Here is another edition of my Roubo saga. Been sitting on this footage for about a month now and finally got it edited and put out. In this episode I will rout the grooves for the sliding leg vise. But first I need to make sure all the joinery points on the bottom of the bench top are flat. Then it’s time to make the mother of all mortises to install the legs. Finally I give you a little tutorial on making pegs and draw boring joints.
Since this footage was shot I have finished the leg vise and you can see it if you look close in one of the opening photos. I’ll post that part soon, but really y’all are caught up to my progress now.
Oh yeah, let me know what you think of my new opening credits segment with episode specific shots.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Bob Rozaieski // Dec 9, 2009 at 8:38 am
Bench looks great Shannon! You probably mentioned it in the video and I probably just missed it, but what are the two metal channels that you routed into the bottom of the bench top for?
2 Shannon // Dec 9, 2009 at 11:56 am
Thanks Bob. You know I may not have mentioned the purpose of those grooves let alone the steel reinforcement. I have been working on this bench for so long and the design is now second nature so sometimes what is in my head as obvious is not to my audience. The groove is for a sliding leg vise. Were I just using a sliding deadman I would not reinforce it, but due to the pressures exerted by a vise I installed the steel to prevent the front edge of the bench top from bowing out. The sliding vise assembly will have a tenon at the top and a V groove at the bottom that will ride on the V shaped lower stretcher. I put the groove on both sides of the bench to allow for greater versatility if I was working from both sides of the bench simultaneously. Probably won’t happen much but it would be next to impossible to go back and rout it after the fact.
3 Torch02 // Dec 14, 2009 at 11:19 am
I love these bench assembly videos – I’m sure I’ll be coming back to them once I start on my bench. I’m just catching up on these videos, so I apologize if you covered this in an earlier video, but why did you make the tenons for the stretchers more like half-lap joints, instead of having them centered on the board? Is there a strength element in the decision?
4 Shannon // Dec 14, 2009 at 2:11 pm
There are a couple of reasons. First it was easier and faster to build them this way since I laminated two boards together. Second this allows me to build a really thick tenon while still having a thick mortise wall in the leg. So the answer is both structurally as well as ease of execution.