1 Folding

This folding workbench, modified from an early twentieth-century design, will serve you handily even if you already have a heavy, fixed workbench. Henry Mayhew, writing on the lives of the working poor in nineteenth- century London, described the arrival of a country at a metro- politan sweatshop. Unable to ñnd a bench to work at, he chose an empty corner of the shop, pulled up some of the floorboards, and went to work standing in this hole using the floor as his benchtop. I wish I had a good ending to the story of this carpenter who started in the hole, and how he came up in the world, and that his name was Duncan Phyfe, and that he literally started at the ground floor. But I don't have such an end for this story, only the beginning; and like this country carpenter, you need to be- gin with a bench. This folding workbench has a solid work surface ten inches wide and a well of equal width. It is a simple piece, yet very sturdy and a great thing to have when you are working out of the shop or don't have space for a permanent bench. The height of a workbench is governed not by a rule of thumb but by a rule of knuckles. As you stand beside the bench, your knuckles should just brush the top. This is a good height for sawing and stock on the benchtop, yet it won't force you to swing your too high when chiseling. On average, this height comes to about 30 inches, but you should make it to fit yourself, not the average. And, be With the diagonal braces removed, the leg frames on this little bench fold reasonably warned, I like a benchtop that is about one or two inches lower than most flat against the top. folks. At one shop where I used to work, it was not a week after my last day before all the benche s had two-inc h extension s on the bottom s of all the legs. The work surface and the tool well are joined on their undersid e by two or three cross- . Hinged to the outermos t s are leg frames, and two braces pivot down from a centra l batten to connec t to the leg frames with carriage bolts and wing nuts. When you unscrew the wing nuts, the leg frames will fold up to lie against the top. (If you want the legs to fold completel y flat against the top, you need to modify this design ei- ther by spacing the leg frames farther apart or by offsetting them someho w so that they miss one anothe r when they fold.)

With the exception of the 3A-inch board for the tool well and its skirt- ing, the whole bench can be made from a single rough- n two-by-ten . You need a full thicknes s two-by-te n plank, not one that has been ma- chine- d down to PA inche s (but such stuff must do if you have no choice) . Look for the stiffest stuff that you can find, such as tight-graine d hard yellow . My bench is only 4. feet long, so 1 was able to make the top, the legs, the lower rails, and the braces from a single ten-foo t length of pine two-by-ten . . !ie /<'· .'a . ii'^N begu: (is a t\\'o-bv-ten- Normall y you would begin by setting the plank on a bench to plane it inch pLinh. Rough-plane the sur/cia' S belore smooth , but since you are making a bench , I will assume that you don't beginning the layout. have one yet. Instead , you can hold the plank steady by sitting on it. Set the plank on stumps or kitchen chairs (don' t get caught) and sit down on it near the left end as you face it. Hold the back handl e (or toat) of the plane in your right hand and the foregrip in your left hand . If there is no forward knob, grasp the body of the plane with your thum b on the near side and your fingers on the far side. Start planin g at the far end and work your way backward down the plank. If the grain of the plank seems to be rising against you, sit on the opposite side of the plank and work in the othe r direction . You will need to turn aroun d anyway when you run out of space to sit. When you plane a rough board, you may find that the blade (the iron) can protrud e a bit more than normal . When you start, you are taking off only the high point s (the tips of the ridges that cover the rough ). Since you are cuttin g about half air and half wood, the stroke is easy. Once the iron starts cuttin g a level surface and is bringing up long, full shavings instead of short crumbles, you will want to reset the plane iron to take a finer cut. The fastest way to work is go over the whole plank with an ad- justmen t that works well, then reset the plane as necessary and go over the plank again until you are taking fine, translucen t shavings off the en- tire surface. If you have started with a long plank that will provide both the benchto p and a length to rip into the legs, you can now cut the benchto p to length. Before you cut anything shorter (and I mean anything—rope ,

FOLDIN G WORKBENC H I 3 Rip the two-by-twos for the braces and leg copper pipe, or Shakespeare), be sure that you are not making your work frames from the plank after laying them out harder by creating a piece that is too short to hold properly. In this case, with the marking . cutting the 10- or 12-foot-long plank into two pieces will make the work easier, as the piece you choose for the benchtop will provide support for the processes that follow: the ripping and final planing of the two-by-two legs, rails, and braces. First, use your to ensure that the edge of the plank you intend to rip into legs is straight and at a true right angle to the face, and correct by more planing if necessary. Set your gauge to the thickness of the plank (whatever it may be, as long as it is close to two inches), then pull the gauge along both the top and bottom faces to mark out the first two-inch strip parallel to the outside edge.

