Popular Woodworking Magazine

The BigWoodVise.com web site says that ordering is temporarily closed. I chatted via e-mail with Joe Comunale at Big Wood Vise to get the story.

Here's the good news: It's only a temporary thing.

Comunale, who works in the automotive industry, said his day job kicked into high gear after some layoffs. As a result, he's been traveling a lot on short notice and hasn't been home to make the ash vise screws, which won a Best New Tool award from us in 2009 and was featured on the LVL Workbench shown above.

He said things should return to normal in a few months. In the meantime, he decided to close ordering so he could fill his existing orders before taking on new business. If you have a vise screw on order, he's working on it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several readers have asked about the sawhorses that my new benchtop is temporarily sitting on. We've had two pairs of these in the shop for about 14 years and featured them in a one-page article in the March 1997 issue of Popular Woodworking.

I scanned the page and you can download a pdf of the article here.

sawhorses.pdf (1.14 MB)

The sawhorses are quite handy. In their short form, they are 21" high, and are excellent for laying out cuts on rough lumber. We also assemble cabinets on them. They are a little high (for me) for handsawing. I want to lop 2" off the legs. That would be about right.

When you put the risers on them, they are 30"-high – just right for gluing up panels. We'll also put a door on top of them and use that as an assembly table or – in a pinch – as a dining table for a staff event.

There are a million plans out there for sawhorses. Here is #1,000,001.

— Christopher Schwarz

All week I've been itching to saw these joints that connect the legs to the benchtop. I've never cut a 5"-deep dovetail joint in a 6x6, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

It was easy going until my enormous saw suddenly stopped cutting. Had the flesh-detecting technology in my tenon saw kicked in? (Ye Olde Saw Astyntan?) But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Let's back up to Tuesday when I was laying out these joints. I spent a long time staring at the original plate from Roubo's "L'Art du Menuisier," and it wasn't making sense to me. Robert Lang and I tried sketching the joint (electronically and on paper) to reconcile the odd perspective of the joint (I believe it's supposed to be in parallel projection instead of in perspective, but even that doesn't really explain it).

Oh, and there was the fact that the original text's dimensions don't really jibe with the drawings.

So I set forth to create a joint that resembled the drawings of workbenches shown throughout the four volumes of Roubo – and that obeyed some of the basic rules of wood-to-wood joinery set down by Joesph Moxon. And it would split my top like a muffin.

The first question was proportioning the thickness of the sliding dovetail and the tenon. These legs are finishing out a little bigger than 5" x 5". So I went for a 1-1/2"-thick dovetail, a 1-1/2" thick tenon and 1-1/2" space between the two. The remainder (a bit more than 1/2") was the shoulder at the back.

About that angle on the dovetail. It looks a lot steeper than is typical in a drawer or carcase. Roy Underhill suggested in "The Woodwright's Shop" to use a dovetail that has a slope of 2-1/2" to 1" when he built his bench with a rising dovetail.

That sloped looked too shallow. After fussing around, we settled on a slope that was 1-3/4" to 1". That is one steep slope (about 30°), but it looks right. So be it.

I laid out the joints last night before I left work and started in on the sawing this morning with a honking enormous 11-point tenon saw that's 16" long.

I needed a bigger saw. I couldn't reach the baseline because the brass back hit the top of the leg. That was a new sensation.

So I got out my full-size ripsaw. And that's when the fun began. Even with the big saw, it took some time to rip those cheeks. I could have written a couple blog entries while sawing one joint. But it's going well.

Soon I'll get to make the female part of the joint and give my mortise chisel and brace a workout.

— Christopher Schwarz

I follow a lot of woodworking blogs and forums, but I'm more interested in getting the information and getting back to the shop than I am in staring at a computer screen until my eyeballs dry up and fall into my lap.

And that's why I have become a huge fan of the "Spoken Wood Podcast," the mastermind of Matt "The Podfather" Vanderlist. This free service gathers together the best blog entries from the Internet and has the author (or Matt) read them in a radio-show format. You can listen to them at your desk, or you can do what I do: Subscribe to the feed on iTunes and get them loaded onto your iPod and listen to them on the way to work.

