Splitsville, man…
So I started this morning by finishing off the mortice for the plane stop. This did not go well. First of all, despite my dead fancy wooden carvers mallet, the old footprint half-inch chisel split right down the handle…
Only the ferrule is holding it together now 🙁 Time to go ebay a new handle. But that wasn’t the only disaster, because like an idiot, I cut the mortice from the back side, thinking the sawhorse was giving enough support to the top of the benchtop that when I broke through it’d give me a clean hole and I could then cut down from the top to complete the mortice.
Nope.
Not quite sure how to fix that. I’m thinking I could cut the mortice out of the divot itself, then glue the remaining two pieces into the benchtop fore and aft of the mortice, as it’s a clean breakout; titebond II is meant to be stronger than the wood, right? So would it hold up when I flatten the benchtop? Or am I just hosed? Anyone got any ideas?
And then, as I was feeling sorry for myself, a nice man pulled up with a flatbed truck…
Some plywood for bench hooks, a diamond plate holder, a jig for steaming some walnut for an xmas gift I want to build, and assorted other things; and also some OSB3 to line the shed the bench will be living in… and that was what I spent the rest of the day doing instead of the bench (I don’t really have the ability to store 2.4×1.2m sheets of anything here, so I halved the plywood and started lining the shed with the OSB).