Reloading Bench Build

[JohnnyEgo]

Time to bash some through mortises. I pre-drilled these to remove the bulk of the waste.








I borrowed a method from Paul Sellers that I quite like. Cut an extra tenon in a piece of scrap to use as a chisel guide.


Squared up the corners enough to get the big new Narex in there.




Flipped it and did the other side. This gave me some reasonably clean mortises with straight walls, cut exactly to the width of my tenons.

[JohnnyEgo]

Did a quick dry-assembly to check tenon fit. Man I've cut a lot of mortises and tenons on this.





Starting to look good. Almost good enough to leave in place and wish I were done. But the show must go on. Time to give the feet a little bit of shape.
Picked a random forstner bit that looked good in terms of size. Cut some holes in the base of the leg.


Over to the bandsaw. I planned to cut a bit of an ogive shape to it, but I didn't cut it very deep and I am not married to it. Might sand that part out.




I've drawn about 27 curves on the leg piece. Took it over to the bandsaw to see which one might look half decent.




Little clean up on the spindle sander.


Use it as a template for the rest of them.


Reasonably similar on all four sides.

[Oscar77]

Very impressive!
When do you take orders?

[Oscar77]

Sorry double tap.

[JohnnyEgo]

Work got pretty busy, so I ended up putting this one to the side for a few weeks. Decided to knock out something I thought would take 15 minutes, that ended up taking two hours as a result of me not paying good attention.

I decided the legs would be more rigid and look a little better with cross braces, but I didn't want to compromise the legs by bashing another set of mortises in them, so I decided to use my Festool Domino and carve a couple of quick mortises for floating tenons.


The mortises went in really quick. 10 minutes tops. Then I went to assemble everything, and not one of them lined up with the other. I was moving so fast I didn't verify that the height adjustment was locked all the way down on the Domino, and it drifted with every mortise. The ones with the most drift had up to 4mm of difference between them, and no two mortises varied by the same amounts.


I recut the brace pieces, then measured where each hole needed to be with a caliper, and marked it on the piece.


Then I dialed in the fine adjustment to the Domino fence with a feeler gauge, to within about 5 hundredths of an inch. I had to do this eight times, all because I tried to do something quick instead of making sure I did it right.


But I got close enough eventually.




Another opportunity to dry-fit everything and see where I am at:





The part that comes next is the most tedious part for me, which is all the adjusting and fitting before I can glue it up and move on to sand and stain. It's probably only a couple of hours of work, but I just don't like doing it, so I tend to put it off. But hoping I can find the motivation to put some work into it over the 4th of July.

[JohnnyEgo]

Been a little while between scout camps, family vacations, and work. Finally found some time to get back to this thing.

Doug Fir is a splintery mess to work with. I wanted to ease all the corners on the outside of the bench, mostly to keep them from getting dinged up. Thought about a simple roundover, but remembered I had a beading bit from my last project that I liked, so figured I'd give it a go.





Liked the way it looked well enough that I decided to do the rails as well:





Figured I'd do a little epoxy testing on the back side of the benchtop. I normally use System 3 T-88. It's pretty durable and hard without being brittle when fully cured, but it takes a couple days for it to cure. Decided to try Quick Cure 15, which is more on the adhesive side then the fill side. But I liked the idea of a faster cure for multiple deep layers.







This stuff is not the worst thing I've ever smelled, but it is the most uniquely bad smelling product I have encountered. It is weird and bad in a way that challenges my mastery of the English language to describe it. The closest I can come is metaphor; it reeks like I imagine the intestinal track of a small marsupial that was hit by a truck and thrown to the side of the road to bake in the sun for approximately three days.
On the plus side, the smell did not linger after about an hour. We will see if it was worth the assault on my senses.

While the epoxy was curing, I did a dry fit of the legs and adjusted the mortises to be a little looser. Tension will be provided by the assembly wedges, and I need the rails to slide in and out without scraping off the finish when I am done.

[Gman]

The thought of moving that thing makes my back hurt.

Nice work. It should hold up.

[BladesNBarrels]

Wow, furniture grade reloading bench.
I can just see it now ...
Don't put that ammo can on the bench, it will scratch the finish!

Great looking project

[bradbn4]

I could see that bench with just a dimensional change in the top to make a wonderful kitchen / dining room / buffet style table.

[JohnnyEgo]

A workbench top should only look pristine the day you put it in place. After that, it should pick up the scars and character of use. The top finish will just be Watco, so if it gets too dented, scratched, or stained for my liking, I will just hit it with a plane and wipe on another coat.

All the furniture I have built gets abused by a kid with a hoverboard and a wife who believes every flat surface is an acceptable place to put a drink, so I have developed a high tolerance for scratches and wear!