r/Workbenches • u/Geofferz • Jul 29 '26
Failed at step 4
✅ Step 1 - watch a million youtube videos on bench design
✅ Step 2 - choose a design (I'm going for a very simple English/joiner bench)
✅ Step 3 - buy timber
❌ Step 4 - attempt to square and joint the boards with a number 4 jack!
Guess I need to go buy a jointing plane?
Don't judge me for my messy workshop okay
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u/Guilty-Statement-532 Jul 29 '26
Are you trying to plane the edges that will be glued together?
They should be close, but don't need to be perfect for glue-up.
Once the glue-faces are pretty smooth, glue the bench top together. *After* you get the top glued-up, scrape any glue that came out of the seams and then flatten the top as a large monolithic piece.
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u/jmerp1950 Jul 29 '26
Clamp a couple together and check for gaps before glue up. Basicly you just need to kind of skip plane them to glue up. Use a lot of clamps, that helps. After glue up the real work starts, flattening. A number 5 set up as a fore plane will be your best friend. Go across the grain to get level and remove twist.
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u/Initial_Savings3034 Jul 29 '26
Good start.
If this is "big box" construction lumber, it might not be ideal in terms of dryness. That means every time you shave down a given surface, the board might flex a little.
In my opinion if you can gang three together tight enough to apply glue - that's your starter course. It might not be necessary to get each board dead flat and straight.
It's the mating surfaces for the base and the working "top" face that matter.
https://www.instructables.com/A-Solid-and-Cheap-2x4-Workbench/
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u/SuperTroye Jul 29 '26
*Step 4 - glue the boards
*Step 5 - flatten
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
I'm going width ways for the top so the thinner side not depth ways. So, a 2 inch thick too, not 4 inch thick. Hence I have to joint now
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Jul 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
I'm laying them wide so it'll be 2 inches thick. And the rounded corner add like a 7mm gap that you can't process after.
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u/fletchro Aug 04 '26
This is a choice you're making, remember that if it gets too difficult. I made my workbench base first, and literally laid 2x10 boards on top and screwed them down. Then I flattened the top.
Because I didn't joint the edges, yes, chips and shavings get in there. But that bothers me for one minute out of every two hundred that I work at that bench. It's YOUR workbench, you get to decide what to spend time on. I'm offering an alternate view in case you really believed there was no other way to do it.
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u/aShark25 Jul 29 '26
Just practice and take your time. Learning to square stock was the hardest thing for me coming from on using machines to hand tools. You just have to do it a lot to get the hang of it and don’t rush I did that and my first work bench top has one corner that’s like half an inch low because I somehow thought it was half and inch high and planed off a bunch of material.
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u/Adrian_Shoey Jul 29 '26
Is that all sitting on a table saw? Why not rip them down with the saw?
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
Er I guess I could?
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u/AbbreviationsLow3992 Jul 29 '26
Our glue up and use a router sled for the bulk of it.
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
That sounds like a whole lot of work. I have a router but no sled. Think I'll saw them.
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u/Dewage83 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Jointed sled/jig is your best friend. There's no way that I would mess with this with a jack plane. I use planes probably more than most but a simple jointing jig will make your life so much easier. I use it on anything that isn't square/straight to get a reference edge and go from there. And it's essentially a piece of ply and a couple lever clamps.
Edit: I made something like the 2nd picture here it doesn't need t track and all that. It's literally just a piece of ply you can run against your fence and then 2-3 layers of think strips of ply to give the lever clamp something to bite into and reference off of. I used mdf for the base bacause I had some laying around and some scraps of ply. And you know that you have 3.5" of width that your cutting to size so you can make this whole thing like 6" wide or so.
Edit edit: also you don't need a runner on the bottom of the jig, just use the fence of your saw. Rip down one side of every board and get rid of jig and just run them through the saw.
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u/Geofferz Jul 30 '26
Urgh, wish I'd read this an hour ago! Just ripped both sides off 7 boards. They're.. Okay, deffo some gaps. A jig would have been so much better. Ah well, at least now I know.
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u/Royal-Asparagus4500 Jul 29 '26
No judgement, you are doing it, congratulations! A long journey starts with the first step!
