Lately my son (currently 16 months old) has been enjoying spending time with me in the workshop (he says workbop). He likes to hammer on stuff and is really enjoying using a toy saw and a toy plane to imitate his dad. The problem is, my bench is too high and the 5 gallon buckets I turn over for him to work on are too ..errr… unbench-like (even though they have served as my “saw benches” for years). He needs a bench of his own that is the right height for him to use for a few years. It kills me to make something he’ll only use for a little while, so I wanted it to be utilitarian too. A pair of Saw Benches seemed the perfect fit. He could use them as his work bench and I could use them for hand-sawing.
First the research. I looked at saw benches done by Chris Schwarz at Popular Woodworking. It was nice, but, in his design the legs are always splayed out and I knew that would inevitably cause several falls for my son as he tripped over the legs. Plus it didn’t look very workbench-like from the point of view of a little guy wanting to work at his bench just like daddy. I was also concerned that the splayed legs, while not a problem for crosscuts, might get in the way for rip cuts. So I kept digging.
I ran across a straight legged design on The Village Carpenter …which then traced its roots back to Dan’s Woodshop and it was enough confirmation for me that a straight legged saw bench could be just as functional as a saw bench and had the added property of being able to look like a real workbench to a wee child.
Of course I had to make some modifications just to …errr …. make it more “mine.” I added a pair of saddle notches on the uprights so that a 3/4″ pipe clamp could be placed in it and used as a crude bench vice (a la New Fangled Bench … hmm New Fangled SawBench). And of course any use with a bench vice would need bench dogs, so I added 2 strips of 3/4″ holes for bench dogs. Given the 2″ thick top, the holes could also accommodate a holdfast or Wonder Dog. The simple shaker style bench rails were crying out to me to have a dovetail added just for fun, I’m sure they weren’t really needed.
Originally this was going to be a quick project from a couple of pine 2″x8″ s. Then I got to thinking about a stack of rough sawn 2×8 cutoffs that came from the flooring of my timber frame gazebo. Sure they were rabbeted on each side, but I could cut that off and they’d only be down to 2″x7″.
Oyyy why do I choose to make things difficult? Those red pine cut-offs are now several years old, weathered, twisted, knot laden, and blue stained. And then there is me with no thickness planer or power jointer. Out comes the #5 Jack plane that is set up more like a scrub plane. Flattening each face was not unpleasant… I had a lot of fun with it, but with all those knots, keeping each face parallel to the other was just not going to happen. And so it didn’t. This of course complicates layout a little bit, but dealing with not fully squared lumber is something I’ve gotten pretty accustomed too thanks to the timber framing project.
Here’s the Sketch-up plans and with a little luck my next post should have the finished results … or the photo of a nice bonfire. Apologies to anyone using this model for the 2×7 lumber in the design. It should be pretty easy to adapt the design for standard 2×8.
Previously
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (6) – Finishing Up
Gluing the Base
The base of this chest / play table is pretty large and I needed help getting all the pieces in place for the dry fit and the glue up. Fortunately my Father-in-law was here, so I enlisted his help. The dry fit went well, so we rehearsed who was going to be gluing [...]
- Sharpening a Card Scraper
There were several times when working on my timber frame project that I used a card scraper to clean up a bit of wood that had some nice grain or knot detail that I wanted to bring out. In the soft semi-green pine, the scraper worked pretty well without requiring me to pay a lot [...]
- Round Tenon Maker
When making a swinging gate out of natural cedar timbers for my deck, I had the need to make round tenons on the ends of some cedar branches. If I was doing a lot of them, it would have made sense to buy a dedicated round tenon cutter that is driven by a power drill. These [...]
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (5) – Pattern Cutting Feet
The four side panels of this play table chest could simply rest on the floor, but it is pretty likely that the chest would rock a bit on a slightly uneven floor. It would also look a little bit too boxy for my taste. So I planned to trim away sections of each panel to [...]
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (4) – Dados
With the dovetails now cut and dryfit, it is time to create the dado (a groove) in the side panels that will hold the floor of the chest in place. By planning for the location of the dado to terminate in a tail, I only have to create stopped dados in the tails, so only on [...]
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (3) – Dovetails
The base of the chest will be held together with through dovetails (meaning the end grain of the tails will show). I like the alternating look of the endgrain and facegrain combinations. I have to admit that I am not an outstanding dovetailer …. some day I hope to be, but I’m not there yet..not [...]
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (2)
So from my drawing of the Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table I determined how much wood I would need and returned from the home center with a decent selection of white pine.
The table sides are all panels 18″ high, so I created them by joining two 1″ x10″s By the time I jointed [...]
- Tongue & Groove Planes : Match Planes
Tongue and Groove is a method of joining boards that predates modern wood glue, biscuits and doweling jigs. I’ve seen Norm Abrams demonstrate how he creates tongue & groove using a table saw with a dado set installed, and I’ve seen others use a router table with a tongue and groove pair of router bits [...]
- Coffee Table / Chest / Play Table (1) Plan
I was at a high-end children’s toy store the other day with my son (1 yr old) and watched his eyes light up over a table full of Brio trains on a play table. As I watched how he used the table to play I noticed that the raised edge of the table kept the [...]
- Dutch Doors from Pine Six Panel Doors
I have young a chocolate Lab that often need to be confined to one room or another and I heat my home with a propane stove so that requires that door be open to allow the heat to flow throughout the house. For a while we used baby gates to restrict the dog to one [...]
- New WorkBench
I like simple things tools that can be used for multiple purposes. I am not one that likes to fall into the pit of having every specialized tool ever created. That just gets way too expensive.
I have been gradually modifying a simple bench that I have been using for years. It works pretty well but [...]
- Windproof Dock Bench (outdoor bench)
It is said often enough that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” and I believe that is true. I am also a believer that Thriftiness is the Father of Invention. This dock bench I made is a perfect example. …
- Cordwood Infill is an interesting option
I found this video today showing how cordwood (predominantly old cedar logs) can be used to create an infill wall between posts on a timber frame.Pictures from the cordwood workshop can be found… here.
I wish there were more how-to’s described in the blog. But it was interesting to see another option.
There is an interesting [...]
- Rustic Wooden Deck Railing
The deck on our log home overlooks the lake. It needed a railing for safety but we didn’t want a railing that would block our view. So we decided to use stainless steel cable railing, but needed the posts to fit the style of our log home.
The forest around our home is primarily [...]
- Door with Wooden Hinges
I found this great old door at the local architectural salvage shop. It was missing the glass in the windows, but it appealed to me because it used through mortises and wedge tenons. It also had working latch hardware and was only missing the handle. I found a nice brass handle at [...]
- Making Wooden Bolts
To make wooden bolts to hold the screens on the gazebo, I used 3/4″ dowel and used a wood threader to cut the threads on the dowel and a matching tap to cut the threads in the gazebo and the nut.
The wood threader is a box with a hole for the dowel and a cutter [...]
- Screens with Wood Frames
To keep the Gazebo bug free, I needed to put some screens up. We get a lot of wind here at the edge of the lake so I needed them to be fairly strong and secure. I made the screen frames out of 1″x2″.
The largest openings are three window panes wide so these screens [...]
- Tools of the Timber Framing Shop
This is an interesting example of tools used in a timber framing shop. In my opinion most of these tools are not needed for amateur timber framers…only for people who make a living out of it, or are working on a large scale production.
Either way, it is neat to see the tools [...]
- Timber Framing Workshop – learn timberframing
This timber frame workshop (to teach timber framing) was taught right in my town. Unfortunately it took place a few years before I got bitten by the timber framing bug.
This was a bit of fun to watch.
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