4 I FOLDING WORKBENCH Support the plank that you are ripping on the plank that you are saving for the benchtop. Start your ripsaw on the end so that the kerf is just on the outside of the line scratched by the gauge. Saw along for an inch or so, then flip the plank over and saw from the other side for another few inches. If you get off the line and need to steer, don't try to twist the saw; just lower the angle of attack and hold your hand over to bend the blade in the direction you want to go. Keep flipping the plank over and sawing from the opposite side every six inches or so, not only to maintain an ac- curate cut but also to give your arm a break. Reverse the plank and start from the other end when you no longer have enough to kneel on. When your first two-by-two is sawn free, set it on the benchtop plank and plane its rough face as you sit on one end. Because the piece is almost five feet long, you have plenty to sit or kneel on to hold it in place as you saw or plane. Only when both of these steps are complete should you crosscut it into shorter lengths. Start the next two-by-two by planing the newly sawn face of the remainder of the plank and repeating the process of gauging and sawing until you have all the legs, rails, and braces that you need. In the next step, you join the timbers into two frames to support the two ends of the bench. The top rail of the frames connects to the legs with screwed half-lapped joints, and the lower crosspiece connects with mortice and tenon joints. The process of laying out these joints to connect the vertical and horizontal pieces is a basic procedure for all such framed work. In making chairs you lay out the legs and rungs in the same way; in making doors, you lay out the stiles and rails; and in , you lay out the posts and beams. Cut all the legs to length and align them on the benchtop with their ends square, across. Mark all the upper faces of the legs with a squiggle to indicate the face side of all the pieces. This is the constant from which you make all gauge measurements, and it is usually the better, exposed surface. "Best face to London," as they used to say. For the joint at the top of the leg frames, take one of the two-by-six rails and set it directly atop the legs, aligning one edge of the two-by-six with the top ends of the legs. Draw a fine line down the other edge of the two- by-six and then set it aside without disturbing the alignment of the legs. Now measure down 18 inches from the top ends and draw a line square across all the pieces. Set one of the two-by-two horizontal pieces atop the legs with one edge aligned with this line, then mark down the opposite edge as before. Now take each leg and bring these lines square around the two adjoin- ing faces. The lines made thus far with ruler and square determine the lo- cation and height of the joints on the legs. For the remaining measure- ments, you'll use gauges. For the half-lapped joints at the top, set your at one-half the thickness of the stock, and with the of

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 5 Left. the gauge riding on the face sides of aff pieces, mark the depth of the half- Lay out the joints in the leg frames by lap on the legs. aligning the legs on aflat surface and then The mortice and teño >n of the lower rails is a bit more complex than the setting the horizontal members on top of half-lap. First you must choose the proper proportions for the mortice them. Check for squareness and vertical and tenon. The rule of t humb in joining equal-sized pieces is to make the position, then mark above and below the joint more than one-thir d but less than one-half the thickness of the stock. edges of the horizontal pieces. 24 For two-inch-thick ( /. 2' "-thick ) stock such as this, one-thir d of the thick- 2 8 12 Right. ness would be / 3 of an inch ( /i 2"), and one-hal f would be one inch ( /n") , v 9/ Lay out the half-laps at the tops of the leg ^"a /^nah/v /ii\Tiiutcrc e and teno n is right in the ballpark. Take up your 3 frames with a marking gauge set to half the A-inch morticin g and set the gap between the two teeth of your thickness of the stock. Mark around the ends morticin g gauge to match its width. To center the mortic e in the two-inc h of each piece with the fence of the gauge al- stock, set the fence % inch from the near tooth . Again gauging from the ways riding on the "face" side of the timbers. face sides only, run the teeth of the gauge down, opposin g faces of all the \fegs, 10 afcYrneaxe fne width ana'locatio n oí mortices.

6 I FOLDING WORKBENCH The double-toothed morticing gauge will mark both the width of the mortices in the legs and the width of the tenons on the ends of the rails. Again, the fence must ride on the face side of all pieces.