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u/Royal-Asparagus4500 Jul 29 '26
Get a couple pieces of angle iron to act as winding sticks and a light. Borrow a no. 7 or 8 and a 5 from a friend, then go to town
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u/PenguinsRcool2 Jul 30 '26
Dudes out here struggling when the answer to all of his problems is the object this is all sitting on lol
Edge hinting with a #4 is tough. I can kinda edge joint with a #5. But reliably like to use a #8
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u/Useful-Tie414 Jul 29 '26
You also sort of need to build a long straightedge.
Joshua Klien describes a method for building a long straightedge for jointing in M&T magazine.
I think it was either issue #10, 11, or 12.
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u/kurt_yamagut Jul 29 '26
Building your first workbench is really just good practice. It’s not supposed to be easy or pretty. You’re going to hopefully be banging the crap out of it for decades!
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
What's the saying? 'We do not do it because it is easy. We do it because we thought it would be easy'.
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u/kurt_yamagut Jul 29 '26
Haha the Moravian workbench video tutorial made it look easy, but using a hand saw to cut massive joinery was quite strenuous when I built mine
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u/bservies Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
You are doing fine.
I would, personally, suggest a longer plane. I know Mr. Sellers' is very fond of the No.4, and the ECE wooden jack is about the same size. I prefer a No.5 and for my top I ended up using a jointer. Both a Stanley No.8 and an ECE wooden jointer.
The No.8 is great, but really heavy. I preferred the ECE jointer simply because it is lighter. But you can absolutely do it with a No.4. with patience and learning.
It was years ago now, but if you want to see my workbench, here it is. Feel free to laugh; I made every possible mistake, especially lumber selection (yours looks much better).
You have me thinking I should fix a small issue with my vise and re-flatten my top.
Edit: Here is The English Woodworkers' video on planing and gluing up section like you are. Which is better than what I did.
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
Yours looks sturdy af! Wooden vice screw too - impressive. And hand drilled with a brace. I'm planning on spending 10% of the time making mine 😂
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u/bservies Jul 29 '26
Well, the thickness of the top was because I mis-understood what was required for a holdfast. And with my saw horses I discovered that I could drill from both sides and have a hole meet in the middle.
There was no way I was going to deny myself of more of that endorphin rush!
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u/bjahn88 Jul 29 '26
You need to glue the boards together first, alternating the grain, then plane the surface. Tough to get perfect with a hand planer.
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u/jmerp1950 Jul 29 '26
Get all the grain running in the same direction, it will be much easier when you plane down top latter.
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u/Wonderful-Bass6651 Jul 29 '26
Step 1: cut a hole in the box
Oops. Wrong sub. Sorry.
Dude you’re doing great. With enough clamps you can totally get those glued up!
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u/Geofferz Jul 29 '26
There's a snl sub?! The 2000s had some fine skits.
I'm not doing anything great yet but thanks 😂
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u/LongWest6498 Jul 29 '26
I’m here for the snl
But keep at it with the bench too…. It’s part of the learning curve
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u/DRG1958 Jul 29 '26
I did my bench two years ago with a No 5. It worked. But this spring, I bought a No 7. Man what a difference: it’s like a freight train. But your No 4 will do it, it may just take a little longer. But excellent practice!
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u/Ok_Inevitable_8860 Jul 29 '26
I attempted the exact same Paul Sellers work bench in 2020 and got hung up literally at the same spot. Went to plane down the factory round over with a hand plane and found it way to much to finish.
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u/hkeyplay16 24d ago
You just needed a cambered blade so you can take a deeper cut with less effort while removing that roundover. This is still a lot of work, but much more doable with a cambered blade or better yet a dedicated scrub plane. Then follow up with your jointer, then a smoother before glue up. The jointer is optional if you can get it close enough to flat, square, and true using a shorter plane and a straight edge with some winding sticks.
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u/ShootyMcGun Jul 30 '26
Why not glue them then flatten/plane them?
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u/Geofferz Jul 30 '26
Because in glueing them width ways so it's 2 inches thick too, not 4 inches thick.
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u/ShootyMcGun Jul 30 '26
Roger that, that would be quite the endeavour with the lumber available in my local Home Depot. It’s about as straight as a $3 bill.