Already I've been exposed to some good bloggers I didn't know about before, and I have enjoyed the 23 podcasts Matt has posted so far. To show how much I like the "Spoken Wood Podcast," I've even stepped up my game and have recorded my first submission.

Like anything new, it was fun making the jig you need to record a podcast. Basically I needed a wire hanger and some of my wife's pantyhose. (It's funny. She doesn't even roll her eyes anymore at these requests.) Using these two household items I built a screen for the microphone to stop the "plosives" from ruining the podcast (plosives are the hard "p" sound that makes a hard pop on a recording).

In any case, look for more submissions from me (and perhaps the rest of the staff). To learn more about the "Spoken Wood Podcast," you can subscribe to it through iTunes or listen in at Matt's Basement Workshop.

— Christopher Schwarz

This October, Woodworking in America will be held in our backyard here in Cincinnati from Oct. 1-3. Registration will open in early May, and we'll start telling you all about the instructors and 80 sessions as soon as we get all the contracts signed.

But there is one aspect of planning this conference that I could use your help with. For this conference, we're planning some extra evening events. And I'd like some advice from you about which ones you think are most interesting. Read these short descriptions then click on the ones you like the best using the polling widget below.

Thanks in advance for your help.

'Toolmakers' Dinner' at the Popular Woodworking Magazine shop
When: The Thursday evening before Woodworking in America
Where: Our offices and workshop in suburban Cincinnati
Details: A lot of toolmakers will be unveiling new products at this conference, so we thought it would be a fun evening to invite all the toolmakers to a dinner at our headquarters plus as many attendees as we could fit. We'd provide dinner that would give you a taste of local food (LaRosa's pizza, Skyline chili, Graeter's ice cream), plus a few local malted beverages for you to try. You'd get to tour the shop, see the newest tools before everyone else and get to chat up the toolmakers.

'The Feast of Andre Roubo' with Roy Underhill and Don Williams
When: Saturday evening
Where: A restaurant near the conference
Details: Don Williams and a team of scholars are in the middle of an historic task: translating A.J. Roubo's 18th-century masterwork "L’Art du Menuisier." Williams will present – for the first time in public – some of the very cool things he's learned about early workshop practice during this project. (And if you saw Williams at the conference last year, you know he's an amazing speaker.) Also, Roy Underhill – who reads Roubo in the original French – will share some of the fascinating details he has unearthed about the man.

'Covington Pub Crawl' with the Popular Woodworking Magazine Editors
When: Friday evening (after the keynote dinner)
Where: Covington's Main Strasse
Details: Find out just how well Megan Fitzpatrick holds her liquor (here's a tip: she's tipsy when she starts using big words in a Southern accent). Our editors lead you on a trip down Covington's Main Strasse, a nicely restored 19th-century street just a couple block from the conference. Chat woodworking as you sample beers from some of our favorite German beer gardens and the Cock & Bull English pub (which has the best fish and chips in town). There's no formal program – just a casual evening with a bunch of fellow woodworkers.

'Make this Tool, Please' – Lunch with Manufacturers
When: Saturday at noon
Where: a room at the conference center
Details: One of the biggest frustrations many woodworkers have is that many tools they want are not made anymore. Who makes a decent folding rule anymore? At this special lunch, you can bring your wish list of tools, which we'll present to many of the leading hand-tool manufacturers around today. They'll let you know why they tool isn't being made (maybe they don't think there is a market, or materials are too expensive, or they never thought of it). And perhaps – just perhaps – you'll inspire them to make the tool of your dreams.

'Woodworking Night at Molly Malone's'
When: Saturday evening
Where: Molly Malone's Irish pub, a block from the conference
Details: We take over a floor of Molly Malone's, an Irish pub and restaurant that's a short walk from the conference. In addition to hanging out with the editors, toolmakers and other attendees, we'll arrange for some traditional woodworking music – yes, you guessed it – musical saws.

