In the last month, I have injured myself more times than I have in the past few years! Now we’re not talking hospital visits here. Just small cuts and scrapes (mostly from hand tools) and a couple of close calls. Enough for me to take a step back and seriously evaluate how I feel before I step into the shop. If there is one thing I learned about myself, it’s that I have NO business being in the shop when I’m tired.

The problem with fatigue is it’s a little like being drunk. You may be a little more complacent than usual. You might make slightly more risky cuts. You might not set up all the proper safety devices. The phrase, “Its just one cut” will likely come out of your mouth. Even something as simple as having a weaker grip on your chisel or push stick could have dangerous ramifications. Basically, all of our safety training goes out the window if you compromise your ability to make good decisions and execute properly.

With this new appreciation for the effects of fatigue on safety, I am happy to say I have been making the decision to stay home much more often than usual. I guess I’ll just edit more video. Like my good buddy Ice Cube says, “Check yo self before you wreck yo self!”

The reason I am bringing this up is because I recently made a purchase at Clyde Hardware and I thought it would be helpful to show you an example of the insane price discrepancies. I made a relatively small purchase of 18 Blum 1/2″ overlay hinges and 100 1/4″ brass shelf pins. At a popular online retailer, the hinges are about $7 each and the shelf pins are about $0.30 each. If my trusty calculator is right, that’s a total bill of $156 before tax. At Clyde, I was able to get the hinges for about $3 each and the pins for about $0.05 each, giving me a total of $59. So that’s a savings of about $97 on small order of 100 shelf pins and 18 hinges!!!

Moral to the story? Pick up the yellow pages and look for a hardware supplier. You might have to find a friend who has a tax ID number (if you don’t have one) because some of these places might not deal with the public directly. The potential savings is significant enough that it’s worth the extra effort to find these places. Spending less money on hardware means spending more money on the stuff that counts……….WOOD!

“I am building a bar top from 8/4 Walnut for my son’s new home, and he wants to have a very natural finish on it – no film finish allowed. My first thought was to use BLO, but some research has led me to think that Pure Tung Oil might provide better protection. Is Pure Tung Oil a better option than BLO for an open grained wood like Walnut?”

Tung Oil and BLO

When it comes to protection, boiled linseed oil (BLO) and pure tung oil are pretty similar. One important thing they have in common is that neither one offers a great deal of protection. If you have to choose between the two, I would say to go for the BLO since its cheaper. BLO does is said to “yellow” a little more over time when compared to tung oil, but that is a moot point with respect to walnut.

Now obviously your son is the boss here, right? But indulge me while I make a small suggestion. An pure oil finish will certainly be better than nothing at all, but for a bartop, your son might regret this decision after the first few spills. I can totally understand why he doesn’t want a film finish though. Personally, I hate the look of those super thick bartop finishes (epoxy). If someone wants that much protection, they should just put down a piece of glass or simply use something other than wood (can you smell the contempt? hehe). But keep in mind this isn’t an all or none proposition and you can achieve a compromise between the highly protective plastic look and the barely protected natural look.

The Oil/Varnish Compromise

So my suggestion would be to try to achieve the best of both worlds. Give the bar top a very natural-looking finish, while imparting a great deal more protection than what you would receive from an oil alone. There are a few products on the market today that contain oil and varnish together, like Watco Danish Oil. Because there is so much oil in the mix, you would have to put on about 4 or 5 coats before you really start to get an appreciable film. However, if you apply 2-3 coats, the wood will retain the natural look while protecting the surface with at least some varnish. If you go with a matte or satin formulas, I think your son will be even happier with the end result as it won’t have the eye-glaring reflective qualities of a typical gloss concoction.

One of the great advantages to using an oil/varnish blend is you can monitor the surface after each coat and simply stop when you have the look you want. Dilute the mix with mineral spirits if you want even more fine control. Also keep in mind that you can actually make your own oil/varnish blend by mixing 1/3 mineral spirits, 1/3 BLO (or tung oil), and 1/3 polyurethane.

Either way, make sure you sand lightly between coats to keep the finish nice and smooth. After the final coat, either sand with 1200 grit paper or buff with 0000 steel wool. The wood will not only look natural, but will easily repel the occasional spill.

Related Resources:

Oil Finish Basics (Video)
Make Your Own Oil/Varnish Blend

The Dog Strip

“The Dog Strip”…..sounds like it should be a street in Las Vegas. Just me? OK, focus Marc! The dog hole strip is made with the aid of a routing template and a pattern bit. The dog hole itself is positioned at a 2 degree angle to offset the force that will be applied to the dogs when in use. The dog holes also feature a small “shelf” that essentially serves as a depth stop so the dogs don’t go too deep into the bench.

