Autumn AS 54 (2020) – Page 3

Known World Spotlight

Log Workbench

By Baron John Biggeheved, Kingdom Of Atlantia

I was bemoaning the lack of a woodworking bench and indoor workspace to my friend Sadb last month. She suggested that I use some of the various logs I have laying around to make an outdoor workbench with some mass to it that won’t wobble or lean over when I am pushing a plane across long oak boards. I thought it was a grand idea, so I set about doing that.

I had a large Norway maple log and some chestnut oak around. I decided to use those to make the bench. The maple makes up the table and the oak is the legs.

I split the maple roughly in half and made notches with round mortises (1-1/2”) to take the legs. But, I did two of the legs at a bad angle and had to plug and re-drill the mortises at a better angle.

Plugging the bad mortises.

Chiseling off the plug.

I took some oak splits from a previous project and cut them into some stout legs. The maple top weighs quite a bit, at least 200 lbs. That should resist kicking over when I push on it!

Using a draw knife and chisel, I carved the ends into round tenons (1-1/2”) four inches long, to fit the table mortices tightly. I had to use the chisel during fit up of one of the legs, since it didn’t quite fit the notch.

I glued the legs into place and let it dry for a week in the cool weather. Then, I flipped the table upright. That was no easy effort!

I used a boat maker’s adze to remove a high spot. The axe for the rest.

I set it on some concrete pavers to stop it from sinking into the lawn. Then I cut the feet square with a saw.

I used a level to find the lowest corner of the surface and drew some lines to guide me.

I used an axe to hew notches into the surface for rough material removal.

I used the axe and chisel to remove the joggles.

I continued notching and joggling until roughly flat.

Then, I leaned over to the left and swung the axe sideways to hew the surface roughly flat. The table is too heavy to easily flip on it’s side, which would have been better for that stage of hewing.

I have a lot to plane off. I don’t have a scrub plane or a large jack plane, just this regular smoothing plane.

Once it was nearly flat I started using the plane to smooth the surface flatter. I learned a bit about how the grain can make the plane “chatter” as it tries to dig into the rising grain. I watched a video by Paul Sellers that explained planes and what was going on there. Quite helpful.