A New Saw Bench

I was encouraged to blog about some of my projects.  I'm not sure how many I'll add on to my wife blog as I am not used to sharing digitally what is going on in our lives.  But I guess it could be fun.

We have been doing several projects on our new home.  Adding a wood stove, renovating an office, painting 1/2 a garage, and building a dog house.  But all those require tools.  I have purchased many tools over the years and have purchased several over the past couple years.  These tools can make life easier in the DIY world.  The right tool for the job can become very expensive though, so you have to pick and choose which tools will work for now and which tools and do multiple jobs.  Sometimes, you can build your own.  I have complete two such projects for the garage workshop.  A clamp rack and a new saw bench.

Clamp Rack

For those of you that don't know what they are, I'll give a brief overview.  You will find in woodworking that you need to clamp a lot of stuff of varying sizes and shapes.  You clamp to hold things in place while you work on them or during a glue up.  These are indispensable and a common phrase among woodworkers is, "You can never have enough clamps."  This is fine, but these clamps come in different shapes and sizes as well and the question becomes, where to store them.  You want them to be accessible as they will be used on every project, but out of the way.  This is what a clamps rack does for you.  Gives them a place to hang out and become friends.

Storage in the back.

I decided on a vertical clamp rack with similar clamps stacked up against each other.  Some people stack them side by side, but I have a small shop that doesn't have that kind of room.  I had another problem, my walls are not flat.  Because the garage is partially underground, half the walls are a concrete footing with the remaining walls sitting on top of that.  To combat this, I decided to design a clamp rack that has depth to attach to the wall, but comes out far enough that the clamps could hang freely straight down.  So this space wasn't wasted, I made the dead space into extra storage for smaller clamps.  Clamps from Futurama would be proud.

My lovely clamp rack

This is a saw bench.  Made of multiple wood types,
mainly because I used what I had.  I did have to buy
a 2x6 from the big box store, but otherwise I had
almost all the items to make this in house.

The next project I just finished is a saw bench.  This is a modified old timer woodworker tool that can be very useful.  It is high enough to sit on like a park bench, but built sturdy and tough so it can handle a lot of abuse.  You clamp items to the saw bench and work on them, like cutting a mortis and tendon joint or cutting dovetails.  It gets its name from people placing wood on top of them and then sawing through the items.  You could lay a 2x4 on top, step on it and make your cut due to its height or you could place a panel on it and saw down the middle.  Like most useful tools, more uses for them came as people realized that the big heavy bench was a good place for a lot of hand tool work.  And then when you are all done, you can sit on it and drink your cold beverage.

I got my pattern for the saw bench from a You Tube guy named Stumpy Nubs.  He did a video telling how to make it and I basically designed and made it from his description.  He didn't have any directions to buy, so I had to figure it out.  I learned a lot and did some firsts.  The bench features my first handcut dovetails.  Normally I have used a router to make my dovetails, but as large as the material I was using, my jig wouldn't work.  I used a lot of chisels on this job and learned some do's and don't from that.  I learned that most of my tools are not very sharp and that can make for an injury or mashed wood.  I learned that it can be hard to make these joints.  I made my first mortise and tenon joint and even used dowel rods to tighten it further.  I bought and then learned to use a holdfast.  And I learned that my next project will be a pond box to hold my sharpening stones so I can get those tools extra sharp.  I have also already started using it.  Hope you like it.  It is not as pretty as a nice furniture piece, but it is sturdy, sits flat and stable, and will be very useful for years to come.

This was my best of the hand cut dovetails and
a good way to join wood.
It is also a good way to realize your tools are dull.

This is not a butt joint (he he he, he said butt).
This is my first mortis and tenon joint.
The pegs can be seen on the side that pull the joint tighter.

I finished the bench with tung oil, some sanding and
another coat of tung oil.

Already putting it to work.  The blue clamps are called holdfasts.

 Mrs. DYI helped in this project a little.  Especially when it came to the glue up.  Some of these joints were hard to put together in the end.  I mainly worked on this one myself while Mrs. DYI started her own project.  A cool tool for her and a neat reimagining that I'm sure will pop up on this page soon enough.

Thanks for stopping by our neck of the DIY neighborhood. And as our favorite neighbor Mr. Rogers used to say, "You always make each day a special day for me, by just being you. There's only 1 person in this WHOLE world like you; that's you yourself, and people can like you exactly the way you are.  I'll be back next time. Bye-bye!"

Bye-bye neighbor!