flattening the bottom of the top

Yup, spent an evening after work beavering away at the bottom surface of the top now that the glue's reasonably dry. You want this sort of flat so that the attachment of the legs/stretchers is reasonably predictable. It also provides a bounty of shavings for the litterbox of our cat Spartapuss.

First with the plane designed to remove lots of material in one swoop with its heavily radiused blade (Lee Valley makes 'em). Diagonal strokes per Schwarz et. al.







...then proceed to my Jack plane, the longest one in my small harbor of bench planes

top glueup & leg dressing

after repeated checks for gaps and refitting the two sides of the top together, it finally made a strong enough fit that the boards closed up pretty well.

So now to MacBeath Hardwoods for a few more large clamps, and then a complex ordeal sorting out the glue-up dance, which amounted to playing the game of jenga underneath each beam for a couple hours, but finally it's pressed tightly and drying here:



With that done, time to concentrate on cleaning up the two legs I cut earlier from the smaller length of beam. Takes some doing but still had some of the patina from the beam's original use left over. A few framing hammer dents here, some nail holes that have stained the wood from the rust there:

edge jointing top

Now the delicate act of edge joining these two beefy beams. hoo boy. watch your toes, this is 98" x 24" x 5,1/2" of WATCH YOUR TOES AND FINGERS.

benchwork begins in earnest

I begin with milling the beam. Had 2 8' sections for the bench top and some left over to attempt to rip for a few sturdy legs. ripping by handsaw is futile at this width so I made a couple increasing depth passes using the skill saw pete "gave" me. worked okay but i hope he doesn't see this as I'm sure the motor of got fairly cooked from it all.



The Skillsaw blade does not fully reach 1/2 the depth of the material, so after flipping the beam over, I will make a matching cut and then finish off the remainder with my ryoba. not too much fuss







Next came the 8 footers. same dance with ripping the wood to width and getting rid of that crown on the edge



Now the precision step of the operation (?). Cleaning up the edges of the beams for lamination. Just don't be in too much a hurry and keep the plane blades sharp...

A HUGE beam

Been eyein' a wonderful old timber at the architectural salvage site that i pick through on my lunch hour near work most of the winter. Kept thinking it would make an old European style woodworking bench top with its heft.

Impulse and fair weather made me throw down some dosh for the sweet thing before it rotted in a pile of underachieving hippie debris. Love the bill of sale:



What kept me from an earlier rescue was mostly logistics. It's very heavy and 21 feet long.



I rented a CityCarShare truck for 90 minutes yesterday morning with a plan to break the beam down into 2 8' segments with a remainder left over for some other project. That short candle is smeared across the face of my Ryoba blade for smooth operation. thing cut though the beam in short order, leaving a few AM crustaceans picking over architectural debris incredulous.



I'm quite sore today after getting them to sanctuary here inside the pleasing compound. Rain in the forecast, so need to get them in the garage soon. They need to dry out for a while, but the plan is to have the two 8' sections laminated together for the bench top. While I was at the salvage yard, I also found these two old growth timbers on the top of the stack which could form the legs for the bench. We'll see.

A Good Day 'Round Briones Reservoir

Temps: 75degF, Wind: mild, Road: open

an excellent manual lathe craftsman