Steve and his big Scandinavian style bench. The bench is equipped with an end vise on the far end and a shoulder vise on the near right corner. It looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier, especially after a couple of Guinness's.
Galoots and their shops. Our places of refuge from the world, oases of calm and centers of creative pursuits. Or places for just farting around. I'm pretty much there for the farting around, myself. But I know Galoots with seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy. Soccer and T-ball parents who can still find time to construct a shop and bench from rough-sawn boards and learn the arcane art of hand-tool woodworking. Galoots like my buddy Steve.
Back in '97, Steve decided to build himself a big, Frank Klausz style woodworking bench. He collected a pile of thick maple slabs, borrowed my WorkMate(TM) and we got started on this project in January of 1998. At that time, Steve had an empty corner of his basement, a pile of wood, some hand tools and big dreams for his Galoot shop. Inwardly, I thought the whole thing was insanely ambitious and figured that it would take us about 5 years to get the bench finished. Steve had a different timeline in mind and he finished the bench in less than 18 months. He did this by mainly ignoring my advice and sticking to his plan. He assembled the massive base with mortise and tenon joints, cut by hand, and dovetailed the large joints for the end vise. He ended up with a great bench and went on to equip his shop with a handsome tool cabinet. I helped where I could during the bench construction and chronicled our efforts on the Old Tools list as "Steve and Tom's Excellent Adventure." I offer some selected excerpts:
" Esteemed Galoots,
Steve Reynolds went and got himself a pile of maple and we're building him a Frank Klausz style bench. This 'soft' maple of his is flint hard, real knuckle busting stuff with a fair amount of curl to the grain. So-called 'soft' maple can range from silver maple, which is white and on the soft side of the spectrum (but not very soft), to red maple and other Acer species which tend to be harder. Steve's stuff is on the hard side and has grain reversal out the wazoo. This wood is pretty but makes you pay in blood. We both have dings on our hands from whacking them into sharp, square corners. Fingerless gloves are now on the agenda. He has a nice corner of his basement for a shop. He has a good sized room, the walls are well insulated and it is dry and warm down there.
At present we are cutting mortise and tenon joints for the base. This is almost on a timber framing scale considering the size of the legs and trestle members on this beast. Our chisels and planes are deadly sharp but our saws are not, alas. The romance of hand tooling mortise and tenon joints quickly faded given that we sawed the tenons with semi-sharp backsaws, filed crosscut. As a matter of fact, we had a comical moment (only in retrospect) when we realized that the tenons were too long for our collective assortment of backsaws. We knew we were in trouble when we buried the deepest Disston we had right down to the back with still an inch to go. Oops...We would be getting through this project a lot faster if we could just resist the temptation to stand around and shave hair off of our forearms with our chisels."
We solved the problem with my old Ryoba saw and Steve went on to finish the base.
October 1998:
" Esteemed Galoots,
When last we left our intrepid duo they had glued up a trestle to Steve's honkin' big bench-to-be. Much has happened in the intervening time. Steve finished the other trestle, assembled the base and we have had a couple more Galoot Encounters of the Third Kind.
Encounter I, of the this latest series, occurred when Steve bribed me with a home-cooked meal while I was Home Alone in August. The goal of the evening (besides me pigging out on his SWMBO's excellent cooking) was to glue up the core of his benchtop... At this point, Steve had dimensioned the maple slabs for the core of the top. The top only needed to be laminated together and the top cut to length. Frank Klausz specifies 1/2" plywood splines between the pieces for the top so we routed grooves for the narrow splines with a tailed apprentice. Said apprentice left the smell of burned maple in the air and spewed dust and chips to the far corners of Steve's shop while his terrified family cowered upstairs. We dry-assembled the pieces for the top and registered them relative to each other by marking triangles. We then located the position for the threaded rod which holds the shoulder vise in place and, disassembling the top, drilled the rod hole in each piece separately.
This last step took nearly the whole evening as we discovered that a 1-2 degree error in each piece made for a slightly crooked hole through which the rod would not fit. Various methods of reaming and drilling out the holes were tried during which we got Steve's breast drill stuck in the middle hole. Picture two Galoots walking around a long slab of maple while trying to extract a vertically protruding breast drill. Rather like the sword Excalibur except that no King Arthur was available to aid in the extraction. After much swearing, helpless laughter and noisy exertion we got the breast drill free and went back to the trusty brace (of which Steve has a few). Eventually, we produced a combined hole through which we could jam the threaded rod. The rod itself proved to be an adequate reamer and we used it to finish enlarging the hole such that the rod could move somewhat freely. Live and learn...
Last week was Encounter II during which we trimmed the ends of the now-laminated benchtop to length. This we did with another portable tailed apprentice, a Rockwell (now Porter-Cable) 8 1/4" 2 hp "Builder's Saw". This wailing demon is the loudest of its breed I have ever used and was able to cut most of the way though the thickness of the top. Once again, dust and chips were spewed to the far corners of Steve's shop while his terrified family huddled upstairs. Some devices are not meant for the tender ears of a Galoot's children. We used my trusty Ryoba saw to finish the cuts seeing as how none of Steve's crosscut saws were sharp enough to tackle the job. Ahem. More Guinness was quaffed and we retired to play with some of Steve's new toys. I was poking around his cabinets looking for something-or-other and discovered a Drawer O' Block Planes. Steve has 13 block planes in there, only two of them duplicates, and with his recent joining of the MWTCA must now assume the mantle of Collector. Heh, heh."
Actually, I think we could describe Steve as a 'functional collector' since he is attracted to tools by the role they might play in outfitting his dream Galoot shop.