'White Water Shaker Village' a Personalized Tour
When: Sunday morning
Where: White Water Shaker Village (bus transportation provided)
During the last year, Popular Woodworking Magazine has become involved with the restoration efforts at the White Water Shaker Village, a beautiful group of original buildings still in their original setting. The village isn't open to the public, but we have arranged to get you special access to the village with guides who are restoring the village's Meeting House. Get a close look at Shaker craftsmanship – from the toolmarks to the cut nails. See some of the original furniture pieces in the collection, and get a privileged look at this amazingly untouched gem.

— Christopher Schwarz

From outside the confines of our shop, the fact that I'm building another workbench might be interpreted as a cry for psychological help. After all, I already have my fair share of workbenches.

But there are some good reasons that I'd like to share with you. And believe me when I say that the problem here isn't me, it's you.

1. "Schwarz, your bench is too large." One of the biggest complaints I get from readers is that there is no way they could fit an 8'-long Roubo-style workbench into their 6'-wide shop. Or they have to have the bench in a public space and can't have some ugly construction-lumber thing where the guests can see it. This bench is an attempt to build a smaller, apartment-sized bench that will still do full-size work and looks nice enough for a public space.

2. "Dude, I don't have power tools." Another criticism: The benches I've built have used a combination of power and hand tools. What about the people who work entirely by hand? This bench is an attempt to document the hand process (I used a machine to deal with one nasty part of the top that I should have asked the sawyer to deal with).

3. "I need a place to put my tools." This bench will have that. Stay tuned.

4. "What about other bench designs out there, such as John White's "'Newfangled Workbench?'" This bench won't address that question, but a book I'm working on now will. Yes, you read that right, a new workbench book.

This book will be a companion to the book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." The tentative title of the new book is "The Workbench Design Book." It will contain complete plans for a bunch of workbenches we've published in the past with some updated information and new chapters.

We'll have chapters that take about 20 common workbench designs (from the "Newfangled Workbench" to Frank Klausz's workbench) and explain the pros and cons of each design (as I see it). I'm also going to re-draw these classic bench forms (blasphemer!) to show how they can be modified to be more effective.

And we'll have a chapter on how to make your workbench knock down and an updated chapter on workholding – there have been a lot of new vises that have hit the market since 2007.

The book will be published later in 2010. More details to follow.

We're also making a DVD that will document the construction of this old-school Roubo bench. Glen Huey has filmed every step of the process (except when I used the band saw. I still feel dirty about that).

As of today, the top of my old-school Roubo workbench is complete, and I am itching to get started on the legs. These will be joined to the top with a sliding dovetail and tenon, which is going to be a lot of fun to cut, especially on this grand scale.

But before I get into that joinery, I wanted to give you a quick video tour of the top so you can see how the epoxy looks and the workholding I've installed so far. Take a look.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I am deep into a sawcut, you could walk into the shop totally naked, on fire and covered with leprous monkeys, and I probably wouldn't notice.

Accurate sawing is tantric. It's a rhythm. It is meditation.

Today I was sawing the legs to length for this Roubo workbench and I was surrounded by mahem. We had a photographer in the shop shooting photos. All the overhead lights were out and there were wild flashes and beeps every minute or so. We had a guest in the shop learning woodworking. Router. Circ saw. Benchtop table saw. Jigsaw. Animated conversation. And we're trying to close the June 2010 issue of the magazine and there is a lot of torn hair on the floor.

I finished cutting a 5" x 5" leg to 33" with a handsaw. I split the line on all four faces. I was feeling no pain, and I was hearing the sound of one hand clapping. But then I heard this:

"What are you doing working so hard?"

I looked over at our guest, who was learning all the hand-held power tools today. I opened my mouth to explain, and then I knew what it must feel like to wear a saffron robe and live in a cave without speaking for a decade. I couldn't explain it.

But for you, dear reader, I can explain a couple things.

1. My block plane was not cleaved in thrain by epoxy yesterday. That staged photo was my sick sense of humor leaching through my training as a journalist. I'd apologize for the misunderstanding, but we Midwesterners apologize for anything at the drop of a hat. So it would be meaningless.

2. Here's how to saw a 6x6. Start sawing on a corner as per usual. Immediately lay down the saw to cut at a low angle across the uppermost face. Saw until you have traversed the face. Rotate the stock 90° away from you. Put the saw in the kerf and advance on the face that is now uppermost. After a few strokes, lay down the saw again and traverse the line facing up. A low sawing angle is less aggressive, but it is more accurate.

