My Sawbench by Dave Hahn

My bench is certainly not original, it's based on looking at as many other sawbenches as I could find on the web.  Charlie Rodgers, Jeff Gorman, and Roy Griggs' benches were particular sources of inspriation. 

I made it from structural lumber since I had some offcuts from some work on my house (who said you can't make a 2 foot piece of 2x10 into anything).  The top is made from two 2x10's which had about an inch each ripped off after I'd made it and decided it was too wide.  The legs are 2x12 and the shelf is 2x10.  The dimension of the top is 26 x 16.5 and it's 21 inches off the floor which feels like the correct height for me.  I cut the legs so it would sit flat on a level surface, but keep a shim with it to compensate for the crazy slope of my basement floor.  I planed the top flat after the glue dried and I cut off the excess tenon and wedge.  The finish is a spitcoat of shellac mainly to help with brushing the dust off.

I wedge tenoned the legs into the top at an angle. I did some of the mortises with just a mortise chisel and did some by hogging out the waste with a brace and bit and then paring to the lines. Neither technique worked well in this SYP. You can't really see the wedges in this shot, but they are going the wrong direction. It's a good thing my mortices are too big otherwise I'd probably have split the top pieces on the long grain. I made the top from two pieces with a gap to deal with seasonal wood movement between the two tenons.

You can see the gaps in the tenon shoulders here. I didn't put a shoulder all the way around, just on the sides. The main reason I put the shelf in on the bottom was to stabilize the legs and hold them at their maximum angle since my joints where so loose. Its held on with pocket screws since I really didn't feel like anything more complicated. You can also see where I've cut into the notch when ripping.

Here are some action shots. I'm using a back saw to get the rip cut started. If I was completely ripping this board in two, I'd do the cut on this side and then flip it end over end and do the other (that way I'm always cutting on the same side of the line).

Now the rip saw comes out. My rip saw has a slight bow to it and I'm not sure it is that bow, or an uneven set (I've honed the sides), or just my skill level, but I have to watch that I'm both following the line and cutting 90 deg to the board. I only have one bench, but I've used to it rip an 8 ft 4/4 poplar board. The length is nice for that. Its probably still wider than it needs to be.

Here's a crosscut. I normally stand on the other side and cut by the notch, but I thought I'd spare you all a shot of my backside.

I've done quite a bit of ripping on this bench so far. I made some builtins for my bedroom and did over 50 feet of rips 6 to 8 feet at a time for the verticals on the face frames and did another 35 to 50 ft of longer and shorter lengths for the horizontals. It was all 4/4 poplar but it was still a pretty good workout. I had to take a rest in the middle of the 6 and 8 foot rips, but it did go pretty quickly. I don't have a tablesaw and I didn't want to do 1 to 1.5 inch wide rips with my circ saw, so this was way safer. I usually have to do quite a bit of planing to straighten and square up the edge after the cut, but I'm getting better.

Dave? Hahn
January 2007