After routing, a strip of 3/8″ thick maple caps it off. The end result is a perfectly-centered series of dog holes that are now ready to be glued to the bench top. Notice that the dog hole strip does not run the full length of the bench. This is so that the tail vise can do its job and the movable dog block will have some room to travel. The strip is glued to the bench with the aid of Dominos for alignment.

Front Laminate & Dovetails (Condor Tails)

The bench top is finished off by attaching the front laminate strip. The only tricky part about this is the fact that we need to tie the strip into the end cap. There are several options for how to accomplish this, including something as simple as a butt joint and lag bolts. But that’s no fun! So I decided to aim for the fences and make the connection with dovetails. I followed Jameel Abraham’s method, published in an article called “Condor Tails” in Popular Woodworking Magazine (August 2011). The method is right up my alley as it makes good use of both hand and power tools. The tails are cut first at the bandsaw. The pins are then cut into the end cap using a clever combination of chisels and a pattern bit in the router. You’ll have to buy the back issue or join the Guild to get the details on this method. The picture below shows the dovetails in the “rough state” with pencil marks and all. After it was glued into place and cleaned up, I was truly impressed with the results. A near piston fit! Kudos to Jameel on coming up with this method for what would normally be a pretty daunting joint.

Finishing Up The Tail Vise

With the front laminate glued into place, we can now route the grooves for the tail vise rails. The rails are then screwed into place and the dog block slides cleanly in the rails. It is interesting to note that the metal nut block shouldn’t make contact with any wood. If everything is working properly, it should slide back and forth making contact with the metal rails only. I didn’t mention it earlier, but when making the dog hole strip I was careful to include one extra dog hole. That one was reserved specifically for the movable dog block, which is installed here in the final step. The vise has incredibly smooth action and travels quickly. I think I’m going to like this!

The Dog Breeder

The only thing missing from my new bench top is the dogs themselves. They are fairly easy to make but it can be time-consuming. So I figured I would save some time by making a makeshift routing jig that I affectionately refer to as “The Dog Breeder”. Once the shape is cut, each dog receives a piece of 1/8″ stock that serves as a spring. A little fine-tuning with my smoothing plane and the dogs slide in and out of the dog holes with ease. When full retracted, you can see they sit just below the surface of the bench.

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This article was written by VitalBodies, a Wood Whisperer community member. If you like music, you’ll enjoy his story. Here’s a short bio:
From countless wood shop classes to contractor to fixer to starting to create a home shop. For the fixer I have been doing everything from fences to architectural planter boxes to refinishing furniture and more.

It all started by attempting to write a comment on TWW site to thank Marc for his scraper articles I found so handy while working on an antique writing desk. Meanwhile, I had also been asking folks of all ages for at least a week “what songs really lift you up and get you moving?” I told the folks I asked, “it does not matter what decade, era, genre or whatever, but WHAT GETS YOU DANCING?” I was testing dancing to some of the songs in between writing the comment. Does not matter if you are in the kitchen, shop, club or on the dance floor, what is the song(s) that sets you to flight?

Today I started working on an antique writing table. Not knowing antiques all that well I thought “U can’t touch this” but since it was only the top that needed work, I thought, “well maybe I should”? I mean, this is not the Antique road show is it?

I needed to refinish the top. It could have been hickory or oak, I was not really sure. I used a Dewalt Random Orbital Sander (ROS) with a VERY aggressive Bosch 40 grit disk, connected to a full blown HEPA vac. Even then, the wood was so hard I realized it would take hours and hours of sanding, in Uggs in a cold shop.

I then remembered I bought a card (cabinet) scraper and a burnisher! I heard about them from The Wood Whisperer and used his Amazon Store (you can too!) to buy them to support the show. Thanks Marc and all, even Mateo!

But, was the scraper sharp? And how to sharpen it? Although I did not have the sharpening, grinding or polishing stones, I did have the burnisher mentioned, ya! And it was not hard to get that baby lookin sharp, Like can you handle this? I feel like dancing on the table like a superstar!

Wow, when that scraper is sharp, it is nice and it moves! Like drop everything and check it out! Even then, it took quite a while as the scratches in that top were, what, Rolling In The Deep? Oddly enough they looked like someone put “Black or White” ink (mostly deep black) in the deepest parts – Old English or perhaps they were painting the town, or burning the place down?

There were small stains, large stains, other major artifacts plus the wood was so so hard. The stains were like Blood On The Dance Floor. Like, how do you get those deep scratches out, a 7″ knife?

