Leg-Vise - Tuning & Handle

Top edge sawn and planed flush

Stuck-in-handle (cut the tip off of a rather new screwdriver) for the distance-board to hold the vise parallel to the leg

the shopmade handle - woodturned ... and didn't forget to stuck it in before gluing the second end piece :-)
I also cut the bottom-end to avoid collecting shavings between the vise and the leg.

Surface-Vise

next feature ... surface vise:

make holes

fix the front-part

turn the back-part to grab the screw

clamp the workpiece

the Veritas holdfast fits the same holes ... perfect

The leg-vise

A heavy 6 cm thick woodslab of ash it is

rough-sawn and starting to plane

the hole for the screw

the hole in the leg ... if the hook moves you are not straight

screwing in the screw ;-)

one advantage of holes in the workbench: a big scew on the underside is no problem :-)

what the f... !!!  surgery for a broken screw

another advantage of holes in the workbench: more clamping possibilities

yeah! ... perfect wedged tenon for the distance-board

the distance-board

what a beauty

what curves, what grain!

perfect fit
(the non-parallel-look of the screw and board is because the weight of the leg and yet no counter-screw)

to do: turning a handle, fitting the counterscrew on the back of the leg, trimming the top-edge

Into the Workshop

Because there's no space in front of the workshop to turn the workbench around the corner, it has to be moved in a vertical position and then to "drop" into the Workshop

ready to drop

outch ... my back

The End is near ...

Cause my wife want's a bedroom with no wood (strange, isn't it?) ... I am working hard on finishing my workbench.

I didn't post the last steps, but they were made:

to fit the legs, they have to be moved in and out, in and out ... sometimes they stick

cutting the tenons ... my bandsaw is too small for this, so handwork

gluing the stretchers ...

... and drawboring them

the two long stretchers ... done

work area ... hard turning around (150 kg?)

removing the split-protection-sheet with fire and power

standing on the feet ... one stretcher to make

Top - upper side finished

At last I finished the Butterflies & Wedges on the upper side of the top.
Skipped one Butterfly cause of another one already there.

Flipped it over and the 16 Butterflies for the down-side are waiting.

A little here and there

Tooth-ache and the cold ... bad combination!

So to do more than nothing I knocked the rest of the wedges in an made one single butterfly. Even this one didn't want to go entirely into his mortise ... bad day.

the unwilling butterlfly on the third block

the second block finished

Some planing & butterflies

Rough Planing of the top to create a flat surface - not 100% but enought to have a reference.
Used some winding sticks to eleminate the twist.

8 butterflies to connect the middle-blocks done ... so 1/4 of the 32 pieces which remain for the top.

Much dust and shavings but no heaving the top around.

Here is the TOP!

Removed the clamps - heaved it horizontal and there it is:

Rough, ugly and big!
The surface will be planed at the end (when the feet are on).
The next step will be the 32 butterflies, which hold the beams and the middle-blocks together.
Call it an overkill, but I don't want a 150 kg-Workbench falling apart.

Gluing up the top - second day, second beam

First I had to minimize the heave-work, so I put the second beam on a little higher position next to the fist beam with blocks:

now I could heave one end of the second beam on or off the middleblocks and then the other end.

The next thing was to plane the middle-blocks to fit the second beam.
I began with the light-through-method:

quite a lot of light ... so nothing to plane off from this block ... now.
After a while I changed to the method of putting carbon-paper between the gluing areas. By rubbing the woodpieces against each other I created black marks where to plane:

... here you can see the marks on the right side and top.

After heaving the beam uncount times I decided that it was enough and glued the whole thing up:

Now wait a while ..

Gluing up the top

Now the inner side of the back beam is planded flush and the middle blocks are fitted for gluing.
Here we go with the first one:

The bottom piece is the beam (with the butterflies in it).
Above is the end-middle-block and on top is a waste wood as a supplement.

Here the two endblocks are already glued on, the two middleblocks are clamped.
On the left side one can see the other beam with freshly glued wedges filling the cracks between the butterflies.

92 Butterfly spines ... DONE!

Week after week I worked the splines in.
After a while I got a good method for cutting the splines and for the chisel work:

so after uncount hours all of the 92 splines are in the wood.
Most wedges glued in and everything sawed flush ... more or less.