Entryway Storage Bench Part 5

This week I finally finished the storage bench that has been in progress on and off for probably 2 years or more. I pre-finished the ship-lapped boards that made up the bottom of the storage area and got them mounted with a few cleats screwed into the inside of the bottom frame. The next step was to add a bevel to the lid which not only adds some visual interest but also removed the dents and gouges around the edge that I inadvertently added while trying to clamp the panel to the face of the work table to plane the edges and end grain. I keep hearing that the key to successful woodworking is finding creative ways to hide your screw-ups. This was one of those challenges. I don't have any router bits for anything like this and cutting this bevel on the table saw seemed risky so I settled on planing the bevel by hand. I marked the start and stop of the bevel on both the top surface and the edge of the lid and then started planing free hand. I used a low angle jack for the ends and the bevel up smoother sharpened to a high angle to deal with some reversing grain on the sides. Overall it was pretty straightforward once I got started and I think it worked out nicely. The bevels are not perfect but they were done by hand and I'm happy with the results.

With the bevel complete I moved on to finishing the lid. I added some cross grain batons to help limit any cupping and then wiped on 4 or 5 coats of polyurethane. As soon as the finish dried I dropped the lid onto the bench to see how it looked.

I ordered some torsion hinges from Rockler to mount the lid. These hinges are similar to those on a laptop. The lid basically stays where you put it so that there are no worries about fingers getting slammed between the lid and the frame.

The hinges were easy to mount and work as advertised.... and now the bench is finally done.

Lessons learned from this project:
1) Even a seemingly simple project takes forever if you don't have time to spend in the shop. I need to make time to work on these projects more consistently.
2) I really enjoy working wood with hand tools and I need to build a real workbench with dog holes and a decent face vise.
3) Carefully selecting wood with appropriate grain patterns for each component of a project makes a huge difference in the finished product.
4) I strongly prefer the straight grained look of quarter and rift-sawn oak compared to the wild patterns of plain-sawn oak.

Entryway Storage Bench Part 4

The next step in the entry bench project was to make all of the pieces that would create the ship-lap bottom. After planing all the pieces down to the proper thickness, jointing an edge, ripping them to width, and cross cutting them to length I got a chance to try out my new Veritas skew rabbet plane. The first challenge was to find a way to hold the boards while planing the rabbets. Below you can see the clamp setup I used while planing the rabbets across the end-grain. These rabbets will allow the bottom boards to sit up inside the bottom rails a bit.

I then built a jig to hold the bottom pieces to plane the rabbets on the sides that will form the ship-lap joint. Cutting these joints by hand was a bit of work but after I got the hang of it it only took a few minutes per board. The fact that I could do it at 11:30 at night with the garage door open made it worth the workout.

The key here is to make sure you flip the board so that the rabbets are on opposite faces on either side. I messed up one board by cutting both rabbets on the same face. Luckily I had made a few extras just in case. Below you can see another view of the clamping jig I setup to hold the pieces while planing the rabbets. It will be nice to have an actual workbench someday but I've been surprised how well I've been able to get by by using my table saw top and a few jigs/clamps.

Below you can see a few test pieces I cut to dial in the dimensions of the ship-lap joint. I was pretty happy at this point that my first hand tool joinery was working out well.

Below is an example of one of the finished bottom pieces with the rabbets on both ends and on opposite faces along both edges.

Below is the fantastic pile of nice curly shavings that I made while cutting the rabbets. It's a mess but it sure beats sawdust.

Once I had all the rabbets cut I started cutting the end pieces to fit around the posts in the corners. Below you can see the test fit of the first few pieces.

The ship-laps fit together nicely and filled in the bottom. The cool part about using a ship-lap bottom is that it allowed me to use up a bunch of the shorter scraps that aren't much use for most other projects.

Below if the bench bottom with all the pieces fit and in place. Other than some finish the only step left to complete the bottom is to make the "brackets" that will screw to the lower rails underneath the bottom pieces to support them.

