to here it's a dry fit joint this bolt sits in a larger diameter hole so that allows for the movement well your tool tray the grain is running this way and that's not going to move at all so traditionally what they would do is they would leave a gap down in here and you would just live with it it would be a narrower gap one part of the year and a wider gap the other well I didn't like that so what I did I took a little piece of mahogany cut a groove in the end of this piece of mahogany and cut a piece of wood to match in the the the width I put two Springs out of a couple of ballpoint pens in holes that were bored down in the bottom of the groove and then this piece of wood in here is spring loaded so as this closes down in the humid time of the year that will simply move into the groove and allow for the expansion and as this shrinks in the wintertime when it's dry this will come out to continuously fill the gap a couple of same thing when I fastened this to the bottom it's fast and solid on this screw this screw over here has a pardon me I say that right I can't remember one of them is in it is in a larger diameter hole and the other one isn't so that the movement won't be affected X I think it's this one that stays tight yeah that's way too because this is a solid piece of wood as well so this piece of wood is made fast screwed and made fast to the bottom of the bench the groove that it fits into in this back piece of mahogany is deeper than the amount that is actually projecting into it so that will allow as this comes this way the tool tray can go in to this back piece there's at least a quarter of an inch of movement in there so when I fastened this to the tool tray it's made fast over here and it's allowed to expand over here okay what else oh yeah what's this piece something else that I change that I hadn't done before is that typically this piece is left unsupported and you can sit here and move it a fair bit and it always bothered me so I made this piece of this piece of bird's-eye which goes under all the way back to here if you look up underneath that come down here so it's made fast back here with four screws and a little bit of glue these four screws are again larger diameter holes that allow for expansion and then what I did you have to come up here and look at this I cut a the shape of this support is cut into the bottom of this core with extra room at the end so as this expands it will just come over top it'll slide over top of the support and as it shrinks it will go out but it'll always remain nice and tight closed like that and then out here on this end we put a more this is a there's a tenon on the end of this there's a mortise in here and then through the way I did all of the joints I penned pinned it with the some walnut dowels okay would also need to show you in the tool tray I guess that's about it some don't like them but I would much rather have had my tools drop it into the tool tray than hitting the floor dovetails are cut by hand on these corners and it's a challenge cutting the big dovetails like that and I pin them again just for a little extra strength put them top and bottom and we come along here the hardware I designed the hardware not being satisfied with what was available over the years of building benches so I custom designed this and I had a custom machine shop make it for me so there's not a whole lot of difference in this end other than the fact that we used a double start threaded rod which simply means for every revolution where every two revolutions this it moves an inch on my other benches it's as many as five on one and six on the other so you get a lot of speed which really helps and the brass rings are just the way too fancy ended up we actually took this tee and polished it all up just to make it shine now when you when you have your handle there's it's constantly dropping down like that and what ends up happening is it breaks the end off so what we did nice and Lee Nelson did this first so I copied it a couple of rubber o-rings on either end just cushion the blow this is a piece of mahogany this is a piece of these end caps or Birdseye so our our we call this or wagon wheel vise is a block of mahogany this is made in one two three four parts bolted together from the bottom side and I don't know if you can see in there or not move this out quickly when I come over on this end you might be able to see a little bit better I don't know if you can see right down in there or not but what we have your groove they cut into this into the core and into this outside piece they have to be the equal distance from the top and then we have two pieces of I think I used blood wood which is naturally oily and that those two pieces of blood wood ones on this side one that ones on that side are made to fit in that groove as with tightest tolerances possible and then there is a groove cut in this mahogany block then at the bargaining block is separated and then bolted together from the bottom side so that it squeezes on those two pieces of blood wood and they stay attached to the mahogany block but they slide in that track so that this always stays parallel to the top now let me show you the bench dogs because I did something different there the one thing about bench dogs is at least the ones that I've had in the past whatever means they had of holding them preventing them from dropping down usually only worked in a few locations so if you were way up here wouldn't stop it wouldn't stay put it would drop down into the hole so I did this I took a piece of bird's-eye and I cut a t-shaped groove in it and then I cut a piece of blood but not blood where this is actually bubinga and that's t-shaped as well as you can see before I put it together I drilled two holes one here one here took the springs out of a