Flip the work 90° away from you again. Do the same routine. Start at the corner. Lay down the saw. Traverse the face. When you finish that face, move the saw to 45° and saw like crazy. Throw the handle like you would a baseball pitch. Don't use much downward pressure. Let the tool do the work.

When you have sawn from corner to corner, flip the leg 90° away from you one last time. Connect the saw kerfs by laying down the saw. Then return to 45° and finish the cut.

If you take your time, I think you'll find this technique crazily accurate and weirdly fast.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several weeks ago I was planing a piece of palm when my hand slipped, and a deep sliver of the nasty grass dove into the middle finger of my left hand.

I dug out as much of the splinter as I could. But now almost six weeks later, the foreign object (as my doctor calls it) is deep inside my soft tissue. I can wait things out, or I can see a hand surgeon (I'm a good waiter).

Wood can be nasty stuff. Rosewoods make my tongue swell up like a Ballpark Frank. Some species (redwood, especially) sting like crazy when I get a splinter. And spalted stuff can kill you dead.

But aren't you worried about what wood can do to your tools?

On Wednesday I was slathering epoxy into the cracks of my workbench top when Megan Fitzpatrick asked me if I was worried about what the epoxy would do to the blades of my handplanes.

"I don't really give a weevil's (expletive deleted)," I replied.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I know how to sharpen."

The way I see it, unless the material I'm working is going to split my tool in half, I'll plane it. Laminated veneer lumber? Plywood? MDF? OSB? Epoxy? Plastic resin glue? Yup, I've planed them all. Here's why: It's easier to sharpen a handplane blade than it is to sharpen the blades in my electric jointer or planer. So I think a handplane is a great tool for dealing with engineered material. This is wacky chat, I know.

I too was afraid of planing odd stuff until one day in the late 1990s. We were training our fellow publishing employees in basic woodworking techniques, and each student was building a little project with our help.

We let the students pick the wood for their project, and half of the women in the class picked purpleheart. Purpleheart, I discovered, is not a wood. It's a mineral. After two swipes, my block plane began to dull. I had to hone my block plane a lot that week, but we made it through the class.

After that experience, I stopped worrying about what I was planing and focused on becoming a faster and better sharpener. The way I see things, a dull blade is a good thing because it means two things. 1. You are working the wood and not just fondling the forgings. 2. You get to sharpen it, which makes you a better sharpener.

And now back to scraping epoxy (which cuts a lot like maple).

— Christopher Schwarz

I went looking during lunchtime for stuff to make my epoxy black. I struck out trying to find lamp black and black food coloring in our neighborhood. I guess our neighborhood just isn't chi-chi enough to support people who make their own tires or bake high-end cakes.

However, at our local art supply store, I found Gamblin "Mars Black" powder, a synthetic black iron oxide used to color both paint and construction materials. And I found some India ink.

I mixed my epoxy product from Advanced Repair Technology, which was recommended by several readers who restore rotted wood (this is the stuff they use at Colonial Williamsburg). It is structural and has a 30-45 minute open time.

Then I colored it. I started with one drop of India ink. Then two. Then three. It stopped getting blacker after two drops. It looked good, but the epoxy retained some of its yellowness and translucence.

Then I sprinkled a wee bit of the "Mars Black" on a second glop of epoxy. It instantly turned jet, tar, coal, pit-of-Kurt-Cobain's-soul black. And it was dark, too.

I went with the "Mars Black."

I forced the epoxy into the cracks with my putty knife. It wasn't difficult at all. The stuff is just a little thinner than peanut butter. Then I scraped off the excess. Now I have to wait for 24 hours. Then I'll finish planing the top and see what it looks like.

— Christopher Schwarz

On one of my early workbenches (the $175 Workbench), a split opened at one end of its benchtop a couple weeks after assembly. It was about 1/8" wide and a few inches long, but it might as well have cleaved the top in twain.

Everyone in the shop gave me a good mock – it was my first benchtop using Southern yellow pine. And I wanted to see if epoxy could – as my grandfather claimed – fix anything except overcooked swordfish.

