Das Bench - Square Dogholes

[charlie b]

The advantage to putting this bench together with dovetails, mortise and tenon, splines AND "all thread" is that it leaves you options as you go. You can put the thing together, look at it and, if you want to add something or change something you just disassemble and make the change(s).

In this case, because the front apron is a smidge over 2 inches thick I could router 3/4" deep "square" dogholes in the inside face and still have some meat left on the apron. A template, router bit and template guide and a boatload of chips later - SQUARE dogholes. Of course, after the glue had dried on the template and I'd done a bunch of test cuts on scrap to get the depth right - THEN I discocvered that my template "faced the wrong way". The angle on the holes would be AWAY from the vise jaw rather than leaning towards it. OOPS!

Cutting the dogholes went well - on the apron. Now I have to figure out how to do the opposite leaning doghole in the end vise outer jaw.

Anyway - here's yesterday's dust making. (all one line)

bench top's been tricky. Most furniture's joinery doesn't need to allow for tension AND compression. The bench "top", in addition to acting as a table, also acts as a small or huge clamp, in several planes. Making accessories for it, wooden dogs, shooting boards, moter board etc. is going to be fun, fun, fun. And that's one of the reasons I like woodworking - doing this leads to that and, along the way, plenty of opportunities to solve problems and learn something new.

charlie b

(BTW - the right sawdust is easily mistake for dandruff)

[Mike in Mystic]

Hey Charlie,

You're almost there. Looking at your efforts really does make me think my pine based hardboard/MDF top bench is really lame. The thing is, I can still do everything with my bench that you will be able to do with yours, just not so pretty. Someday.......

Anyway, on your webpage regarding the dog holes you mention trying to put square dog holes in the twin-screw vise jaws. I suppose you can chop out mortises by hand, which I won't be surprised if you do, but why don't you just use round dogs for the vise? The Veritas dogs are very precise and they really are 3/4" in diameter (so you won't have to worry about having the clamping force only being applied to two points of the dog hole perimeter). Just a thought that might save you some headaches.

Mike

[Alan Bierbaum]

I am confused by your statement above about the angle. You want the angle such that the distance on top of the bench (where the wood is held) is shorter than the distance at the bottom of the dog holes. The dogs lean into the wood being held. Is this what you mean?

I used the Veritas retangular (square) dogs and cut the dog holes with a dado sled. Alan Bierbaum

web site:

[charlie b]

each other, are at about a 2 degree angle to the top of the apron and the top of the vise jaw. Maybe this will help. Note the step below the dog face into the shank of the dog.

Apron Dog Vise Dog

+-+ +-+ / | | \ / ++ ++ \ / / \ \ / / \ \

What messed me up when doing the template for the apron dogholes was that I was "seeing things" from the outside face of the apron where the dogholes "lean" to theRIGHT towards the vise end. But when you're routing the holes on the inside face of the apron the template must "lean to the left - still towards the vise end but that's easy to forget when you're focusing on lines and offsets for the template collar.

The doghole in the vise jaw is getting interesting. The jaw is

2 1/2" thick and 6 inches tall. Cutting a 6 inch deep stepped mortise, at an angle, ain't something I can do with chisels or even with my tilting head mortiser (ok maybe I could've used the tilting head mortising machine).

Here's what I've done so far ( all one line - watch line wrap)

's of winging it on this bench project.

As for making a fancy smancy bench - the first one, now an assembly bench, was anything but fancy - 2x4s, ply and nuts and bolts, along with a ton of screws. One little vise and three round dogholes for dowel dogs with rubber crutch caps on the ends.

Here's the bench I've been using for three plus years

b