There were artifacts that looked like they could have been from a “Fire Burning” or perhaps Dynamite, like they were trying to rock this club? I can tell you, with knee deep shavings, I was the last one standing.

It took hours of scraping, but at least that might help me be a bit more bootylicious and in better shape. I noticed it also took rhythm to get into the groove, like as in “Rhythm Is A Dancer”, I mean, you had to work it. As you know, Rhythm is a dancer, it’s a soul companion, people feel it everywhere, lift your hands and voices, free your mind and join us, you can feel it in the air, it’s a passion…

Every now and then the the whole writing table would jump forward with a Boom Boom Pow kind of sound, when the scraper would grab, and ya, it would grab like you never felt before.

But I Gotta Feeling that I will get this top right, although not sure what century that will happen!

The other way of doing this, you know, with the ROS, dust collection, ear protection, and dust mask could Make Me Want To Scream.

The wood, even still, was so hard that sharping the card scraper needed to happen about every 5 minutes! But that was easy with the burnisher. As you know, if you get dull, you have to sharpen up, like Bust A Move when the time calls for it!

Planing to Thickness

After the tops were glued up, it was a pretty simple affair bringing them to final thickness. Thanks to careful milling and a few Dominos, things were already pretty darn flat. A few passes through the planer were all that were needed to bring the tops to a final thickness of 4″. Since both top slabs are under 12″ in width, this is an operation that can be done with pretty much any planer, which I think is pretty cool. But a word to the wise: if you ever build a workbench, be prepared to ask for help. I DO NOT recommend trying to move slabs of this size by yourself. Seriously, unless you want to blow a gasket or wind up with a hernia.

Trimming to Length

Once the thickness was established, I needed to trim the rough ends of the slabs. Seems simple enough, but at 4″ thick, this operation required a little extra planning. The Benchcrafted plan mentions that they use their miter saw for this task, making a pass on one side and then flipping the slab to make a pass on the other side. That’s defintely one way to go about it, but for slabs of this size, I prefer to bring the tool to the wood. Out comes my trusty Festool TS75! Since this was a two-part cut, I wanted to make sure I had an accurate knife-line all the way around the slab. With any luck, I would be able to line up my circular saw and guide with the knife line for both cuts and end up with a nearly flat surface. The end result was almost perfect! The small bit of offset material was easily removed with a block plane and a little sanding. And before you give me crap about how it must be nice to have a tracksaw (which it is), this same operation can be done using a piece of MDF as a guide with a standard circular saw.

The Tenon

The right side of the front slab will receive an end cap as part of the vise installation, and as a result it requires a big fat honkin’ tenon. The tenon is cut using a similar technique as the previous trimming operation. The big difference is instead of cleaving off the entire end, we are setting the saw’s depth so that it leaves a centered “tongue” on the slab. Once the shoulders were established, I simply made a series of kerf cuts to remove the bulk of the waste. The tenon doesn’t run the full length of the slab, so I used a handsaw to trim a portion of the tenon away. Chisels and a rabbeting block plane did the rest of the cleanup work and finessing.

The Stopped Rabbet

The screw of the Benchcrafted tail vise needs a place to live, so the next step was to cut a huge stopped rabbet into the slab. Using a piece of scrap to help support my router, I took multiple passes with a 1/2″ spiral bit. Eventually, the colossal rabbet was revealed!

The End Cap

Next up was the end cap. The end cap came from a big old piece of 12/4 stock. Admittedly, this part gets a little tricky. But one step at a time, right? First up is the open mortise. The end cap needs to fit over the tenon we just cut into the slab and the router was the tool of choice. With no workbench to work on (part of my personal challenge to pretend I don’t already have a bench), I relied on the slabs and some clamps to keep the work secure. After a little finessing of the tenon, the end cap slid on with a few taps of the dead blow. Bada bing!

With the end cap in position, a paper template was used to locate several holes on the outside face. These holes are for the bench screw, the associated hardware, and the bolts that fasten the back of the end cap to the slab. The holes for the vise parts need to be drilled in just the right locations or the vise will not function correctly. Once I triple checked myself, had some coffee, then checked my marks again, I took the end cap over to the drill press for some fancy drillin’. The various through holes, elongated holes, and counterbores were made with a variety of forstner and brad point bits. You do have a set of each, don’t you?

The two bolts that hold the back of the end cap to the slab are secured using captured nuts. Basically, these are nuts that are inserted into carefully placed holes in the underside of the bench. If located properly (and with a little luck), the nut slides into the hole and interfaces perfectly with the bolt. Since the idea of a flat washer and a flat nut sitting against a curved surface just bugs the heck out of me, I decided to use my sweet LN mortise chisels to flatten one face of the hole. The hardware seems much happier now. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Test Run

With the end cap complete, I was able to take the tail vise for a little test spin. Even without the guide rails in place and nothing screwed down, the vise operates as smooth as silk. I guess that’s why it costs so much money! But hey, you get what you pay for!