So I filled the split with epoxy. The adhesive shrank out a bit. Then I filled it some more. That was 10 years ago, and the repair is still as flush and sound as the day I made it.

Today I face some bigger splits in this cherry benchtop, so my strategy is different. I cleaned out the two large splits with a putty knife and then faired the walls with a thin paring chisel. Then I glued in tapered wedges that I scavenged from some offcuts from the benchtop.

Now I'm off to the store to buy some stuff to color my epoxy black. Knife makers have suggested the following colorants:

1. Toner from a photocopier
2. Pigment used to color oil paints from the paint store
3. India ink
4. Testor's model paints
5. Epoxy colorant from K&G
6. Ebony dust

I'm sure there are other options. But these are the ones that appeal to me. (Especially the toner dust. We have a metric buttload of that stuff here.) I'll keep you posted.

— Christopher Schwarz

Last week we offered free plans for the Skansen Bench I built for the April 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. If you didn't hear about this, it's likely because you don't subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. You can correct that oversight here.

In any case, this bench was tremendous fun to build. It was $22 in yellow pine from the home center and a couple evenings in the shop. The sucker is stout, has some nice curves and exposed joinery as well. Read the whole article and download the free pdf here.

So what's stopping you? The legs?

We included a scaled pattern of the legs in the pdf, but scaled patterns put some people off. In fact, I have received quite a few calls about how to use these patterns. You have a few options. Here are four.

• The New Testament Option: Take the printout to a copying store and throw yourself on the mercy of the nice young people there. Ask them if they'll enlarge the leg pattern until each square is 1". That's full size.

• Old Testament Option: Get out your dividers and some posterboard. Set the points of the dividers to 1" and turn that posterboard into oversized graph paper with a 1" grid. Then gaze at the small drawing and attempt to replicate it on the big posterboard. It's easy.

• The Good News for Modern Man Option: Dude, you like take the SketchUp file (in our way-groovy 3D warehouse) and scale the drawing yourself. Print out the results on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and tape them together. Dude. Then stick them to your wood and go to town. Download the SketchUp file here:

Skansen_Bench.zip (12.56 KB)

Read a tutorial from Robert Lang on how to scale things to full size here.

• And the "Please Don't Teach Me to Fish" Solution: Download a pdf of the leg template here. Print it out. Tape it together. Forget about it.

Skansenleg.pdf (105.81 KB)

— Christopher Schwarz

From the chicken vs. egg file: Many beginning woodworkers think you have to have a workbench in order to build a workbench. So they buy a cheap workbench and suffer with it for many years until they get around to building a "real" bench.

Truth is, you don't need a bench to build a bench.

Most of the workbenches I've built have been constructed on sawhorses. Start by making the top. Yeah, it's a bit wobbly on horses, but it works OK. When the top is built, flatten it and attach one of your vises.

Now you have a benchtop with a sawhorse base.

Build the bench's base on the benchtop. Yeah, it feels a bit like working on a car while the engine is running, but it's totally do-able. When the base is built, attach it to the top. Flip the puppy off the sawhorses, and you are ready to finish up work on your bench.

This is the exact path I'm following with this small-scale Roubo bench I'm building this week. I finished sizing up the top on Friday, which came out to 4-3/4" x 19" x 67". That's a little narrower than a modern bench, but I've seen older benches this narrow (and even narrower). I will be interested to see how tippy it is (or isn't).

Today I installed a vintage vise I've been hoarding for some time that looks like the vises in old French woodworking catalogs. Ooo la la. I like it. It's a mite fussy, but it's cool. Next I'll install a wooden chop on the vise, drill some dog holes and get to work on the legs.

And then the much-maligned epoxy.

— Christopher Schwarz

I dislike writing about the magazine business because it's not useful for our readers, who expect us to write about woodworking instead of engaging in navel-gazing.

But because we have received a lot of questions and mail about the merger of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine, I'm going to make an exception, lift up my shirt and take a quick peek.