ballpoint pen and put them down in there now I that I lined up holes in the piece of bubinga lined them up with the holes that were drilled in the bird's eye piece not very deep just enough so that when you put it together the spring would pop into that little depression in there in there and it would keep this from falling out and that just spring-loaded so when you put it down inside the dog hole it'll stay in any position that you want now this was a screw-up I ended up having that dog hole right over top of the trestle so I couldn't I wouldn't be able to it wouldn't be able to go down out of sight because as you'll see if you look down underneath here the bench dogs are longer than the bench is thick so that you can easily pop them up so what I did on this one is I just cut it short same thing with your little spring-loaded wooden stay and I just made a little reef inger recess in there so that could go out of the way and if you just put your finger in there and pull it out this one doesn't get used a whole lot but it just works out nice with the space and I put a leather line the jaws this one doesn't really get used much but if it does the leather protects your wood and it just gives a little better grip - all right so we come along here and my spacing first bends I built the spacing was four or five inches sex and measurement six inches apart and I found out real quick that that was bad so these are these are three and three-quarter inches but Center to Center which works out well and this one I rarely use that back one but I put it in there anyway usually the front ones the only one that ever gets used alright for this vise so here's where I made the changes with this style of vise what you want is you want it a little bit of swivel on the horizontal axis that way if you're clamping a board that isn't perfectly doesn't have parallel sides it'll still stay tight however you don't want any forward droop or drip on the vertical because if you do and this has been the problem as your board comes up tight here as this the droop gets pulled up it always moves the board out of position and when I cut up tails I want my piece held in a very specific spot so I simply designed a threaded rod and a well that would allow for this movement but doesn't have any forward or droop on the vertical axis and again we use the double start so it moves nice and quick polished up the parts to make them look nice and there's a little there's a little toe in here that fits into a groove and all that's there or is so sorry so that when you're spinning this this thing is not spinning around like a propeller and the nut then that is really deep it's a brass nut it goes way back to here and I wanted that so that there wasn't any droop in the threaded rod when it gets all the way out so I'm gonna it's a little bit sticky right there I've got to go back in and just take a little more material up right here it's just a little bit too tight and then it'll be good to go so find a little touch up now when you build this there's a lot of cross grain construction so what we've got going on here is this piece is opposing this piece and this piece so when this went in this is only glued and made fast there's triple splines on this joint and this triple splines on this joint so it's glued for the first couple of inches both here and here the rest of it has to allow groups to expand there's a bulb right here and there's a lot of pressure put on this big arm as you bear down on this vise this once they've come apart so there is a bolt right here that goes to about right here on the other side of what's called this is the dog strip it's built up separately and added onto the bench after you've done your you're getting your core done so this is a four inch thick piece this is a three inch thick piece and on the other side and a captured hole there's a nut that squeezes this together and prevents or fights the action of the pressure being put on this as a result of the vise and because of the size of the dovetail I put in four four dowels and when you put these in you want to make sure they're not in the same line which may cause a split so that's why they're offset with on this piece with the way the grain is so and that was a big dovetail to cut I think I actually did one of these in the bandsaw when we were filming our online workshop I wanted to show them options that they had so we cut one by hand with hand side we cut one on the table side I think we actually cut one on the bandsaw still a lot of handwork to fit it and I decided to put in just a little bit of extra mahogany just as an accent piece to break up that joint so I put in a piece of mahogany but you'll notice that this piece of mahogany the grain is running in the same direction as the core so I actually glued to the core it's not glued to this side and then when it stops here it's actually it's short grain this way and the long grain running that way so that this one this these three pieces could all be glued together okay now down underneath I'm over here on this end as I said I felt a fair number of these I try to experiment I'm to see what I like and I really like Frank Klaus style a bit so the base underneath is all pretty much patterned after his with a few minor exceptions I've done through wedge Tenon's on this I've done bolts well I like this keyed mortise and patted is the best it's nice and fast I used to travel and do wood shows a lot one crack witness okay ten cracks with this same idea is it 15 more times but that just wedged in there and it's just a couple of taps and that pulls that sing and tight so it's a nice way of doing it and I made it extra wide just religious have lots of surface area the base of this bench is actually made out of Spanish cedar it looks very much like mahogany when