One thing I really enjoy about doing these Guild builds is the fact that we can spend so much time on all of these little details, and the various work methods available to reach our goals. As you can see, the projects employ a healthy amount of both power tools and hand tools. We become most efficient in the shop when we stop thinking about hand and power tools, and simply start thinking about tools. Corded or not, some tools are simply better, faster, or more pleasurable to use. So I encourage you to find what you like and don’t box yourself into a category. Because ultimately, other than other woodworkers, no one gives a crap what tools you used to make your projects. All they see is the end result of your craftsmanship.

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Little did I know that one day, while channel surfing on my sweet self-installed DirecTV system, I would come across a half-hour woodworking program that would change the course of not only my career, but my life. That show was Woodworks with David Marks. Being a relatively handy guy in general, I would frequently stop to watch an episode of New Yankee Workshop in much the same way I might watch a cooking show. It’s just cool to watch someone craft something with their hands, be it food or wood. But there was something special about David’s work that resonated with me deeply. Part of the allure was that he didn’t look like your “typical” woodworker and his projects certainly didn’t look like “typical” furniture. I was immediately intrigued by his tools and techniques. And after years of watching Norm, I was amazed to learn that you can build furniture out of more than just pine or mahogany! To say Woodworks opened my eyes to a whole new world would be an understatement.

One of David’s pieces that really captured my imagination was his Bubinga Veneer Coffee Table. The design was fairly simple and the choice in materials was superb! The maple legs and aprons act as an unassuming canvas that frames the real showpiece: the figured bubinga veneer! I understood the procedures David demonstrated and even with no real furniture-making experience, I honestly felt like I could make the table if I had access to the proper tools. This table would serve as a deeply planted seed that wouldn’t germinate for another year or two.

Eventually, Nicole and I were able to buy our first home: a small fixer-upper in Temecula, CA. Project after project, my DIY skills, confidence, and interest level were growing rapidly. I even managed to accumulate a modest collection of tools, including a Craftsman tablesaw and miter saw. But before I knew it, pretty much everything was scratched off of the to-do list and our fixer-upper was fixed. By this time, my desire to fix old things was quickly morphing into an even stronger instinct to create something new. With several seasons of Woodworks under my belt, I felt confident enough to venture into building my very first project from a plan: a night stand. The rest is history and you can read more about my descent into woodworking madness here if you’re interested.

I have been fortunate in that I was able to eventually forge a friendship with my virtual mentor. During my most recent trip to Santa Rosa, David showed me where he keeps some of the old Woodworks projects. For a long-time fan like me, this was a surreal experience. We came across the coffee table from the show and I told him how much impact that little table had on my woodworking trajectory. Fortunately, we were able to work out a deal and I am now the proud owner of the Bubinga Coffee Table. The table arrived a few days ago carefully wrapped in a crate that was truly worthy of the prize nested inside. Anyone who spends even a small amount of time with David will experience his meticulous nature. Apparently that extends to his packaging too. You just can’t be too careful when shipping a finished piece of furniture and thankfully, the coffee table arrived without a scratch or dent. My step dad helped me unpack the many layers of padding and packing material and as you can see, he had way too much fun.

The table now resides in my bedroom, right next to my comic book reading chair. Yes, the table will be used to hold and display comic books. And some day, it will hold and display my son’s comic books. Truth is, I really don’t need another coffee table. But this table deserves a place of honor in my home and my “relaxation area” is perfect!

I know we all have different inspirations and reasons for getting into the craft and I’d love to hear yours. Have you ever had an opportunity to acquire a piece made by someone you admire? Or do you feel a little weird owning a piece of furniture built by another woodworker? I would bet that more than a few of you keep at least one piece of furniture that you really don’t need, just for sentimental value or because it was associated with an early influence. I’d love to hear your tale!

Corey Eriksen is a woodworking instructor at Bishop Blanchet, a small Catholic high school in Seattle. He sent me a few pictures recently showing how his class not only made charity rocking horses, but went the extra mile to make sure they went to good homes. I asked Corey to send a few more pictures and to give us a little writeup on his class and their charity efforts. Thanks to Corey and his class of talented and enthusiastic students!

Our projects are usually simple, designed to give the students experience with various aspects of woodworking, such as using different tools and following plans. Past projects have included birdhouses and keepsake boxes. This year, I wanted to try something new, and I had a plan in mind to build toys to donate to a holiday toy drive. Then I saw Marc’s announcement of the Charity Build rocking horse project, and I realized my students could contribute in more ways than one.

