Roubo's Slippers

When I built my Roubo workbench, I obsessed over how high to make it. Workbench height is always a compromise, because different tools and operations require different posture.

Planing is what ultimately limits the height for a general-purpose bench. It needs to be low enough to plane comfortably, or your arms wear out quickly. However, too low and you get a sore back from stooping over too much. And a good planing height is a little low for everything else.

Because everybody's built a little differently, there's no standard measured height. Instead, it's better measured in relation to your own body. Chris Schwarz likes his bench to come up to the point where his pinky  joins his hand. Roy Underhill likes it to come up just under his knuckles when he makes fists. And Mike Dunbar likes it to come up under his palm when he tips his hand up flat.

At some point you just have to pick a height and go for it. You can hedge your bets by erring on one side or the other. Keep it on the high side with the expectation that you might need to trim a bit off the ends of the legs to lower it. Keep it on the low side with the expectation that you might need to add some kind of feet or risers to raise it. I chose the latter, using the pinky measure.

After using the bench for about 6 months now, I decided it was just a bit too low. After more obsessing, I figured raising it by two 3/4" thicknesses would be better. But I wasn't totally sure. So I came up with these slip-on feet that can have loose shims added or removed for fine tuning.

I opted for the simplest possible construction here, since there's no need for any structural strength. The feet just need to keep the shims in place under the legs if the bench slides around a bit. They're simple nailed boxes, about as sophisticated as a kid's birdhouse project.

Ripping a scrap of 3/4" CDX plywood for the bottoms. A good sharp crosscut saw cuts plywood and MDF just fine.

Crosscutting the bottom to final size. Wait, is this crosscut or rip? That's not really even meaningful with plywood.

The bottom pieces slipped under the legs for testing. Time to do some obsessing and see if this is a good height.

After cutting a couple of short sides from a scrap of pine 1x4, marking out for the overlapping long sides.

Crosscutting the sides. I didn't bother shooting the endgrain, no need for that kind of precision here.

Using a bradawl to make pilot holes for the nails. Otherwise this pine would split, nailing so close to the edge.

Driving the nails on a short side.

Nailing a long side.

An alternative for making the pilot holes: Yankee drill. Using the awl can give you sore wrist, forearm, or elbow from the repetitive twisting motion.

My concrete basement floor isn't perfectly flat, making the bench wobble (it couldn't possibly be that my bench is less than perfect). In addition to the second layer of CDX inside this foot, dropping in a layer of fiberboard to shim it up.

Levering up the bench while slipping the feet in place.

Still just a tiny bit of wobble, rectified with a few playing cards slipped into the opposite corner foot. Note that the front feet are open on the front side. On the left front foot, that keeps it from interfering with the leg vise. On the right, that keeps the plane of the bench front flat. If these feet shift around, I can put a screw in through the side.

The feet in place, all shimmed up and rock solid.

Ok, so they're not as graceful as Cinderella's glass slippers. More like big ugly boondockers. But they get the job done. I'll use the bench like this for a while and see how I like it. So far it does feel more comfortable while planing.

The final height? It comes up to the point where my pinky joins my hand. Wait, you ask, wasn't that where it was before I added the feet? Yeah. It turns out you shouldn't slouch when you're measuring for bench height.

I Know Kung Fu

Having completed my Roubo workbench, I feel like Neo in The Matrix when he wakes up in the chair after downloading skills for the first time.

My download took considerably longer, and like Neo, my skills still need honing. But it's given me the confidence to take on the challenges. I throw my head back and breathe deep, curling my fists as I gather power: bring 'em on! I got yer dovetails right here, buddy!

For me, it was an ambitious undertaking. As I had hoped, it was a great skill-builder. Where before I was intimidated by complex machine setups, now I know I can just grab my hand tools and knock the work out.

It was also a successful exercise in patience, taking months to complete. But I disciplined myself to be happy with incremental progress. I enjoyed the time I could spend on it without getting greedy for more.

The greatest feeling is the sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction of knowing it was me, my skills doing all the work, not my machines. Now I feel like a real woodworker. I have a real workbench!

My only regret is that I spent 36 years being a wannabe power tool woodworker. Yes, 36 years! Starting with 8th grade shop class, where we had table saws and power jointers and planers. These were all hopelessly unobtainable for a teenager with little money. Think of all that time I could have been doing stuff if I had instead focused on hand tools. What a missed opportunity.