February, 1999:
" Esteemed Galoots,
I was over to Steve Reynold's shop last night where we made some more forward progress on his bench. I'm sorry to say that I had one of the endcap pieces hostage for far too long a period. My task was to bore out the recess for the nut to the end-vise screw. After doing the same job for the shoulder vise, I was sort of dreading the task. The main problem was drilling a 1 3/4" diameter hole part way through rock maple. My largest bit is 1 1/2" in diameter. Last time, I bored the 1 1/2" hole, used a routah to enlarge the lip of the hole and enlarged the rest of the hole the by jamming the nut down in the hole and, with gouges, cutting away any wood where the nut left paint, in effect bedding the nut in the recess. Took forever. This time I procrastinated to about an hour before I was supposed to go to Steve's and decided to try to bore the hold with a 'new' Irwin expansion bit. I had previously tried this with a Clark expansion bit with a fine lead screw. It was not successful as the bit could not draw itself in via the lead screw - there was just too much resistance. The Irwin had a medium lead screw and a slightly different configuration with the 'lips' that excavate the wood so I hoped that I might be more successful.
I clamped the endcap to my bench so I could drill horizontally and chucked the Irwin in my 14" brace. I had previously drilled a 1/16" hole for the lead screw to follow. I started drilling and, although was making somewhat more headway than with the Clark, found the progress to be excruciatingly slow. SWMBO was coming down with a cold and wanted me to go out for some supplies. While I was out, I hit three home centers looking for a larger bit for my dr*ll pr*ss. No luck.
Okay... Plan B. Plan B consisted of kneeling on the floor over the endcap and boring vertically. I put my chest on the pad of the brace and went at it. I swear that I slipped into a time warp. Days passed. The moon entered a new phase. I got a total of about 3/4" into the maple. Fortunately, the children (or Steve, for that matter) were not present to hear my running commentary. I finally put a 1.5" bit into the dr*ll pr*ss and bored out the rest of the hole. By now I was very much overdue at Steve's but he cheerfully told me to come over anyway. Steve is very optimistic as well as being cheerful. He scares me.
I got to Steve's with the gouges and the End cap From Hell. Steve had mockups of the doors to his future tool-cabinet on his shop floor with a shocking number of tools aligned on them. He will need beefy hinges to keep the doors from falling off. He is aware of this. The bench is recognizably a bench. The top is nearly complete, he only needs to finish the tool tray and flatten the whole thing. The shoulder vise is complete so our task for the evening was to work on the tail vise. Steve had already cut the enormous dovetails for the end vise and glued the body of the vise together. We finished fitting the vise nut into the recess by using the gouges. Our progress after that was to cut some slots for the runners to fit into. This was preceded by a lot of marking, measuring, and double-checking. After laying out the joints, Steve did the cutting with a miterbox and I sat there giving sage advice with a Guinness in hand. These traditional Klausz style end vises are intricate exercises in fitting. Fortunately, Steve is very patient. He scares me.
Making one of these Klausz style traditional benches is one of the largest and most complex projects that a Galoot is likely to take on. Steve started this with a reasonable assortment of hand tools and a borrowed Workmate. That and a pile of maple boards on the floor of his shop. He has bootstrapped himself up to a nearly finished top astride a finished base. Some electrons have been expended in the project thus far but Steve has put quite a lot of hand work in as well. Before too long, he will have a finished bench which is a testament to good old-fashioned persistence."
And finish the bench, he did. After completion of the bench, Steve went on to plan and complete a large standing tool cabinet to house the 'good' stuff in his collec...er, assortment of tools. Recently, we met in his shop to work on a pair of bowsaws. I snapped some pictures of Steve in the Shop of the Honkin' Big Bench.
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Steve and his big Scandinavian style bench. The bench is equipped with an end vise on the far end and a shoulder vise on the near right corner. It looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier, especially after a couple of Guinness's. |
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Some detail of the shoulder vise. Steve employed a large single dovetail for the joint where the endcap and vise arm meet. I turned the vise handle end pieces out of mahogany. |
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Steve planes an upright from his bowsaw. He's using a Millers Falls #10 (same size as a Stanley 4 1/2). He bought this plane from the Crazy Hungarian at the local flea market and beat me out by about 15 seconds. Sigh. Its a good user. |
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Steve's tool cabinet. The main feature of the piece is the pair of massive doors. The center of each door is recessed in order to hold as many tools as Steve can lay his sweaty hands on. The shallow drawers hold Steve's growing collec.. er, assortment of chisels and gouges. |
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The brace in the center of the door is a Parson's brace, made by Millers Falls. This was one of the finest braces ever made. Parson's braces are fairly rare. Steve snagged this one for a pittance at the local flea market. |
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That's a full half set of hollows and rounds. This is a so-called 'harlequin' set of matched pairs. Steve bought these from Tony Murland, a well known British tool dealer. The block plane on the next shelf down sports one of Patrick Leach's reproduction handles. I have one on my prize Stanley #19 knuckle-cap block plane and highly recommend them. |
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The corner of Steve's shop holds a very nice post drill and a Rack O' Saws. I think Steve needs more saws, myself. |
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A closer shot of Steve's post drill. I was there when he bought the thing from George Langford. This specimen has a Jacobs keyed chuck as well as a ratchet and pawl mechanism for advancing the quill. |
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Evidence of our bowsaw construction effort. The rasp is a Nicholson #49 patternmaker's rasp. |
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After a long, hard evening of telling tall tales, shaving hair off of our forearms and maybe a little woodworking, it's nice to quaff some of Ireland's finest export. |