Every Christmas season, Blanchet’s students sponsor families in need, providing them with food and presents. I proposed to the students in my class that we build enough horses to provide one to each family with young children. My class of 12 would have to build 10 horses. To my delight, the students jumped at the idea.

The students threw themselves into this project with focused dedication. In order to make 10 horses with as little fuss as possible, I attached the patterns onto 1/4″ hardboard, and the students used these to trace out the different parts of the project. Working together, the students turned sheets of pre-laminated pine into heads, tails, and rockers. I took great pride in my students, their enthusiasm, and their charity. The end results are several beautiful rocking horses, two rocking unicorns and one rocking zebra!

Not only did they grow their woodworking skills, they also contributed to the Livestrong cause and helped ensure that 10 needy children will have a happier Christmas. Thanks, Marc, for sponsoring such a great event. I hope that the project next time will be equally appropriate and fun for my students!

From Rough to Ready

The Split-Top Roubo, as the name suggests, features a top comprised of two separate slabs. I used 8/4 stock for everything so there was quite a bit of milling to do. As you can see, I made a wee bit of sawdust. That’s about two loads from the dust collector.

The boards for the top are cut to about 4 1/4″ Wide x 96″ Long while leaving the thickness as thick as possible. Obviously the thicker the boards, the fewer we’ll need to make up the slab. I wound up needing 7 boards for the rear slab and 5 for the front. Later, I’ll have to mill up a couple more boards for the front slab’s dog hole strip and the front strip.

Alignment Help

When gluing all these boards together, it is imperative that we find some way to stop them from sliding past one another. After all, the flatter they remain during the glueup, the less flattening we’ll have to do later. You can certainly use dowels, splines or biscuits for this, but I’m opting for Dominos. Joint strength really isn’t an issue here and alignment is our only concern. And very few things will align two surfaces quite as accurately as a Domino! So I made 4 mortises per joint and slathered on the glue. I really didn’t worry about getting glue in the mortises. A small paint roller made quick work of the task.

Never Enough Clamps?

Once the glue was applied and the stack assembled, I began adding clamps every 12″ or so. The good thing about using such thick stock is that it acts somewhat like its own caul. The clamping pressure is fairly well-distributed so you don’t necessarily need an insane amount of clamps. Well, I guess that depends on your definition of “insane”.

Next step is to plane the top slabs to final thickness and then trim them to length. Stay tuned!

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The front slab of the Split-Top Roubo has a nice thick end cap that facilitates the attachment of the tail vise hardware and also stabilizes the front apron.

Option #1

The original Benchcrafted version features a beautiful massive dovetail. The dovetail is glued to the end cap and the slab tenon is secured to the end cap using bolts. The back bolt is in an elongated hole so the top can expand and contract.

A well thought out design to be sure, but there was one thing that bugged us. One of my favorite things about this bench is that both top halves can be sent through a planer for flattening. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do this not only during the initial build, but again 5-10 years down the road? Of course, if you’re handy with a jointer plane and you have an afternoon to spare, you can flatten the bench the traditional way. But again, we like options. So this was the primary concern we addressed with Option #2.

Option #2

Somehow, we needed to allow the end cap to be removable. Sending that slab through the planer with the end cap attached would result in disaster! So that means the dovetails would no longer receive any glue. No problem there since dovetails don’t necessarily need glue to perform their intended function. But we had one other obstacle to overcome, and that was the main slab tenon. In Option #1, you can’t slide the end cap off because the tenon is completely surrounded by the mortise. So a simple solution was to make a little more room in front of the tenon. We also opened up the back of the mortise so it acts a little more like a breadboard end. Removing the end cap would be as simple as removing the bolts, tapping the cap toward the back to release the dovetail, and then pulling the cap off the slab. The front slab could then be sent through the planer for cleanup.

Option #3

Aaron suggested this version as a way to really simplify things for folks who might be a little intimidated by the big honkin’ dovetails. It is every bit as strong as options 1 and 2 but instead of a dovetail, the front apron is attached to the end cap with a mortise and tenon joint. Since we want the cap to be removable, a third bolt could be added to secure the front apron completely without the aid of glue.

I should clarify that we are in no way questioning the validity of the original Benchcrafted design. But like any plan, things can be modified to suit your own needs/wants. So this is just some food for thought. I’d be curious to hear what you think about the changes and whether or not you would include them in your own version of the Split-Top Roubo. And if you’re not already a member of the Wood Whisperer Guild, now is a great time to join! Learn More!