Working on a Workbench
Things have been a bit up and down over Christmas. The last couple of days were definitely down, but things are looking up now that I've got started on making something again. This one's a very straightforward physical construction project: I'm making a workbench.
I have a little more space in the garage now that I don't have the huge DEC TU77 tape drive in there any more. That space is currently under-utilised and poorly organised, so I was on the lookout for an offcut of kitchen worktop to make into a bench. I have just over a metre of room between the end wall and my father's old metalworking bench. Now, I recently visited an old friend, Fran, and he had a piece of worktop that's made of a material called SpeedStone. It's sold by B&Q for installation as part of their kitchens, and can be joined to the sink almost invisibly using an epoxy resin. It's actually made by DuPont, according to the manufacturing markings underneath.
I know that I can't get a 600mm wide chunk of worktop in the Cappuccino. Fortunately, Fran brought the offcut round to my house just before Christmas (he also brought my birthday/Christmas present: an Adafruit Ice Tube Clock kit). Today, I ventured out to buy the wood I'd need to make the legs and frame of the bench. It comes in 2.4m lengths, so I had to remove one side of the Cappuccino's roof to get it in (by some coincidence, the B&Q car-park held a number of two-seater sports cars today):
I'm loosely following the design here:
http://woodgears.ca/workbench/build.html
Although, my version is quite a bit smaller, 1170x600mm.
So far, I have most of the pieces cut from the 2.4m lengths. I have drilled the holes and installed the dowels for some of the joints, but I have not yet begun to cut the mortices in the sides of the frame. I've used the bench hook that I made earlier, but I also had to use the little square table as a platform to saw on. It wobbles. A lot. It's a sort of bootstrap problem: I could really use a good workbench to make this workbench on...
I have a little more space in the garage now that I don't have the huge DEC TU77 tape drive in there any more. That space is currently under-utilised and poorly organised, so I was on the lookout for an offcut of kitchen worktop to make into a bench. I have just over a metre of room between the end wall and my father's old metalworking bench. Now, I recently visited an old friend, Fran, and he had a piece of worktop that's made of a material called SpeedStone. It's sold by B&Q for installation as part of their kitchens, and can be joined to the sink almost invisibly using an epoxy resin. It's actually made by DuPont, according to the manufacturing markings underneath.
I know that I can't get a 600mm wide chunk of worktop in the Cappuccino. Fortunately, Fran brought the offcut round to my house just before Christmas (he also brought my birthday/Christmas present: an Adafruit Ice Tube Clock kit). Today, I ventured out to buy the wood I'd need to make the legs and frame of the bench. It comes in 2.4m lengths, so I had to remove one side of the Cappuccino's roof to get it in (by some coincidence, the B&Q car-park held a number of two-seater sports cars today):
I'm loosely following the design here:
http://woodgears.ca/workbench/build.html
Although, my version is quite a bit smaller, 1170x600mm.
So far, I have most of the pieces cut from the 2.4m lengths. I have drilled the holes and installed the dowels for some of the joints, but I have not yet begun to cut the mortices in the sides of the frame. I've used the bench hook that I made earlier, but I also had to use the little square table as a platform to saw on. It wobbles. A lot. It's a sort of bootstrap problem: I could really use a good workbench to make this workbench on...