Finish your joint layout by marking the tenons and half-laps on the rails in a repeat of the preceding process. Set all the rails flat, with their ends squarely aligned, and lay a leg atop them with one edge flush with their ends. Mark down the opposite edge of the leg; then, using this line as a starting point, bring the lines square around the rails as before. Repeat the process on the opposite ends. Take the morticing gauge and run it around the ends of the two-by-twos, then use the marking gauge (still with the same setting used earlier) to lay out the half-laps on the ends of the two-by-sixes. You can use just about any fine-toothed to cut the shoul- ders of the tenons and half-laps, but you will find the process much easier if you make a to hold the work. A bench hook is just a short board with battens screwed across opposite sides on opposite ends. I usu- ally saw the shoulders (cross grain) first and then saw the cheeks (long

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 7 grain). (This habit of sawing the tenon shoulders first comes from split- ting off the cheeks of tenons.) However you work, cut with the kerf on the waste side of the lines and stop precisely as you touch the intersection with the next line. On the shorter cuts of the tenons on the two-by-two, a finer-toothed crosscut saw will do well for the long grain ripping of the cheeks, but on the two-by-six, you may want to use a proper ripsaw for faster cutting, or instead you might carefully split away the waste wood with a mallet and chisel. In either case, shave the cheeks smooth with a sharp chisel laid up, cutting flat across the grain. A mortice is simply a square hole, so one obvious way to work is to bore a series of round holes through the wood and then square them up to the final dimensions. Often, though (and it's hard to say when), it's easier (and more dignified) to chop the mortice square using only a mallet and chisel rather than boring and squaring. Start the very stout morticing chisel with the blade aligned across the grain, just a little bit in from the line. Set the bevel facing toward the direc- tion in which you will proceed and drive the chisel in about a quarter inch with a few blows of the mallet. Pull the chisel free, move it along about an eighth of an inch, and drive it in again. Because the first chopping made The little bench hook allows you to hold the space for the second, the chisel will now go deeper into the wood. As you rail with one hand as you cut the shoulders of march along, the chisel will go deeper and deeper, because each preceding the tenon with a saw in the other hand. move has made more space. March down to the other end of the mortice,

8 I FOLDING WORKBENCH stopping just short of the line, then turn the bevel around and march Starting at one end and marching along, back, repeating the process until you are halfway through the stock. Now the morticing chisel cuts deeper with each flip the piece over and chop through from the other side until you meet in step. Now you are ready to turn about and the middle. The wedging action of the chisel should force most of the cut the next pass, continuing back and forth chips out, but inevitably you will need to lever the chisel against the end until you're about halfway through. Then walls of the mortice, denting them in somewhat. That is why you have left repeat the process from the opposite side to the very ends of the mortice uncut until the very end, when you can shear meet in the middle. Finally, shear the ends them off in a perfect vertical cut to achieve square perfection. of the mortice flush to the line. The remarkable thing that you have just accomplished in chopping this mortice is the essence of real . The wedging action of the chisel blade was exerted along the length of the grain, severing it and forc- ing it up, and not between the fibers of the grain, pushing it apart and splitting the wood. You have taken a rather large piece of steel and driven it through a piece of wood without splitting it, leaving behind a perfectly square hole. The same principle that made it possible to drive the chisel through the leg to cut the mortice also applies when you assemble the joint: the fit against the end grain of the mortice can be quite tight, but if the cheeks of the tenon are too fat, you may split the morticed piece. If it is too tight,

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 9 Left. shave a bit off the cheeks of the tenon. If the fit is too loose, glue on a shim Drawbore the mortice and tenon joints by or shaving. Although the mortice and tenon joint should push together first boring the peg hole through the cheeks and hold without a peg or even glue, eventually the joint will become of the mortice, then driving the unbared looser when the wood gets really dry and will become looser still as the tenon tightly into place. Set the auger back joint "works" when you use the bench and generate angular pressure that in the hole through the mortice to mark the crushes the tenon. location of the hole on the tenon. You can prevent the demise of your joint by gluing, drawboring, and

Right. pegging- Drawboring involves deliberately offsetting the peg holes Now remove the tenon and bore the peg hole through the cheeks of the mortice with the peg hole through the tenon, so slightly offset toward the tenon shoulder. that driving a tapered peg through them forces the tenon tighter into the When the joint is reassembled, driving the mortice. To drawbore a joint of this size: tapered peg through the misaligned holes • Bore a Ys- to Vi-inch hole through the center of the two cheeks of will force the tenon tighter into the mortice. the mortice, without the tenon in place. Place a waste piece in the mortice and under the far side to prevent the auger from breaking through and splintering the wood. • Assemble the joint and push the point of the auger back into the hole through the mortice cheek to mark its location on the tenon. • Pull the joint apart and bore the hole through the tenon, offset- ting it a fat Vie inch toward the shoulder of the tenon from the point marked as the center.

10 FOLDING WORKBENCH Three bits help the drive the through the half-laps. The -bit deft) bores the pilot hole, the snail (right) counter- sinks for the head, and the screw- driver-bit cranks it home.

• Spread glue on the tenon and in the mortice, reassemble the joint, and drive a tapered peg through the offset holes. The peg will force the joint up tight to the shoulder, and the glue will lock the cheeks together, and you have a joint for the centuries.

