Any woodworkers?

Weell I finally got some shop time today and got the last section of the bench top planed.
I then ran the other 2 sections through the planer for a skim cut to make sure they would all be the same thickness.
This is the bottom.

The top will finish up at 3' x 5'6"

I filled any imperfections on the bottom with CA.

And scraped it all level.

The top side. The center sections of walnut will get 1 more pass on the jointer to make a nice tight fit.

3 inches of each end will be cut off to remove snipe. It's almost unavoidable with sections this long and heavy with a bench top planer.

 

Nice work

 

It is amazing how the human eye can detect even slight imperfections in parallel, but cannot tell how far out. Makes the job of the creator even harder ... must still make it perfect. Especially with 3' x 5'6".

 

And the funny thing is it will only be perfect once, it's wood and it will move.

 

looks great! i work with alot of kinda funky stuff, so i'm very familiar with CA filling.

 

Yeah me too. For me it's just part of it. Actually I'm not much of a fan of perfect wood, looks sterile to me. I like some knots and imperfections.

 

i'm with ya there . . . the funkier / jacked-up the better! there are times though, where i really don't wanna mess with it . . . just depends on my mood. got a piece of a forest pansy redbud from the backyard i'm playing around with now. really cool looking stuff, but all checked and messed up, so playing around with ideas for what to do with those spots right now.

 

Died epoxy is cool to fix funky stuff.

 

yeah, thinking about that idea . . . got a pressure pot and all that good stuff. pretty sure i need some new epoxy though.

 

Prints finally arrived.

 

Well I finally got some shop time today, I didn't really do any wood working but I'm prepping for that. I want the 3 sections of the top to stay separate but also be joined together for their combined weight. I want the top to come apart if I ever need to move the bench. So my plan to join the sections but not to glue them together is to use loose dowels. I don't have a festool domino so I'm going old school.
Picked up some 3/4" oak dowels from the big box store.

And I bored a test hole in some scrap ash so I could measure the hole.
The biggest dowel center I could find was 1/2" So off to my Southbend metal lathe I went, oiled her up and went to work. I chucked up a piece of 1" 304 stainless steel to make the 3/4" centers.
Just enough point to make a mark for drilling.

I think it came out pretty good. 1 down and 5 to go.

So sometimes metal work crosses over into wood work. I enjoy both.

 

oh nice . . . got just a small little HF metal lathe and milling machine. haven't seen much use, but did make a little carbide tip holder, which was kinda cool. still need some more play time on those . . . one day. be curious to see exactly how this comes together with the dowels.

 

shopnotes e173 -- someone hear was mentioned on there!

 

Yeah I got a kick out of that. I felt honored that they read my post. I'd really like to meet those guys one day.

 

that was pretty cool . . . definitely seem like good dudes. i do like the "woodtalk" podcast too.

 

They read one of my post twice now, I never expected they would even give them a look let alone read them on the show. One was about the workbench and one was about how metal work sometimes comes into play with wood working.
Pretty cool just the same.
At some point I'll do a YouTube video on the bench but not on the whole build process. There's a bunch of those already.

 

I would love to hang out with Mark, the Wood Whisperer, in his shop for a couple of days.

I listened to Shopnotes for the first time today on the way to work. Nice way to pass the time during my commute.

 

Nicely done!!!

 

Finished.

Top is 2x40x84 Pecan
Legs are Maple and some left over Ash I had.
Process- Picked out three slabs of local wood.
Back to shop to dowel and glue slabs, then black epoxy in the voids.
Back to big shop to go through their 60" planer for thickness
Built the simple legs while that was going on. Got top back, sanded sanded sanded. Built short skirt to finish the bottom.
Finish sanded to 180g on DA sander
Mixed stain, 8 parts Pecan, 2 parts Walnut. Rubbed on with rag.
Has 3X coats of Minwax polyurethane wet sanded with 600g in between.
Waited until 10pm with ambient 68 temp, wetted area around top in shop. No wind outside, no activity in shop prior to last coat. Turned out nice with minimal nibs.
Only use Purdy brushes.
Enjoy, this is a hobby, not a vocation. This is for my wife.

 

That's a beauty.