Dan's Hobbies » Work Benches

Finally finished (kind of)

Dan — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:14:44 +0000

Last night I finally finished one of the two utility benches, I’m about 80% done with the second one. To finish the top I used BLO (boiled linseed oil), spar urethane, & Johnson’s paste wax. A lot of traditionalist woodworkers will scoff about applying a film finish to a workbench, but this bench is going to be exposed to a lot more than glue dribbles.

To see some additional shots from this project check out the following posts:

Workbench tops prt. 3

Dan — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:47:50 +0000

It’s been over 3 weeks sine my last post, so I think it’s time I give everyone an update. Since my last post, I have been diglently jointing, planing and gluing up boards for my bench tops. It’s boring work so I will spare you the details, but the good news is I’m done with that phase of the project. I’m now into the flatening phase, but thats for a different post.

Thus without further ado the photos .

About half way done with one top

A close up

One glue-up done, one to go.

Workbench tops prt. 2

Dan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:17:24 +0000

Last week I promised I would provide an updated MC histogram, so Friday night a broke out the moisture meter and took some readings. I found it really interesting, that in only 6 days some of the boards had shown significant changes in MC.

Since it was nice outside today (sunny and upper 50′s), & the SYP was close enough to equilibrium that it wouldn’t move around a lot when cut, I decided to rough cut the boards to size this afternoon. It’s amazing how much sawdust a table saw can generate in a few hours, you can see what I mean in the following photos

Rough cut boards

15 gallons of saw dust

The start of workbench tops

Dan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:36:54 +0000

Now that the steel bases for my work benches are welded together, I can start working on the wood tops. Yesterday my friend Stuart & I made a trip to Menards to pick up the wood I needed. After about an hour of sorting through the lumber rack, we had picked out 14 decent 2″ x 12″ x 14′ Southern yellow pine boards. After we got them back to my place, we cut them in half for stacking and stickering. I thought 275 board feet of lumber would make a bigger pile, than it actually did.

stacked & stickered

Before I can start milling the lumber to size, I have to let it dry out some. The average equilibrium moisture content (EMC) in this part of the country is a little under 14%, thus once it reaches 14% I can start milling it. This morning I went out and took a moisture reading from each board. The histogram below shows, that some of the boards still need to dry out. I’ll check the boards every few days and post an updated histogram.

Bench legs are finally done.

Dan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:30:53 +0000

I finally got time to finish welding my workbench legs today. I really underestimated the amount of time it was going to take. Though it was more work than I expected, I enjoyed it, and my weld skills are much better now than when I started. Next up is making the Sothern yellow pine tops, so stay tuned.