Building a Bench - The Braces and Top

Leg 2 went just like leg 1. After they were both glued up, I two legs like this one:

Once I had these ready, I had to put some cross braces on them to support the top. My initial design had me cutting two 14" pieces and screwing them to the legs. I clamped them on, leveled them, and then screwed them into the side of the leg.

Once I had that done, I got the top ready by just laying the boards on top to see how they looked. Each top piece is a 46" 2x4 that was just cut to length and put on.

It looked pretty good, so it was time to then get more serious.

I grabbed my Kreg pocket hole device and started to put holes in the cross braces (after removing them from the legs). This would allow me to attach the top from below, without any holes in the top. I put two holes in for each top piece (4), which was a total of 8 holes in each brace, or 32 with 4 braces.

I screwed everything together, just to check the height, and it was too high. I'd set the  length of the legs at 22", but when I sat down, that was a little tall. I had my daughter check and her feet were swinging free, so I knew I'd need to cut things down.

I also realized that the cross braces would show below the edging I had planned, so I also needed to remove the cross braces and cut an angle off the bottom of them. However I left that for another day.

Building a Bench - Leg 1 Glue Up

The glue was dry this morning, so the first thing I did was run the base across the jointer to smooth it out. That gives me a nice base on which to stand things.

With the base and the leg, I next decided to cut the corners before glue up. It would be harder once the support is in, so I ran it across the table saw.

Then it was time for glue. I put glue inside the base, smearing it near the top and adding more than I thought, and then pushed in the support

Once this dries, I’ll have a single support. Then it’s time to duplicate this, but try doing it another way to see if it’s easier.

Building a Bench - Leg 1

I saw a bench in a store a few months ago and I thought, that should be easy, so I embarked on the project. It's been slow, and I've just been working on it a few minutes each time I can.

Today I got the base of leg one glued up. I started last week, planing and joining two boards for the upright support and gluing them together. They are 2 2x4s, about 20" long, glued together.

Today I planed and joined two other boards, and then cut them into 4 1/4" slices for the middle spacers that go next to my support. Jointed two other boards that would be the outside, and then glued everything up, execpt the support. I left that as a spacer and then pulled it out, giving me essentially a 4 2x4 wide plank with a hole in it. I want to joint the base and cut angles, so I decide to leave the support out for now and I'll glue that in there once I have the base set.

Testing the Planer

I bought a refurbished Rigid Planer last year and it’s been sitting in a box in the garage for a long time. I’ve been busy, and the projects I’ve tackled haven’t required more than jointing one side.

However I wanted to laminate some boards together and build a bench, and needed to get everything to the same thickness. Two weeks ago I unpacked the planer and put it on a mobile cart I had. There were legs in it, which I hadn’t expected, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use them.

A week ago, I dug through the parts and instructions, looking over things, but didn’t feel like doing anything.

Today I decided to do something. No instructions for the legs, but they’re simple metal bolt together legs. I leaned that I connect the top and bottom part of each leg with one bolt, saving the other one for the cross braces. I bolted the cross braces together, and then tightened everything once I was done. About 10-15 minutes to assemble it.

I stuck it out of the way in the garage, and then carried the planer over to it. It’s heavy, but it fit right on top, and four bolts easily held it down to the legs assembly. Once it was done, this is what it looked like:

The instructions say to clean off the oil from metal parts, but there really wasn’t any. Perhaps because this was a refurb? I did have to remove a plastic coating from the interior bed.

I just wanted to test it, so I grabbed the three pieces I needed sized, already jointed on one side. I lowered the bed to a rough spot where I’d rip off about 1/4” of stuff and fed one through.

It came out the other side, and looked like I had two parallel sides.

I quickly ran through all three  pieces, and then looked like they were consistently the right size. I glued them together, and we’ll see tomorrow how they look.

Hay Mover

When we went to big bales, we worried about moving them around the property. The first year wasn’t bad since we had 8 delivered at a time, and just dropped them in the barn from the trucks and fed off them. However this year, with a hay shortage, we decided we needed more and had 24 or so delivered in the fall. A friend has a similar, but slightly smaller, tractor, and he built a set of pallet forks for his tractor.

We were hoping he would help us, but he ended up getting hurt, and with hay getting in short supply in the barn, we decided to just order some. A little bit of trouble since the original forks we planned on were not being made, but we decided to move to a skid steer adapter, and then add pallet forks, or other attachments to that.

I’d been meaning to go get them, but too busy. However today, despite waking up a little late, I packed up Kendall after feeding horses and raced up there. We were pushing 82 in a 75 most of the way, arriving at 11:58 (they closed at 12). They’re in the country, and good neighbors, and a guy stuck around to help me load my stuff, and take the bucket off. They’re going to adapt the bucket to work with the skid steer, and so  I left it, bringing back the load above. Pallet forks on top, and the skid steer adapter on the bottom.

We got home, and my first step was to remove the old bucket quick attach frame. Not sure what we’ll do with that, but I pulled it off.

It’s four bolts held in with pins and they were fairly easy to remove. A little pounding, but it worked fine. However it’s a pain and definitely not what I want to be doing to switch from the forks to the bucket.

I then lifted and grunted the adapter near and managed to get it attached. The first pin is in above, and surprisingly it wasn’t too bad to get them all in. However that thing is a 100 lbs of solid metal and not easy to move. Taking this one and off would not be fun.

 

Once it was on, it looked pretty good. I had to lift the tractor and then adjust it slightly to get the pins in, and then I added the forks.

We didn’t move hay, but we did test them out and they worked pretty good.

Building a Box

We set up our arena to run the lights off a generator since we expect it to be used only 100-120 hours a year, and that makes for an expensive electrical run.

We got the lights up, the generator bought, and now we need a place to put it. Having it inside doesn't work for a few reasons: CO2, noise, and it's hot.

The plan was to then put the generator in an all weather box. I searched around for some plans, and read what some people had done, and then decided I should build my own. The first step was building a sturdy base. I did that with some 2x6s and OSB, bracing the floor with 4 cross joists.

It was quite sturdy, and I think it will do well. Now I need to add some sides.

The Virtual Lathe

A friend sent me this animation from Grizzly tools, and I thought it was pretty neat. You can power up the lathe and make cuts in the wood, allowing you to see how the tool works. It’s hard, and you don’t get the feedback you get with an actual tool, but it’s a neat way of explaining to people how a lathe works.