Now that major construction is complete, time for fine details, starting with flattening the top. But first, I had to take care of some maintenance resulting from earlier rough-planing. When I planed down the leg glue-ups, I took off some good size chunks of fully-cured glue drips and squeeze-out. Those chunks bit back, taking sizable nicks out of the freshly crowned iron in my transitional plane.
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Here's the nicked iron. That'll take some work on the 80-grit sandpaper to remove.
Which reminded me, I had modified a cheap plastic-handled chisel some time ago specifically for glue removal. I don't care how much this gets beaten up.
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I hacksawed down the length of the handle to make it lie flat across a surface and rounded the corners to prevent gouging.
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Removing the dried glue from the top with the chisel. These are the seams from gluing up the six sub-assemblies.
After restoring the blade in my transitional jack, I rough-planed the top. I started by chamfering the front and back edges to prevent spelching, then took a couple passes traversing directly across the grain. I switched to several passes of diagonals, first from one side, then the other, then changed to the jointer.
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Making a diagonal pass from one side with the jointer.
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I made a series of pencil lines back and forth across the top prior to jointing down the length. They're just visible here.
I made several overlapping passes down the length of the top, eyeballing the flatness and checking for wind with aluminum angle-iron winding sticks. When the pencil lines were gone, I was done. Finally, I made one pass with the smoother. Total time: about an hour.
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Could I have gotten it flatter? Probably, but this was my first time ever doing this, so I figured it's best to quit before over-working it. If I find it's not good enough, I can take more passes.
Now for the planing stop. This is a 12"-long 2"x2" block that slides in a friction-fit through-mortise in the benchtop. Tap it from below to raise it for planing a piece pushed against it, push it back down when done. This is one of the fast and simple work-holding features of this bench.
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Working on the through-mortise.
And now a brief word on safety from the Society for the Preservation of Toes: remember that large wooden constructs are dangerously heavy!
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This lovely color on the knuckles of my toes the result of laying the bench on its back to work on the bottom side of the mortise. I tipped it back toward me, then couldn't control the load. It slipped out of my grip and the back edge landed across my toes.
Fortunately I had laid a board on the floor to provide a space to fit my fingers when righting the bench. That caught the brunt of the impact, preventing a serious crush injury. My wife asked me later if I made up any new words. I said no, I just used the ones I already knew.
Once the pain had subsided enough to continue working, I finished the bottom side. I started seeing spots as I hoisted it back upright. Won't be doing that any more!
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The planing stop in place. Getting a consistent friction-fit on a 12" length is time-consuming. Start fat and plane it lightly in sections, testing the fit repeatedly.
As a final step, I lightly chamfered all the edges of the top with a block plane. Next I'll make the leg vise.
(Continue to part 10)