Workbench - Putting It Together

The final step before gluing the entire bench together was to prepare the front left leg to accept the leg vise.  I had purchased a wooden screw kit from Lake Erie Toolworks that I'm using for this vise, which came with a large wooden nut as seen in the picture below.  I first drilled and a 2-1/2" hole through the leg for the vise screw to pass through.  Then I cut the mortise using a miter saw followed by a chisel to clean out the waste.  This is similar to what I did when I cut the dovetails into the bench top.  I also cut a through mortise towards the bottom of this leg for the parallel guide for the vise (more on this in the next blog).

Before assembly I trimmed the joinery for the legs and bench top quite a bit.  The thought of getting everything glued up and then having the glue set before I could get the legs hammered all the way in didn't excite me.  I also drilled 3/8" holes in all the legs to accept dowels to hold the stretcher tenons good and tight.  When it came time for assembly, I made sure I had everything laid out and ready to go.  I also enlisted the help of my wonderful wife, Janel, to help get everything together as quickly as possible.  To be safe, I bought an epoxy with a 60 minute gel time to make sure I could get everything together before it hardened.  As it turned out, everything went together relatively smoothly, although I did have some trouble getting some of the oak dowels in.  Some of the holes didn't line up as well as they should and the quality of the dowels was a bit questionable. To help get the dowels in, I used a ratchet strap to pull the legs nice and tight .  We then flipped the bench on to the ground and I hammered some maple wedges into the tops of the joints to really tighten them up.  I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally have the legs in this thing and move on to another part.

Right now I'm finishing up the leg vise and will hopefully have a post on that soon.

Henry inspecting my work