A lot of things I don't get

I have to say that I am looking forward to Issue #9 of Woodworking magazine. This is not meant to be a shameless shill for the magazine (though it is excellent) but perhaps to put a little perspective in the Luddites who insist the mark of the beast is "UL Approved" and the path of the truly righteous is best trod wearing pilgrim shoes and pirate shirts.

The buzz is that the issue will address at least in part, the Hand tool vs. Machine debate as it relates to work flow, layout and all around methodology in the creation of a finished piece. I have to say for the record that I really DON'T GET how some cats get all big bodied about the supposed superiority of working exclusively with hand tools. I recently read about some guy who uses an axe instead of a chainsaw (or bucksaw, or bow saw, or brother-in-laws p.o.s. pick-up) to harvest wood and blithering on about it taking several hours work and implying that somehow made the finished piece better. All I will say about that is that here in the 21st. century to take digital photos of your folly and upload them to the masses on your blog, all the while crowing about the older, slower, simpler ways seems to be a rather untenable position from which to preach. Tools and techniques evolve, improvements are made in the finished product and time is saved. It's all about using the appropriate too for the job or failing that, making do with what is at hand. It would be ridiculous to chuck a chamfer bit into a router to break the edge of a couple of planks going into the back of a case piece and it would be equally ridiculous to field all the panels in an 800 s.f. library with a plane. I can see it now, some kook with a couple of scrap blocks padding the "C" clamps that hold a 14 x 28" mahogany panel to his bench (within plain view of his SHAPER TABLE) while going about feverishly raising the first end of his first panel (of 28 ) and thinking it might be time to hone his nickers.

I will submit that it would be time to remove the head from the knickers.

And I say this knowing that when I go to work the two large gatemouth bags that hold my router bit bags, blade wrenches and pneumatic nailer repair kits also hold a Stanley #9 1/2 block plane, a Lie Nielsen #102 low angle apron plane, a Stanley #60 1/2, a #5 1/4, a #20 compass plane, a #78 duplex filletster, a #92 rabbet and on the last job the trusty #8 above. It seemed the right tool for the job.
It is seen here jointing the edge of a rather large window jamb, an on site laminated, 11" wide hunk of clear heart redwood. Formerly a 20' 2x12, it was resawn and cold bent laminated into a 13' 2 3/8" radius with a chord length of right at 16 feet. It didn't seem likely that jointing it on the planer was going to work out too well ;-D
I mention the planes because in the course of the day several of them are always employed, day in day out.
But they're not the be all end all. Or so I think . . .

The 75 dollar bench

Here's the nearly completed bench. It still needs all the holes drilled for the dogs, planing stops and the hold fasts. I'm waiting for arrival of these items before doing so. I'm away from home house sitting for about a month so that will have to wait until I get back. It's going to be a long month.
The title of this entry is somewhat misleading. But I do only have 75 bucks into lumber for this guy. The two bench screws were about 35$ each and the end vise I got on sale for 80$. Here in the Peoples Republic of California they don't know from Southern Yellow Pine. It is not available locally and the two dealers I located online failed answer my e-mail regarding pricing and availability. The best price I could get for maple here in the west was over five bucks/b.f. and as it is winter and I'm off work for a couple more weeks I went with Doug fir. It is dirt cheap and Chris Schwarz mentioned that he always had trouble convincing folks of it's worth so that was that. Any time someone mentions that people don't want to do something the bad part of my brain just has to do it just to be contrary.

I live in a smallish town in the northern Sierra called Truckee. We're situated at about 6000 feet above sea level and 13 miles north of Lake Tahoe. I mention this because we tend to get quite a bit of snow this time of year and finding dry lumber is a bit of a task. The material for the top of this bench is Kiln Dried 2x4 from a big box store down in Reno. There was no K.D. fir available up here on the "hill" and the only available K.D. lumber available in Reno was 8' 2x4. Period. Nothing wider, nothing longer, which was probably just as well as it all had to go inside the camper shell of my pick-up.

26. That's the number of 8 foot 2x4s that will fit into a '97 Tacoma Extra cab if you stuff one end through the sliding rear window and into the passenger compartment Sanford style. It was raining in Reno and snowing by the time I got back home so lashing anything to the roof wasn't really an option since I was going all that way just to get dry lumber in the first place. Upon getting home I quickly unloaded into the garage and so began the race with humidity and my lumber stock pile. Total cost of lumber so far, 42 bucks.

Getting started . . .

The hardest part of any endeavor is often just beginning. And so it is with this blog. I'd been wanting to chronicle the building of a traditional woodworking bench along with other projects and was floundering with the beginning. I was simply at a loss as to how to avoid a Snoopy beginning like "It was a dark and stormy night." I am finally giving up and just going with it.

The bench in question is from the accompanying CD to Chris Schwarz's book "Workbenches-From Design & Theory to Construction & Use". The book has been well and thoroughly reviewed so I will not do so here except to say that it's greatest value for me was in helping me winnow through the myriad features that one might build and glean the ones best suited to my particular type of work. I heartily recommend it. The CD has additional information and an additional bench design on which my personal bench is closely based.

It seemed that when I set about to build my bench nearly every woodworking publication had recently published an article about bench building. Popular Woodworking, American Woodworker, Woodworking, Woodsmith and Fine Woodworking all had something to say. Good for me. I perused all of these articles at length but inevitably found myself back at the Schwarz book. As I said it details not just the "how" but the "why".

And now on with the build.