I thought I'd show a picture of the latest project I have been working on in the shop with the "stay at home" situation. Granted, I started this project before the current situation but the "lockdown" had given me time to spend some more time and let me get much closer to wrapping this one up. The woodworkers bench is called a split top Roubo bench and it is based on a 1700's French Woodworker design. I modified the plans in that I wanted a full width end vice rather than a small vice on one corner but I did go with the leg vice utilizing Benchcrafted leg vice hardware. The maple and Baltic Birch sheets you see behind the bench are for a slide in cabinet that will span the lower cross pieces. This will have three drawers with dividers for chisels and other smaller woodworking hand tools and there will be a small side cabinet for a few larger tools.
The bench itself is all reclaimed wood materials except for the piece of cherry I laminated up for the face of the movable side of the end vice. The main part of the top is a piece of Eastern Hard rock Maple shuffle board top. A friend at my former church asked me if I wanted the 21' long shuffle board simply for removing it. Since it was 3" thick, 22" wide and 21' long I had to cut it into three 7' long pieces to get it down two flights of stairs but to me, it was worth the effort. The dark boards on the edge and that the middle piece is made from came from an old tannery that my friends family owned and had to tear down. The tannery was the oldest vegetable process tannery west of the Mississippi and it used fir bark for the tannin material. These boards were one of the old tanks they soaked the hides in while wooden rockers sloshed them back and forth. The middle board which is not shown is made to drop down in teh middle and sit flush or you can lift it ouot and flip it over and it extends above the work surface about 1" to serve as a back stop for planing work.The legs and cross stringers are milled down from some 80 plus year old fir beams from the same church I got the top from and they were 23' long, 13" deep and 3'+ thick. I ripped them down, laminated the parts I needed then planed or milled them to size. The sliding dead man, not shown, came from a piece of old growth fir out of an old Woolworth Department Store building that was torn down several years ago in Salem and is probably 7-80 years old as well.
The bench itself is all reclaimed wood materials except for the piece of cherry I laminated up for the face of the movable side of the end vice. The main part of the top is a piece of Eastern Hard rock Maple shuffle board top. A friend at my former church asked me if I wanted the 21' long shuffle board simply for removing it. Since it was 3" thick, 22" wide and 21' long I had to cut it into three 7' long pieces to get it down two flights of stairs but to me, it was worth the effort. The dark boards on the edge and that the middle piece is made from came from an old tannery that my friends family owned and had to tear down. The tannery was the oldest vegetable process tannery west of the Mississippi and it used fir bark for the tannin material. These boards were one of the old tanks they soaked the hides in while wooden rockers sloshed them back and forth. The middle board which is not shown is made to drop down in teh middle and sit flush or you can lift it ouot and flip it over and it extends above the work surface about 1" to serve as a back stop for planing work.The legs and cross stringers are milled down from some 80 plus year old fir beams from the same church I got the top from and they were 23' long, 13" deep and 3'+ thick. I ripped them down, laminated the parts I needed then planed or milled them to size. The sliding dead man, not shown, came from a piece of old growth fir out of an old Woolworth Department Store building that was torn down several years ago in Salem and is probably 7-80 years old as well.
. I like that vise wheel. I never saw one like that before. It looks more like something you'd find on a watertight hatch.
