Yesterday was the first real day of the workbench project. I had a drawing of what I wanted, and I had all the tools I needed, so it was time to buy the materials and get started.

So I loaded up the CRX with three boxes of tools and my Workmate®, then headed down to the gpshead abode:

It was to be a day of driving around with a lot of big heavy stuff piled in old Hondas; for the next stage, we’d be using The Karen’s Civic Wagon (nostalgia for me, since my mom had one just like it.). I had decided that I was going to save a lot of time on the workbench top by purchasing a “Numerär” countertop from Ikea. This thing is basically a 1.5″ thick block top available in solid beech that weighs 70lbs. After my days of living in Europe, I’d never thought that I’d ever buy anything from Ikea again, but my only real regret about this is that Ikea didn’t bestow the countertop with the “Skänka” name, because of the obvious yet still hilarious joke.

This was already a bit of driving. I’d started out from my place in the city and gone to Menlo Park, then we had driven all the way back up to Emeryville because that was the closest Ikea that actually had the top in stock. Now we had to head all the way back down the the south bay again to go to Minton’s to pick up the lumber for the base.

My workbench base is going to be a trestle-style, made out of softwood (because the larger stock is cheaper than hardwood and you can get the good stuff in dimensioned stock).

Minton’s was a great place for this. They’re really good at cutting stuff there, so I was going to have them do that part of the work. Because I already had a drawing and a cutting list, I was able to go right to lumber selection. It didn’t take long to decide that I wanted clear fir boards because that stuff was really good-looking, and wouldn’t require a lot of finishing work. I also decided to splurge on the stretchers and get 2x8s instead of 2x4s or 2x6s (this added a considerable amount to the bill, but it also adds considerable mass, and doesn’t look bad, either). Within about 25 minutes, we had what we needed (including the fastening hardware):

You can see some of the grain on the clear fir boards on the left here (the stuff on the right is just some junk for sawhorses). There’s also a sheet of plywood in here and a spare board in case I mess up.

Then we got lunch, drove back to the ranch in Menlo Park, and unloaded. Then I decided that I was tired from all this driving around and was going to lounge around a while until I felt ready to do a little work.

When I felt a little up to doing a little something, I pulled the Workmate® out of the CRX and set up a few jigs. Then I clamped some boards in the vise and started some drilling on the legs:

This photo shows some more of that really nice grain on the clamped board.

I approached the drilling task by using a drill guide to bore a small pilot hole at the right spot, then drilled the final 3/8″ hole with my brace and an auger bit. The bit followed the pilot hole perfectly. I was a little surprised at how warm the bit got because this was “only” softwood. However, I shouldn’t have been; this is Douglas Fir, one of the heaviest softwoods, and that’s one of the reasons I chose it in the first place.

One other note here is that this is the first time I’d actually ever used a brace and auger bit in any serious manner. My Millers Falls #773 is a very effective tool. Certainly not a quick as a power drill, but great for the muscles.

After I’d drilled a few holes, I decided that it was getting late, and since I was already tired, it was time to pack it in. But first I couldn’t resist showing off my handplanes to gpshead. The #9 needs more tweaking, but the #14 jack plane takes awesome shavings, so I took some off of the sawhorse stock.

Reflecting on how thin the shavings were, gpshead decided to pull out his big fresnel lens and see how quickly they would catch on fire in the California sun. About a half a second, as it turns out…

Now it was time to pack up and go home. I loaded everything into the CRX, including the countertop (yes, it really does fit in that little car!). And then I drove home. And then the really fun part: singlehandedly unload everything, and haul it up two flights of steps to my apartment. Or as some of us would say, “just another day of work at the farm.” Except that you don’t have apartments down at the farm.

I’ll be able to resume work here. However, I’m taking today off.