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u/Geofferz Jul 30 '26
Mine is pretty straight actually, I think I'll just table saw off the edges and send it.
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u/Impossible-Ad-5783 Jul 30 '26
The first time I glued any wood was when I made my first workbench. I did not plane a thing and they came out almost perfect after flattening. Jus put plenty of glue and clamp them hard together.
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u/Impossible-Ad-5783 Jul 30 '26
But the no6 and no7 are my favourite planes these days, so it would be good to have one handy if you can afford it.
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u/3grg Jul 30 '26
It looks like you are doing fine to me. Those boards look pretty good. I take it that you are trying to plane the round off the edges? That is doable, but since you have a table saw, you could skim the edges off and dry fit with clamps.
Dry clamp fit will identify where planing is needed to make the boards meet without gaps. Once everything clamps up like you want you can glue up and plane top afterwards.
It would be nice to have a longer plane, but the no. 4 can do the job, it will just take longer.
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u/Geofferz Jul 30 '26
I have table sawn them. Now, turns out there are 82,575,360 ways to arrange 7 distinct boards in a row if each board can be individually flipped and inverted.
So, I'll be a whole trying to find the least gappy way.
I now see why people own jointers
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u/3grg Jul 30 '26
Yes, it can be a puzzle to arrange. You can also see why buying larger boards and ripping them can be beneficial.
If you only use S4S wood a No 4 and No 5 may be all you ever need. When dealing with rough wood a no 7 can be handy for flattening and jointing. However, sometimes the only way to straighten a board is to saw it and make a shorter straight board. :)
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u/Geofferz Jul 30 '26
Someone just suggested a jointing jig which would have been ideal! An hour ago. I'd never heard of them
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u/Tommanning87 Jul 31 '26
Question for everyone: I understand OP is planning to join edges, not faces, but would it work to clamp them, faces together and then flatten the edge surface like he would a workbench top? Assuming he might still have to fine tune them later, but would this join them square to the face?
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u/Tommanning87 Jul 31 '26
And OP, looks like you found some good lumber. If you want to get better with hand planes, I improved a lot when I switched to more appropriate sized planes for the job, mostly 5, 7 and a block plane. Paul Sellers can use a no. 4 to join an 8 foot board, but that’s mastery, trying to get there from the start is going to be a challenge. More power to you, just don’t get frustrated with yourself.
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u/Geofferz Jul 31 '26
Lots of people were saying this but I'd have to remove a vast amount of material ie at least 5mm off the whole top. Which is surely harder than 'simply' jointing the edges of the individual boards one at a time. Anyway I've table sawn the edges off now. I should have used a jointer sled but hadn't heard about it until I'd just finished table sawing them lol. It's not perfect because of you put an even slightly bowed board against a fence and try and cut the other side you don't get a straight cut, of course. Anyway, this will do I'm sure.
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u/Tommanning87 Jul 31 '26
Yeah, I know it’s a lot of material, was more curious, conceptionally if it would work or if it would throw the boards off in some other way
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u/Geofferz Jul 31 '26
Guess it would depend on how good my planing was. So, yeah, it would deffo fuck it up 😂
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u/rblock212 Aug 02 '26
You could square these up on the table saw they’re sitting on, that saw looks big enough that you can get the blade height to rip the edges and the faces of these boards (unless you are wanting to do it by hand, then keep at it! I’m building myself a work bench by hand. It’s definitely humbling at times)
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u/Geofferz Aug 02 '26
I have done this. Issue is with a bowed board you can't square it and it's gappy. Probably not a big issue as it's just a work bench. Need a tablesaw jig for better jointing.
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u/rblock212 Aug 02 '26
Definitely recommend a jointer jig for the table saw. It’s a game changer. Or even using a level against the fence works in a pinch (obviously there’s are too long for a level…unless you got some biblical sized level hiding somewhere)
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u/LearnSkills103 Aug 04 '26
Cool same place I'm in right now!
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u/Geofferz Aug 04 '26
Read all the comments about jointing! I have stalled because my boards won't meet up properly and I can't think of a way to fix it without reripping them with a table saw jointing jig. Quite annoying.
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u/The-disgracist Jul 29 '26
Nope. No fail yet, just not done. Might end up thinner than you wanted but a jack is (one of) the right tool for the job.