So anyone looking at the Irish weather forecast knows by now that the dead have risen and dogs are lying down with cats and everyone is complaining about being a little bit melty. Still though, it wasn’t so bad after sevenish, so last night I took the benchtop out of the clamps to check the glue-up.
Soooo many clamps, and still this happens:
And this, but at least I could fix this with a mallet (and remembering the greaseproof paper trick for next time):
That void aside (and thankfully it’s on the extreme far back right of the bench, so like the BNP, you can mostly ignore it, I hope), the overall glue-up wasn’t too terrible. The difference in heights was expected because of the different board sizes:
And the other glue face was fine:
So I got out the #5½ and planed the edge boards down to the bench surface on the underside. The top will need proper flattening later, but I was overheating after only two boards so I stopped there because melting would have ruined the finish on the wood. Instead I got out my widest chisel and some shoulder planes and started tidying up the leg tenons a bit more, I wasn’t happy with them still.
Also, these arrived ahead of the inset tail vice — there’s no room for a repurposed face vice and a wagon tail vice seemed a bit complicated to start with, whereas with the veritas one, you just cut a hole and drop it into it. So I had fun playing captain hook and terrifying the four-year-old.
I must drill a test hole in the bench for these at some point; someone suggested that it might be too thick for them, so I’ll need to check that. I’ll do it when I start drilling all the dog holes and the like rather than drilling a hole now before the benchtop’s even close to being done.
Need to start marking out for the leg mortices tonight if the weather holds off. Could cut one already, but I want to tidy up the other front leg tenon before marking out for that one.
Tags: bench, Woodworking