Now move on to the half-laps at the tops of the frames, which you have cut but which now need to be glued and screwed. There is a subculture of construction machismo that states that screws are just twisty nails to drive in with a and that the slot is just for taking them back out. But by the older tradition—coming from the days before about 1850, when com- mon screws were square on the ends rather than pointed—every screw

FOLDING WORKBENCH | 11 got a carefully drilled pilot hole. Pilot holes are not just for making the screw easier to drive or to keep the wood from splitting; they also make for a tighter joint. If you try to screw together two pieces of wood without a pilot hole, the wood forced out by the screw will move into the gap be- tween the pieces and prevent them from drawing up tight. The pilot hole needs to give passage for the shank (the unthreaded length) and for the root diameter of the threaded portion. Ideally, only the threads of the screw should be going into uncut wood. For joining the two one-inch pieces of the half-lap, you will be using four l3A-inch #10 flat-head wood screws. The "#10" refers to the diameter Early machine-made screws, such as those shown in "Smith's Key," an 1816 English of the screw. Flat-head screws are intended to be countersunk into a coni- hardware catalog (top row), were square- cal depression in the wood, leaving the flat head flush with the surface of pointed. After about 1850, machine-made the wood. In softer wood you could skip the countersinking and just let pointed screws, such as those shown in the the conical head compress the wood, but for or any work 1913 Lipscomb hardware catalog, quickly where appearance matters, you need to the screw heads so replaced their blunt ancestors. that only a minimum of compression is necessary. In any case, rub the

12 FOLDING WORKBENCH Use a pair ofT-hinges to join the completed leg frames to battens screwed to the under- side of the bench top. Swing the leg frames open and bore the holes for the carriage bolts and wing nuts to join the diagonal braces to the leg frames and center block.

screw threads and shank with beeswax to make it go in easier. Don't use soap, as it may make the screw rust faster. When you buy screws, hinges, and other hardware, they can be jar- ringly bright. You can produce a good-looking dark finish by heating the hardware in a fire of shavings and then rubbing it with linseed oil while the metal is still warm. Be very careful, as linseed oil is extremely flammable and can easily burst into flame and burn you. Finishing the leg frames for the bench is most of the work. Now all you need to do is fasten a two-by-two batten to the tops of the frames with two

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 13 If the angle of the dovetails is too shallow, the joint may not hold, but if it is too sharp, the tails may be too fragile and may break. The angle created by setting the bevel to cross the one-inch and six-inch points on the square is a good compromise.

To do simple dovetailing on equal-thickness pieces, you begin by marking the depth of the joint around the ends of both pieces. Set the gauge to the thickness of the stock, plus a little bit. This leaves some extra wood pro- truding for you to plane off smooth after completing the joint.

pairs of four-inch T-hinges. In turn, fasten these battens to the underside of the benchtop with 3V2-inch #12 screws and to the tool well with IVi- inch #8 screws down from the top. The hinges should of course face the insides of the underside of the bench so that the legs fold toward one an- other. Before you put in all the screws, check to see that the legs are flush with the front edge of the bench when folded up. If you have been squar- ing everything carefully as you go, it should fit perfectly, but tiny errors can sometimes add up in the same direction. The braces not only stiffen the legs with the power of unyielding tri- angles; they also add to the rigidity of the middle of the workbench by transferring outward to the legs any downward-bending force. The braces

14 I FOLDING WORKBENCH join to the lower rails on the leg frames with 3/8-inch carriage bolts and wing nuts. To really do their job well, the tops of the braces need to join solidly to the top and to one another yet still be able to move freely to al- low you to fold the bench. Hinges alone would not be solid enough. If you use hinges to fasten the braces to a third, central batten, the ends of the braces need to butt firmly against both the batten and each other. The load must be taken by wood-to-wood contact, not just by the hardware. Instead of using hinges, alternatively you can bolt the braces to a two- by-two block screwed lengthwise down the center of the benchtop. Bore the hole for the carriage bolt through this center pivot block before you screw it to the benchtop. The upper ends of the braces then need to be cut off at a bevel to fit up close to the benchtop: with the legs fully extended, lay the bench on its side and set the braces on it so that they intersect the center of the benchtop and the upper or lower edge of the lower rail of the leg frames. (You will be able to fold the bench flatter if the braces pass under the rails than if they pass on top of the rails.) Reach underneath the brace and -mark its intersection with the top. Cut the braces ac- cordingly, then hold them in place against the prebored center block to mark the bolt holes for their top ends. After boring the holes for the top bolt, attach the two braces and stand the table upright. Mark where the braces lie against the lower rails of the leg frames, and saw and chisel a flat about half an inch wide into the corner of the rail. Bore through both pieces and slip a carriage bolt through to make the final connection. You now have a bench that is wondrously strong and needs only a few more pieces to finish it: up. The two-by-six face screwed to the benchtop not only widens the top by two inches but also adds stiffness. With the addition of a "frog" and a series of holes for pegs and holdfasts, it supports boards for edge planing. The "frog" is easily chopped from a two-by-four with a hatchet and fas- tened to the plank with screws. To hold stock as you surface plane it on the top of the bench, inset a bench stop, a simple one-inch-square peg set Start with these measurements on the end through a hole bored and chiseled square just clear of the far side of the grain of the piece to receive the pins. Mark left leg frame. When it is not needed, the peg can be pushed down out of the areas to be removed with X's. the way.

