Next up is
the final assembly:
First I did a dry fit. I didn't have clamps big enough so I improvised:
Once all the shoulders looked nice and square I had
alot of dowels to make. I started with a bunch of ~1/2" square walnut.
I drilled all the holes for the drawbores to the same depth. I marked this depth on each dowel. The plan was to taper the dowels slightly so they fully fill the hole when driven home.
In the picture above you can see my trusty craftsman 3/8" crescent wrench. I used this to measure my dowels. Much more convenient then a caliper.
After an hour or so I had all my dowels:
I have been staring at all of these bench pieces: legs, stretchers, tops etc for months now. The final assembly went so quick I couldn't believe it was over!
Here is a picture of one one of the end assemblies with the pegs just lightly tapped in:
After I drove home the dowels for each end assembly I put in the stretchers. At this point I got some help from my kids. They put the final 8 dowels in
After cutting the dowels and flushing them with a chisel:
And here is a picture after I saw'd all the dowel ends off. Notice the little peg tops littering the floor. And if you squint you can see I drew a big "no" sign over the glue bottle. I didn't use a drop on any of the tenons
.
The final step is to mortise the tops to receive the legs. Instead of flipping the immensely heavy base onto the tops I placed the tops on the base instead. I cut some shims the same length as the tenons to make it stable:
I cut 3 of the mortises completely with a plunge router. They are huge but this went pretty quickly. The last one I didn't have enough space for the router so I had to remove some of the waste with a mortise chisel:
4 spax screws through the top stretchers and we have a bench!
Almost as soon as I finished my 4 year old princess showed up from a birthday party and she was the first to actually use the bench
She is not so good with planes yet but does a great job with a spokeshave!
I still have to make the sliding deadman, the center tray thingy, chisel out the first dog hole, and build the bottom shelf but it is functional! I have a coat of BLO/Poly/Mineral spirits drying on it now. I will do one more coat tomorrow and post some final pictures
.
Salem