And now I'm that most tedious of boors, the instant Expert. You got questions? I got opinions. I'm qualified. I've completed one major project!

So I'll bask in the glow of self-satisfaction while I plot my next one. My wife keeps threatening to buy a side table for the loveseat in the living room. I've been telling her for years I can make one. That rediscovered Stickley...

The other thing that's been rolling around in my head is tool storage. I have one plan for the workshop so they'll be immediately accessible by my bench. But I also want to go portable with them. I've been trying out some till layouts for a chest.

Everything I need to go from rough-sawn boards to final furniture with fine joinery. You can see the major tool groups laid out for their stacking tills, clockwise from upper right: planes; boring and rasping; bits and shaves; chisels; saws and molding planes. Measuring and marking items spread around for the moment.

Some miscellaneous things aren't shown, like mallet and hammer. Coping and turning saw. And sharpening supplies. And work-holding devices. Hmmm, will I be able to lift this thing? Maybe I'll need two chests, stackable. 

  Books

 

My Roubo, part 16

(Go back to part 15)

I had originally said I wouldn't add the crochet. But I wanted to keep it authentic. This bench comes from a period where hand tool work was a high art. If they thought it was an essential appliance, then I wanted to give it a try.

My solution was to add a removable crochet. This wouldn't be as solid as a fixed crochet, but would allow me flexibility. I had a cutoff from the glued-up stretchers just the right size.

I formed the curves the same way as the sliding deadman.

I found the surform rasp a little better to use on the concavity.

The surform plane worked well on the convex curve.

Gotta chamfer all the edges!

Boring the hole for the post. Since the post will be fixed to the crochet for insertion into the top, this needs to be a continuous straight line for a good fit.

Trimming the post after bottoming it in the hole.

In order to get a good solid attachment to the crochet, I sawed a kerf down the post and drove in a wedge. The wedge needs to be aligned perpendicular to the grain to avoid splitting the crochet as I drive it in.

After cleaning up the end of the wedged post, I bored a cross-pin hole through the end of the bench and the post. Then I inserted a removable pin. This locks the post in place. The crochet moved out a bit as I bored the hole, leaving a small gap, so I added a layer of PSA sandpaper as a shim. That makes it draw up tight against the top when the pin is inserted.

Testing the crochet.

Under pressure from a workpiece, the crochet had too much give, so I drilled two small holes for alignment pins.

The crochet removed. You can see the sandpaper shim layer, the main post and alignment pins, and the withdrawn locking pin. I glued a square nut onto the end of the pin for easy handling and trimmed it off flush.

The alignment pins made a big difference in stiffness. Still not as solid as a couple of lag bolts, but it holds quite well. We'll see how it stands up over extended use.

Speaking of shims, I had another brainstorm. The indexing holes in the leg vise parallel guide are spaced about 3/8" apart. When something in between those points is in the vise, it suffers the same racking as a parallel clamp where the two screws are not set equally.

So I bought a deck of large flash cards at the toy stored and made a set of shims to allow fine spacing. This in turn allows fine parallel adjustment of the leg vise for maximum grip. Just like a parallel clamp standing on end.

A stack of 10 of these cards measures out at 0.14" with a dial caliper, so they average 0.014" each.

Finally! The completed bench, with leg vise, planing stop, crochet, deadman, Wonder dog, and holdfasts.

I kept a log of all the time I spent on the bench. Spread over 20 calendar weeks, it totaled 88 hours and 26 minutes. There was probably a good hour or so spent fiddling with the camera, so call it 87 hours.

And now a final treat. I made a video demonstrating the features of the bench. It's in two parts due to YouTube limitations on length. NOTE: I have seen problems with these showing up with Firefox on Ubuntu Linux, so if you don't see them below, search for them on YouTube with by clicking here.

My Roubo, part 15

(Go back to part 14)

The sliding deadman has a gentle hourglass shape. I laid this out with a bowed ruler, then cut it out by kerfing and chiseling. I have the parts for a Gramercy turning saw, but I haven't built it yet.

This is a little easier to handle than rigging up a 4'-long beam compass.

Cutting regularly-spaced kerfs to the curve, staying just above the final cut line.

Chiseling the steps. Reminds me of introductory calculus, find the area under the curve as the limit of dx approaches zero. Just need to be sure to always chisel downslope on the grain.