With the bottom basically done I shifted focus to the lid. I saved the nicer pieces of clear riftsawn oak for this. I ripped each piece to width and then ran it over the jointer. I then hit each edge with the hand plane to remove the fine milling marks to make the joint as fine as possible. Once all the pieces were ready for glue-up I arranged them so the grain was running in the same direction (arrows seen below) to make planing easier once glued-up. I then sorted them by color and then marked the arrangement with a triangle across the panel to make sure everything goes where it is supposed to during glue-up. Below you can see the panel glue-up in process.

Below you can see the panel once the glue had dried.

At this point I had to drop it on the bench just to see how it would look. So far so good.

The next step was to cut the lid to length. In the past I would have used a circular saw and a guide to make this cut. Setting that all up is a pain so I gave the hand saw a shot.

It actually worked out pretty well, it turns out a saw really wants to cut straight and as long as you can stay out of its way and let it do its job it's pretty easy to saw to a straight line.

The cut wasn't perfect though and I had to do something to remove the saw marks anyway so I clamped the lid up to my work table and hit the freshly cut end with the low angle jack plane.

Wow, was this cool...after sharpening up the blade this plane was taking see through shavings of end grain oak. The resulting surface was impressively smooth and almost dead straight across.

The next step was to flatten the top and bottom faces of the lid. Its tough to get the boards perfectly aligned when gluing up the panel so I had to take off a decent amount to even out the high and low spots. I did the rough leveling with the low angle jack fitted with a toothed blade. This setup let me take off quite a bit per pass without having to worry about tear-out. This is the part of the project that really sold me on hand tools. In the time it took me a to cook a frozen pizza I had the first face basically leveled. This would have take me all day with the a sander. After all the rough leveling was done I sharpened up the blade in the smooth plane at about 45 degrees and took a few shavings off to leave a near perfect surface (and again... no sanding). Below you can see what will be the inside/bottom of the lid with some mineral spirits on it to highlight any defects.

Below is a nice picture of one of the see through near full length shavings I was taking off on the top of the lid. Planing is sure as heck way more fun than sanding.

Below is a picture of the top surface of the lid with some mineral spirits on it to approximate what it will look like when finished. the color and grain match isn't perfect but I love the rift-sawn grain and am generally pretty happy with how it turned out.

Here is the obligatory test fit on the bench frame showing what the bench should look like when complete.

Here is another view with the lid sitting on the frame.

Next on the to-do list is to begin pre-finishing the bottom pieces and the lid, then make the brackets to hold the bottom in place, then add battens to the inside of the lid to help limit any warping, then fitting the hinges for the lid, and finally one final coat of finish on the bench frame. 

Entryway Storage Bench Part 3

After dry-fitting the bench frame the next step was to break it back down and bevel the inside faces of the lower legs to match the coffee table I built a few years ago. I re-used the simple jig that I made last time as shown below. 

After cutting all of the bevels I used the smoothing plane to clean up the sawn surfaces.

Next I mounted the dado stack in the table saw to cut a rabbet on the bottom edge of each lower rail to house the ship lapped boards that will make up the bottom for the storage area.

I also pre-finished the panels with 4 or 5 coats of wipe-on poly. I'm pretty happy with the natural color and texture of the finish.

The next step was to smooth plane all surfaces of each component to prep them for finish. Since I pre-finished the panels I decided to finish the rest of the components prior to glue-up. In order to keep finish off of the glue surfaces I taped off the tenons and wedged pieces of foam caulk backer rod into the mortises.

All the parts were pre-finished with 3 coats of wipe-on poly and then lightly sanded prior to glue-up. I plan to apply one final coat of finish once everything is assembled.

Above you can see the end assemblies after being finished and glued up. I'm a big fan of the overall look of all this straight grained rift and quartersawn oak.

After smooth planing and pre-finishing the long rails I glued up the full bench frame.

So far I'm pretty excited with how this is turning out. Next on the to-do list is to glue up the seat/lid and then plane it smooth as well as cutting all of the boards to make the ship lap bottom.