it's done but it's all I could find in this big thickness so because it's a little bit on the soft side I wanted to make sure that this wedge was sufficiently wide enough that it wouldn't cut a groove or leave a groove or a mark on this piece when these are driven in all of the joints on these trestles are double tenon so instead of one great big tenon because if you can imagine one big tenon on the end of this it means a great big hole or ripping mortise in this piece and it really weakens it so what I instead I have is I have a half inch tenon over here on this end side and a half inch tenant over there and that leaves material in between the two mortises that just I think it strengthens the whole piece and it increase increases a glue surface but then what I do after I put it all together I pin it with this case walnut dowels so that it's secure and it's not going to come apart so you'll see there's a black dots all over the place that's what they're for and I'll explain this in a moment as I mentioned these were done in Maple and then I wrapped them in bird's-eye so there's bird's-eye glued to the top to the front and to the inside edge actually I might as well show you this now the thought Bob the guy that's a friend of mine that I built this for one of the bench that gave them two Heights when you're planing it's nice to be able to be over top of the wood so you can actually lean over it put a little bit of pressure on the plane however when you're cutting down tails particularly as you get older it's nice to have it at a height where you don't have to bend over but the easiest way I could come up with to adjust disc with simply hinge another set of feet so you lift the bench up that foot folds underneath go to the other end and do the exact same thing and you gain three inches you can gain four depending on how big you make those there really isn't any restriction but now you're working up here and you're sawing at a higher level you're chopping at a higher level it's just a whole lot easier to work okay down on this end actually I'm going to bring this back down around needs a little bit of fancy footwork to do that but it doesn't take terribly long to figure out how to do it okay over here now sharpy station I prefer free hand sharpening is what I teach it's fast you can do it in 30 seconds so you need a sharpening station that is convenient and very close by this end of my French doesn't get used for anything so what I did is I built a little platform it's made out of exterior-grade plywood because it's going to be wet as a result of the water I put a little backsplash on there so it doesn't get all over the bench I actually built everything with about a 1 or 2 degree slope so any of the slurry will actually run off of this end it's adjustable in height but I like to be able to lean over top of my of my stone so that I can neck work pivot from my shoulder instead of my wrist which is what you'd end up doing if you're sharpening a bench height and as a result folks can adapt to it and there it can be very accurate with your sharpening with your a little bit of practice as I said sharpening is about a 30 second procedure which means I'll readily resharpen my blade the minute they need it needs it now what else is there to show you on this heavy I'm guessing it's probably a little over 300 pounds a lot of money tied up in materials but if you're going to build a bench I assume you're only ever going to build one and why not put some pretty wooden it's what you look at all the time so it's nice to have it nice to show off your your skill and your craftsmanship too anyway if you're interested in walking and going through this you can become a member of our online workshop it's the hand and power to a workshop and we allow our members access to everything from when we started filming when you sign up it I think we went through an actual year was 178 episodes I believe 178 half-hour episodes we filmed three a day after part of me three a week so we broadcast Monday Wednesday and Friday on the hand tool power tool there's there on there all the time so you can watch them anytime you want but a new one comes out every Monday Wednesday and Friday and 170 you would have be spent on 78 so there's a lot there but we tried not to do much off-camera the only time we did anything off cameras and we filmed repetitive steps we would do one or two on camera and then do the rest just to save time but it's all on there and it will walk you through the process made a few mistakes in fact I'll admit this piece of mahogany is not there because it was going to be decoration it's there because after we glued this whole thing up we ended up with a gap and they couldn't live with it so I had done this once before I put it in there and then once I put that one in I realized what we really need to balance it so we put a mahogany strip in both ends just to kind of dress it up then it really worked in our favor so actually wasn't a mistake it was intense work so that's its that's our work bench if you want to join us if you want to just kind of get a little sample to see if this is something that you think you might want to experiment but you don't want to put the money upfront and if you contact us Robert Rob Cosman comm we will give you a free 30-day trial you one there and see if you like it if you do great if you don't it just expires at the end of 30 days all right during your time in the shop you

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 350,553

Rating: 4.8807945 out of 5

Keywords: workbench, woodworking, hand tools, dovetails, mortise, tenon, tennon, rob cosman, tools, training, wood, sharpening, sawing, saw, plane, woodcraft, dovetail

Id: U-3c5UNgDBo

Length: 22min 7sec (1327 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2013