Fairing the curve with a convex spokeshave. This removed the saw and chisel marks, but left chatter marks.

Rasping out the chatter marks.

The scraper brought it down to final smoothness.

I chamfered the edges with the spokeshave and scraper.

Boring the holdfast holes.

And that was that! I slipped the deadman into place and the workbench was complete! Right?

But then I had a brainstorm. A removable crochet...

One of the 23 known woodworking puns:

Bench dog, large.

(Continue to part 16, the end!)

My Roubo, part 14

(Go back to part 13)

Time to cut out the sliding deadman. By now some of these steps should be pretty familiar.

Ripping to width.

Jointing the ripped edge.

Before going further, I planed the piece down to final thickness. Since I had to take off about 1/4" from each face, I tried three different planes: my transitional jack with crowned blade, a metal fore plane with slightly more aggressive crowning, and my scrub plane, with the most aggressive blade (meaning the smallest radius to the crown). Then I jointed and smoothed both faces.

After having used the transitional for heavy work before, I was surprised and pleased to find the thicker blade in the metal fore plane made faster work of it. I measured the thick shavings with a dial caliper at about 30 thousandths. The scrub made about the same progress, but with deeper, narrower cuts. This is definitely a useful experiment to try with your various planes to see which one works most efficiently for you.

Trimming to length. This needs to be a precise cut, although I still took a hair off the endgrain with the jointer.

Forming the V-groove in the bottom edge. First I cut down the center line with a tenon saw, then started cleanout with the chisel. I finished up with the shoulder plane, alternating from side to side.

Using a cutoff from the bottom rail as a reverse mullet to check the fit of the groove.

Cutting the half-lap tongue that will fit in the top track.

Cleaning up the tongue.

A little further shaving of the top edge until it slid into the top track and dropped down on the rail.

The deadman slides smoothly back and forth along the length of the rail.

Next will be final shaping.

(Continue to part 15)

My Roubo, part 13

(Go back to part 12)

I didn't have any stock wide or thick enough for the sliding deadman, but I had plenty of waste left over from the top. I glued up two panels for proper width, to be laminated for proper thickness.

Sections for the first panel. I ripped a narrower central piece so the solid widths of the other panel would overlap these, and jointed up the matching edges identified by the cabinetmaker's triangle.

The two panels glued up. The one in back is the same overall width, but I had to add extra spacers because the clamps wouldn't adjust that small. I should modify these clamp rails to handle narrower widths.

This time, I did a thorough job of wiping off the excess glue with a sponge and bucket. That made cleanup a lot easier later once the glue had dried. There were no big gobs to damage my plane iron.

With the panels clamped up, I started drilling the dog and holdfast holes. All 25 of them.

I spaced the dog holes 3" apart, accommodating the travel in the Wonder Dog at the end. I used the cylindrical surform rasp to clean them out a bit.

All these holes got to be a lot of work, so after each one I spent a few minutes sweeping up shavings to rest my arms.

Finishing the holes off from below, having just pierced the bottom side when boring from the top. I had to take off my bifocals to look upwards this close!

After completing the holes, I removed the panels from the clamps. They'd had about an hour of setup time, so the glue joints were strong enough. Then, before it completely hardened, I lightly cleaned the last bits of glue off the panels and clamps with my glue clean-up chisel. This glue drip management was a lot easier than chiseling off rock-hard bits a day later. I let the panels finish curing overnight.

First use of the new Gramercy holdfasts! I rough-planed one side of each panel, traversing almost straight across after first chamfering the edges.

A note about the Gramercy holdfasts. I had just gotten them recently, and I initially had some trouble getting them to grip well. They kept coming loose under the force of planing. A little checking online revealed some concerns about holding in such a thick top, but I followed Joel Moskowitz's instructions to rub around the shank with 120-grit sandpaper. I also noticed they still had a little oil on them from the manufacturing process, so I first wiped them down thoroughly. Cleaned and roughened, they now grip tenaciously.

The resulting rough-planed panel.

Winding sticks (aluminum angle iron) laid out to check for wind before starting the finer work.

Sighting down the length of the panel across the winding sticks. Looks good, no twist.

The final result after flattening with a try plane followed by this smoother.

The two panels laminated together. The matching faces have to be dead flat to each other.

I didn't bother cleaning up this glue, since I was going to be sawing off the waste from each side.

(Continue to part 14)