The Brothers Abraham have announced – finally – the second French Oak Roubo project Nov. 8-14, 2015, in Georgia. Check out the announcement here.
If you missed out on the one last year and you want an awesome French bench, don’t miss this one. Eventually all our backs will give out.
The event will be in the same place with the same assistants (me, included) and the same incredible machinery. Registration opens Sept. 2, 2014.
— Christopher Schwarz
I have concluded that the surface-mounted tee-nuts (item 94122A200 from McMaster-Carr) are difficult to break, but they do break at the collar if you tighten their mating bolts too much.
So I removed these 14 tee-nuts from my knockdown Nicholson bench. When it comes to a workbench, nothing should be light- or medium-duty. I replaced them with an old standby for me: the six-prong steel tee-nut for wood, also from McMaster-Carr (90975A163).
These are less expensive – $13.72 for a pack of 50 – and can be tightened with prejudice. You’ll crush the wood before you strip or break these tee-nuts. The downside? They will sometimes fall out when your parts are disassembled.
And here ends the great surface-mounted tee-nut experiment of 2014.
Tomorrow I’ll finish up this workbench – flatten the benchtop and install the crochet. I’ll also shoot a video of how the bench knocks down for travel. I am pleased with the way it goes together.
Then I’ll get back on a pair of Roorkee chair commissions.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here’s the good news: The bench is assembled and works well. I’ll explain the construction details in the coming days.
And the bad: I destroyed one of the knockdown fasteners tonight. I tightened one of the 3/8” hex-head bolts that fastens the top, and the head of the bolt began to spin freely. Nuts on the tee-nut. The collar of the tee-nut had ripped free from its mounting plate. The broken metal looks porous and weak. I am not happy.
I am going to torture-test a few of these tee-nut fasteners from McMaster-Carr and see if they all break or if that one is an outlier.
Stay tuned.
— Christopher Schwarz
I had only 90 minutes in the shop today as we spent most of our daylight getting my daughter packed for college and taking her out for a rib dinner.
But during those 90 minutes I assembled the ends and added the stretchers. Everything went swimmingly until I fit the final stretcher. I planed the stretcher’s edge a stroke too many and so that one lap joint isn’t museum-quality.
However, the joint is at the back of the bench and by the floor, so I guess I have more luck than brains today.
Tomorrow it’s off to college, and I’ll brood about that joint’s gap all the way home.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. “The Naked Woodworker” will be live in the store tomorrow evening.
The only thing difficult about building this workbench in two days is not building the whole thing in only one day.
I had only about four or five hours of shop time today because we’re packing up our oldest daughter to head off to college on Monday. Despite this, and going to three record stores and a pizza dinner (A Tavola, my favorite), I had to restrain myself from just building the whole workbench start to finish today.
This morning I broke down all the stock with a circular saw, jointed all the boards’ edges with a jointer plane and glued up the top. Then I ate a jelly doughnut.
I clipped the corners of the front and back aprons with a handsaw and then glued a 1×10 spacer to the inside of each apron. This spacer, which is an idea I swiped directly from “The Naked Woodworker,” is one of Mike Siemsen’s moments of pure genius on the DVD. The spacers add rigidity and set the location of the legs.
Then I removed the machine marks from the legs and drilled all the holes for the knockdown hardware. The surface-mounted tee-nuts are a snap to install. They press into a 31/64” pilot hole; prongs stop them from rotating. Then No. 6 x 1-1/4” screws make sure the tee-nuts never fall out when the wood shrinks. I was impressed by how easy these metal bits were to install.
And when I cinched up the legs to the aprons with 3/8” x 3” hex-head bolts and 3/8” x 1” washers, the assemblies were rock solid.
Note that the order of assembly here doesn’t appear logical at first. But I have a good reason for it. More on that tomorrow.
— Christopher Schwarz
