As I stated in an early post, I have gotten rid of my Table Saw. I not going full neander (courtesy of Old Woodies: Neander is a euphemism for old style woodworkers, Normite describes the modern power tool enthusiast.) as I expect to intermingle power tools among hand tools. For instance, I expect to use my drill press for boring out mortises and cleaning them up with chisels and I expect to use my band saw to resaw boards and I expect to rough cut lumber with circular saw.
As I progress into using more hand tools, I have to prepare my shop. My first project is a pair of Saw Benches written up by Chris Schwarz. Here is a picture of his:
I am following his design pretty closely though small adjustments will be made for height (I’m not 7′ tall like he his, heck I’m not even 6′ tall). I’m in progress and will post pictures soon (of course, Chris talks about this being an afternoon’s project, I’m already into day 2 – my pair of excuses is that I’ve never cut mortise and tenons and I’m making 2). I’m really looking forward to these benches because right now sawing is very laborious and I feel that is due to the fact the saw is at a standard bench height vs kneeling over the board.
As instructed, I’m making mine out of cheap materials. The legs and bottom brace are from 2×3 fir (studs from the local big box store). These boards are very wet and have been challenging in doing the mortises and tenons. The bottom shelf and top stretcher will be pine. I glued up 2 1-inch thick boards to get the proper thickness on the top shelf. I have some doweling for the pins. I hope to have these done by early next week.
[...] I mentioned in my previous post about Shop Changes, I decided to build 2 saw benches. Well, my first one is [...]