The top! Cheap construction lumber laminated with hard maple sides. Crosscutting the 5.25" top square proved a bit of a challenge. I made a rough cut with the handsaw but decided to screw on the mitre strip as shown for four runs through the table saw - top and bottom for each end. The end grain cleaned up nicely with a low angle block plane.
Tenons are cut to slide on the top. To drawbore the leg braces, I drilled the mortises through, inserted the tenons, tapped the same brad point bit to mark the tenons and then drilled the tenons 1/16" tighter than the mortise holes.
It's exciting to fit the base joints. I've been planning how to build the top, which will slide onto tenons cut into the tops of the legs. It will probably be the common setup with front vise and tail vise, just reversed so that it will fit into the place in the basement directly to the left of the fridge. I prefer the tail vise designs that use wooden guides and an inexpensive bench screw to the fancier and much more expensive steel rail setups.
The most satisfying thing a monkey can do is use his own handmade tools. And, I spent a lot of time cleaning up the first seven tenons with just a chisel. So, I made this new shoulder/chisel plane after reading about the one on garagewoodworks.com.
Last winter, a very generous friend of a friend let us haul away a truckload of old oak timbers.
The timbers came in a few lengths all over 1m and with varying conditions at the ends. Some had fancy looking old joinery that was still viable and some were decomposed.
A little TLC revealed lots of very usable oak. These will be the legs of my new workbench.
My good friends Mike & Mali and I have started making iOS apps. Here is the first one - a simple matching game showing off Mike's iconic illustrations of alphabet letters and vegetables.
