Olie

Awesome job. Really like the bench and also the honey/caramel-ish color too.

Wait! What? This is just a garage decoration and show piece! I’m buying furniture. Lol

Yes for sure. After a little curing time I’m going to jump into some house furniture projects!

FINALLY finished this bench! Well about 97% done as I decided to just trim out the side cabinet and do some projects before I decide what to do with it. This bench took way longer than expected but life got in the way with a few deaths in the family, a demanding job, and 3 kiddos under the age of 7. Thanks to Kev for everything and all the guidance, the design, and time in the shop. I learned a lot and enjoyed doing more of the work on this bench than the last. There were a lot of “firsts” for me after taking it home from milling and gluing up the slabs in my shop to building jigs and routing mortises and building the cabinets the way I did and designing and installing vises to name a few. Everything turned out well. I finished it with one coat of Fiddes hard wax oil because that’s what I had on hand and my ruobo was finished with that and it turned out good. I can’t believe as a new woodworker that this bench and my ruobo are my first two benches. Wouldn’t have these if it wasn’t for Kev, so thanks again. Before I met Kev I was looking at building some construction lumber benches with pocket hole screws and although I could’ve still got some benches to get the job done it would not have been anything close. One unforeseen but a huge benefit to having these benches are the way it makes me feel when going into the shop and the motivation it gives me to keep going on this woodworking journey. I apologize in advance for all the photos. I took a lot at different times of the day in different lighting from just natural light coming in from the windows to artificial lighting or a combo of both. Instead of picking the best I did a big photo dump of them all.

Had a small detour on the bench. I upgraded the fence on my Harvey table saw to the big eye rip fence and needed to alter the back of my bench to fit into the new fence. The old fence had a C channel and this one is a bit different. The back of the fence has something that hangs down lower to clamp onto the rail as this fence design clamps in the front and the back. So far I love it and will add more about it in another post. As far as finishing the bench, I should have it wrapped up in the next day or two and here’s a sneak peek of the finishing process on the drawers.

I heard the price for this new 15” will be around $1500 which is similar to a Dewalt 735 with a pre installed Byrd shelix head.

@pkinneb Thanks. My space isn’t necessarily small at 28x30 but it sure isn’t big. I thought the space savings and advantages would outweigh the change over especially for someone like me who right now is a late evening and weekend warrior. I may not need 16” but have run into a lot of boards at my hardwood dealer that are greater than 8”. I thought about the hammer jointer only, but the combo is only $520 more and I figured why not try it and if it came to a point where I hated the change over and wanted separates then later down the road I could dedicate it as a jointer only and get a planer. On another note, did you see the new planer that Oliver is coming out with? It’s a 15” bench top planer with a Shelix head.

That will look cool.

I don’t have an exact way to go back and match the thickness on my dewalt 735. I did have to go back and make another piece before but I didn’t need to be at a super exact dimension so I used my digital calipers to get close and then took another small cut and ran the previous pieces through to the new very close dimension because it didn’t matter that much. Probably not the way to go about it but that’s what I did!

Two tools I thought about upgrading in the future are my jointer and planer. I work out of two stalls in a 3 car garage currently and I’m a hobbyist with young children so I’m a busy guy and not out there milling every week or hours per week. I’ve used Kev’s 16” Hammer and really liked it and have been researching the Hammer 16” J/P combo. It seems from my research people either love it or hate it. In terms or hating it, mostly due to the change over. I’ve watched videos and the change over seems to be about a minute and the greater downsides are if you need to go back and forth from jointer to planer or forget something and need to joint or plane another piece and matching the same setting, etc. How much of a pain would that be? Is it worth it to just pay thousands more to get separates for a hobbyist? I got a quote a while ago and now whenever they have sales they email me. They just had a big sale and it was $5665 for a 16” J/P combo and $5145 for a 16” jointer only. That didn’t include shipping or any accessories, but $5665 for 16” of both jointing and planer seems like a great price compared to similar or even lower capacity separates. The combo would have its benefits of space savings, money savings, consolidation of dust collection, same infeed/outfeed space, don’t need to have additional electrical wired to put in a new outlet for separates. But would I hate the combo and change over? Technically I have the space for separates if I needed to. My thought would be why not just try the combo and if it doesn’t work for me it’s only $520 more for the combo and just dedicate as a jointer in the future and get a separate planer? I know Kev’s thoughts on combos and I’m interested in hearing more. I also know @pkinneb has the A3-31 12” combo but also has a separate planer so does that mean you decided you don’t like changing over so you bought another planer? Anyone else have feedback? I’m just thinking about the long term and don’t even need to upgrade now or at all and just want to and when I’m busy with family and can’t make it out to the shop as much I turn to research and find more tools I want for when my kids get older, haha.

Thanks for the kind words. It was definitely good to take the creative leap and develop something on my own. I do have lots of creative ideas all the time but I think sometimes I want buy in or confirmation of ideas when I need to just go with it and try stuff and make mistakes and learn. Could be partially due to being a newer woodworker and building confidence in my work and I’m definitely a perfectionist which can be both good and bad in this journey. Looking forward to getting this all finished up in the next week and move on to actual projects for the house!

Well I have a sanded and shaped chop. There are so many options and ways I could have shaped this chop but I just made a decision and went with it. The top chamfer ended up more than I planned but not bad and nothing lost. I cut it on the miter saw and forgot to lock the bevel and gouged it a little so I had to take another deeper cut. Doesn’t look too bad though. Here are some pics. I know a lot of pics! Can’t wait to get some finish on this bad boy.