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 15 Left. Now, with the legs braced and the benchtop well supported, you can Square the lines on the end grain down the use the bench to complete itself. The tool well needs a perimeter skirting sides until they reach the gauged line. Cut to keep the from rolling out. The skirting is just some 3/4-inch by 3- down the lines with a fine-toothed saw, first inch-wide board dovetailed together at the corners. There are numerous sawing diagonally through the corner, then techniques for dovetailing, but the following procedure, cutting the pins squaring up to barely touch the gauged line first and using them to mark the dovetails, works quickly for narrow on both sides. boards.

Right. • Set a gauge to the thickness of the skirt stock, plus a hair (this ex- A saw is among the fastest and tra length will be planed off flush at the completion of the task), easiest tools for removing the "roots" of and mark around both the ends of both pieces with the fence of the dovetail joints. the gauge riding on the end grain. • Set your bevel against a square so that it intersects both the 1-inch mark and the 6-inch mark. (Later you will know this angle on sight and no longer need your bevel.) • Lay out three pins (the boundaries of the two sockets that will ac- cept the two dovetails) on the first board. Make the center pin l/i inch wide and the end pins % inch in from either end. • Draw lines back across the end grain with the bevel to make a sort of W with the bottom cut off. • Square from these lines down to the marks made by the gauge. Mark the two spaces to cut out with X's. • Saw down the lines, keeping the kerf on the waste side of the line. Cut out the root of the waste with a and finish with a chisel. Start the coping saw blade in one of the vertical kerfs with enough room left to make the turn onto the track of the bottom cut. Pop the piece out and turn the saw back the other way. Leave just enough wood remaining above the line that you can quickly clean up the remainder with a chisel.

16 FOLDING WORKBENCH fft

Finish the cuts right up to the line by paring down across the grain with a chisel.

Position the completed pin piece precisely aligned with the gauged line on the tail piece and mark within the spaces with a sharp pencil. (This "pins-first" approach is one of two different methods of transferring dove- tail dimensions used in this book.)

FOLDING WORKBENCH I 17 Square the lines across the end grain and saw down carefully on the waste side of the lines marked for the tails.

Trim the pieces as necessary to a snug fit that will make a good glue joint. Finish by planing the end grain of the pieces flush and smooth.

The "frog" on the front surface of the bench and the bench stop in the top will hold your work for both edge and surface planing. Holes bored at convenient locations through the top and sides give lodgments for pegs and holdfasts to further secure your work.

• Set the second piece flat on the bench and stand the end of the just-completed piece atop it. Align the inner edge of the vertical piece with the gauged line on the horizontal piece and hold it steady. Reach in with a sharp pencil or and mark the inner dimensions of the spaces onto the piece below. Don't let anything move until you are done marking. • Square these lines around the end grain and bring them down on the opposite side using the bevel as your guide. Mark the three spaces, one in the middle and one on each end, with X's. • Saw down these lines with the kerf solidly on the waste side of the line. You can always shave off a bit more if necessary. Saw out the roots of the end pieces, and saw and chisel out the root of the middle piece. • Tap the two boards slowly together while watching for an overly

18 FOLDING WORKBENCH tight fit that might cause a split. Trim as necessary, remembering that Shakespeare's from A Midsummer Night's Dream was named "Snug."

When all is well, dovetail the other corner, glue the dovetails, and screw the skirt to the bench so that the upper edge is level with the work surface. So now you are done. If you head off to town to seek your fortune as a woodworker, you now have a bench to take with you. If you are just be- ginning in woodworking, you now have had your first experiences in planing, sawing, measuring, cutting mortice-and-tenon joints and half- laps, screwing, gluing, drawboring, and dovetailing, and you'll never have to work in a hole in the floor again.

FOLDING WORKBENCH 19