On to the legs and stretchers

Well, here it is. The completly assembled top before clean up and planing. It weighs a lot now. 

We glued up the legs and thicknessed them in the machine to roughly 120 x 120 mm, then picked out boards for the stretchers that will connect the legs. 



Early this morning I marked out all tenons, saving a bit at the end...

... to facilitate finishing the tenons off with the router plane. Tomorrow we’ll start making the mortises in the legs. Not a whole lot left to do now! And using the top to work on the tenons showed us that it will be a good, hefty workbench. 

Progress on the big ass bench

Before any instruments are made (maybe apart from a couple of fugly travellers) we must crack on with that bench don’t we. I ran all boards through the thickness planer before cutting them to length and laminating them. 

Mid glue-up. A LOT of glue was harmed in this operation. Like five bottles at 125 SEK a piece. 



We (I had help from my brother) made four blocks that were 7 to 9 boards thick, they still fit in the thickness planer and that was a great advantage. We could make both faces flat and parallel before glueing up the entire top. 



This is a block going through the thicknesser. It is a good planer but a bit short, so one came out with a bow and one with a twist. I will handplane the top after glueing it all up. 



Two pairs are glued up, they will all come together tomorrow. 

Luthier on the run

You know the drill, you all know the score... try to do what’s right (song reference). Every summer I pack up some essentials and leave the humble lair of the Argapanator to do some creative woodworking on the road or at some cottage. Today we left for the summer house and I brought tools, a couple of instruments, a large chunk of mahogany, some fugly traveller blanks, a rifle, and a Morley fuzz wah pedal. 

In this pic you see the slab of mahogany on the thickness planer, before running it through. In the bottom right corner are three of the travel uke blanks. 

Problem is, and it should be apparent already, that the summer workshop is crammed with stuff and crap. I need a large and preferably empty workbench...



... and I want it now. So I gathered a load of boards from a rack where they’ve been drying a few years. They will form the workbench slab. 



I coerced my son Johan to help me carry the thickness planer out. Tomorrow I will prepare them and start glueing them together. Wohoo! And the weather is set to be shite all week! 



But what’s this then? Remember that I mentioned a strange monstrosity bass I’d finished, asking if anyone would like to see it? Well none other than Howlin’ Hobbit said, yeah show it. So here it is. 

Before you judge me, look up Vox Winchester basses and guitars. I got the idea from those.