First: Thanks for your letters – both positive and negative – about the new magazine. We read them all and respond to every one that we can. In my e-mail inbox, the sentiment about the new magazine is about 2-to-1 in favor of the changes. The criticisms have mostly been about the addition of advertising and the amount of woodworking information we are now delivering. So let's take a look there.

The April 2010 Popular Woodworking Magazine is a 68-page issue with 19 pages that are advertisements. That's 49 pages of "meat," for lack of a better wood. Let's check the "meat index" of an issue of Woodworking Magazine. There are 36 pages in each issue with only one page of advertising (the "Extras" page on page 35). That's 35 pages of meat.

What about Popular Woodworking before the merger? The February 2010 issue was 76 pages with 17 pages of advertisements. That's 59 pages of stories. (Note that we have averaged about 60 pages of meat in each issue during the last couple years.)

It looks like Popular Woodworking Magazine is smaller than Popular Woodworking but larger than Woodworking Magazine. Right?

It's not that simple.

The design of the new magazine is quite different. The paper is larger than what we used with Popular Woodworking, and we have less white space. We also have constrained the size of the photographs at the beginning of each article – no more full-page spreads. And we have tightened up the columnists. "Arts & Mysteries," "Flexner on Finishing" and "Design Matters" are all two pages each instead of three. We tightened things up with old-fashioned editing, by the way. Instead of removing information, we removed unnecessary words that weren't doing their jobs.

So counting pages isn't a good indicator. Why don't we count the words instead?

Personally, I think counting words is silly. No one will argue that Golden Corral is better than The French Laundry because the Golden Corral gives you more calories. But it is one indicator. Here are the numbers:

1. During the last year, Popular Woodworking has averaged 33,642 words of editorial coverage in each issue.

2. Woodworking Magazine has averaged 24,850 words of editorial per issue.

3. The April 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine has 34,254 words of editorial coverage – about the same as you would get in an issue of Popular Woodworking during the last couple years.

Second Complaint: Those tinyurls
At the end of each article in the magazine is a box that points you to online stories and web sites that are related to the article so you can dive deeper into a topic that interests you. In this issue we used "tinyurls," a long-standing Internet redirect service, so you don't have as many characters to type.

A fair number of readers don't like tinyurls. We don't particularly like them, either. But they are a stopgap until we get a new web site in place this summer. We won't use tinyurls going forward, and if you want to find any of the links listed in the print issue you can go to this page: popularwoodworking.com/apr10 (we're building out this page right now. Links are being added as I type).

Third Complaint: When Does My Subscription Run Out?
Some customers have been confused by the merger, especially if they had subscriptions to both publications. If you want to confirm the number of issues remaining in your subscription, check the line on the mailing label above your name; the last issue in your subscription is printed there. If you'd like to clear up a problem, send a message with your name and mailing address where you receive your subscription to Debbie Paolello, our subscription specialist: debbie.paolello@fwmedia.com.

But Why Did You Do It?
The other big question from readers is "Why?" While I tried to address this in my column in the April 2010 issue, I'll add some more details for you.

Many of my colleagues in the magazine business think we're all swirling around the toilet bowl to our watery grave. I'm not that grim, but it's hard to ignore the fact that a lot of my friends in media are out of work.

We know that big changes are coming. And instead of waiting to have it roll over us, we decided to sprint in front of this boulder. While both our magazines were profitable and stable, they consumed all our staff's time and energy to produce 11 yearly issues (those of you who get e-mails from us during nights and weekends can attest to this).

We decided that we had to put more energy into growing our quickly growing online business. And we knew there was no hope of expanding our staff in this time of dwindling corporate resources.

So that's what drove the decision to merge the two magazines. And it's the honest truth. Any speculation you might read on the message boards is simply not grounded in our world, which is based on raw number-crunching, decades of media experience and a desire to stay employed in the best job in the world – getting to write and edit a woodworking magazine.

It is indeed a dream job. But it's a dream that has to live in the real world.

— Christopher Schwarz

I'm to the point with this workbench that I cannot see the concrete floor any more because of the shavings. I hate that floor, but I am starting to feel a bit like a hamster.

Today I took the clamps off the Roubo benchtop we glued up Thursday and I scraped off the excess hide glue squeeze-out. The seam is tight. Nice.

Then I dressed the front edge of the benchtop. It was straight from the sawmill, so it was as rough as a cob. So I started out planing the edge with a jack plane to get it straight and square to the bench's top surface. Then I dressed the front edge with a jointer plane with a 50° pitch – the reversing grain is a bear on this piece because of the knots.

With the front edge in shape I marked out the final length of the benchtop. I was going for 72", but by settling on 67" I was able to remove a nasty low spot, a knot and some big checks. This bench won't be as long as I prefer, but sometimes you have to let the material dictate the design.

Then I sawed off the ends (yes, I did it by hand). I used a standard crosscutting stroke to make an accurate kerf. Then I used an overhand stroke (as shown) so I could bring the saw almost vertical. This is fast. And it uses different muscles. By switching back and forth between these two positions I was able to cut off the two ends without a break (except for one glug of water).

Then it was back to the jack plane to dress the benchtop and make it true. To do this, I put the benchtop on some risers on my sawhorses to lift it up to a comfortable working height. I clamped four f-style clamps to the risers in order to fence in the top and prevent it from moving.

Traversing the top with the jack was quick work – about 15 minutes worth to remove the rough-sawn fur. Then I went to lunch and started typing this. And I'm still typing, as you can see. Now it's time to stop typing.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Next week I'll be filling the checks in with tinted epoxy. Might look good. Might look like holes filled with black snot.

Whenever I visit the East Coast, I am jealous of the region's stock of vintage hand tools. The Midwest just cannot compete -- even though Cincinnati and Indianapolis were important manufacturing centers of edge tools and saws.

So if you are anywhere near Rhode Island this Saturday, I recommend you check out the Bill Spicer Auction, which starts at 10 a.m. at the Masonic Hall, 1515 Ten Rod Road in North Kingstown, RI. Don't come at 10 a.m. Come much earlier. That's when the tailgating happens.

Look for about 12 tool sellers at the tailgate such as Sanford Moss, Gordon Conrad and Patrick Leach (and maybe "the boy!"). Prices for user stuff are generally very reasonable during the tailgate.

Need directions or more information? Contact Bill Spicer Auctions.

— Christopher Schwarz

We glued up the benchtop for this Old-style Roubo bench today. Yeah, it looks ratty in the photo above, but the seam is tight. I even put in a little spring joint in the center of the joint – I was surprised I could close up the gap with just one of the parallel-jaw clamps.

In other words, we really didn't need many clamps.

But we did need extra glue. I started troweling liquid hide glue on the two edges when my glue bottle made a sound akin to that of a whoopee cushion after a big Mexican meal. Yup, my glue bottle had run dry.

Megan Fitzpatrick scurried over to the sink to heat up another bottle of liquid hide, which was still in "gelatinous dog turd" form. Those of you who use the stuff know what I'm describing here.

Then Glen Huey saved the day with a big bottle of liquid hide glue that was ready to go. We covered both edges with glue, dropped one slab on top of the other. Glen manipulated the seam while I clamped.

It looks pretty good. It weighs about as much as my first car. And after I fill the cracks with black-dyed epoxy resin it will look great.

Note that I'm not using a bench to build this bench. I did all the edge jointing with the pieces on sawhorses. Tomorrow I'll take the top out of the clamps and flatten the benchtop and underside with a fore plane. Then I'll start building the bench base using my new benchtop.

— Christopher Schwarz

Some men seek solace in a bottle. Others in the arms of a woman. For me, when the world starts swirling around the proverbial bidet, I look to construction lumber.

Late last night as I was headed to the grocery store for milk and yogurt, my mind was churning with what I should do about my four punky legs that were supposed to be the legs of my latest workbench. Before I could get to the grocery store, the tempting lights of our home center pulled me into its nearly empty parking lot. There were maybe three customers milling about, and a squadron of idle employees.

I wandered into the lumber racks. Two employees tailed me.

I stopped at a rack of 6 x 6 x 8' timbers in the pressure-treated lumber section. Inset into this wall of light-green wood was a single bunk of stuff that was totally white.

"Is this pressure-treated?" I asked one of my stalkers. "It looks really white, like plain white pine."

The employee brought me a step ladder and showed me the timbers at the back of the pile. They were rotting and covered in bugs. The stuff at the front – which was the same color – was drier and quite sound – just some minor end-checking.

"I don't think these are treated, so I wouldn't use them," the employee said. "I don't even think we can sell these."

I told them I might take a couple and the guy knocked $3 off the price of each. Instead of $15.97 each, I paid $12.97. They cut them up to fit in my car and I headed off to the grocery.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of mixing wood species on the visible surfaces of a project. So I wondered if a cherry benchtop and a pine base would be ugly. Could I bleach the cherry? Or perhaps color the pine with a reddish toner?

When I arrived home, my wife, Lucy, was sitting at our dining room table. It's a Shaker thing I built for Woodworking Magazine with a pine trestle base, a long cherry top made with only two boards and lots of exposed joinery. Just like this workbench would have.

Maybe mixing species will work out. Or maybe I'll sell this bench.

— Christopher Schwarz

The following is unfiltered, mostly unedited and likely unreadable. But this is what I do.

Today I launched headfirst into building this Roubo workbench. First up: Dress the legs. Well, the four legs look worse now than when I sawed them up. One leg looks OK from the front. On two legs, some checking has progressed to the point that I'm worried about their long-term life. The fourth leg is punky and is likely a loss.

I set the legs aside. I have a plan to replace them with some 4x4 Douglas fir fence posts. I can still make the legs totally by hand with only one glue line to make each 6" x 3-1/2" leg. I can manage that.

So I turned my attention to the two pieces for the top slab. They also had checked a little more during the last two weeks, but not to the point where I wanted to make firewood. So I started out dressing the edges to glue up the top. The work was fairly easy. I started with a fore plane and finished up the edges with a jointer plane.

Once they are glued up I plan to surface the entire top.

After dressing up the edges it was obvious I needed to take off a couple inches to remove some punkiness, nasty checking, bark and a little dirt. I got out my coarsest ripsaw and went to work. After 2 feet of ripping the 5"-thick cherry, I gave up. I am generally a stubborn person, but the sawing was too slow-going to be practical. It was going to take an hour of ripping for each slab.

Senior Editor Glen Huey came into the shop. He raised one eyebrow, but he didn't say anything about the sweat drips all over the slabs.

"I'm gonna cheat," I said, "and I need your help."

We humped each slab onto the band saw. In less than five minutes the deed was done. I can rationalize this a million ways: This is work for a pitsawyer. The lumberyard would have dressed these slabs for the pre-industrial woodworker.

But the bottom line was that ripping these slab wasn't fun. And that's where I drew the line. The purists can feel free to throw stones now.

— Christopher Schwarz

Since we first visited in May 2009, the staff of the magazine has witnessed some amazing progress in the restoration of the Meeting House at the White Water Shaker Village, which is west of our offices in Cincinnati.

As many of you know, we are trying to help a bit here, as well. We've completed reproductions of three furniture projects from the White Water collection, which we have donated to the nonprofit organization that is restoring the village.

And if all goes as planned, we hope to offer attendees at our Woodworking in America conference (Oct. 1-3 here in Cincinnati) a special chance to tour this untouched gem. The village is still in its rural setting and is not yet open to the public. Stay tuned here for more details as they develop.

The volunteers are at the last stages at restoring the wainscotting in the ground floor of the Meeting House, which mostly had been ripped out by previous inhabitants. Even more exciting is the installation of one of the first reproduction windows on the north side of the building.

These custom windows use custom tooling to replicate the delicate mullions and muntins. The glass will be salvaged from rotten sash and then the sills will be incorporated into the interior woodwork. After that, the volunteers will turn their attention to the truss system in the attic.

As one of the volunteers put it, the Meeting House is "transforming into a meeting room that the Shakers would know."

We're excited about being involved with the White Water Village and hope that you get the opportunity to see first-hand what a wonderful place it is becoming. For more information on the village or to join the organization (it takes just a small, tax-deductible donation), visit whitewatershakervillage.org.

— Christopher Schwarz

Photos courtesy of Joe Grittani