Am Try project

The hook up

Well it was time... time to begin to put the pieces, the stages, together. Until I began I had no clue how I was gonna manage the angled leg thing and get it spaced right. It seemed to me things would be simpler if I were to attach the legs to the bottom shelf, and then attach that assembly to the bottom of the bench top.
Now all I had to do was come up with the how...

I had some left over chunks of face glued 2x4s from cutting the legs, about 14 inches in length. Well 6 inches of clearance from the floor seemed reasonable, so I cut them into 6 inch long chunks and used them to prop the bottom shelf at that height.

I then straddled the legs over shelf and measured off 6 inches from the edge of the shelf to the outside edge of the legs and clamped them into place. with the clamps tightened I pulled the riser blocks and checked everything for relative level. I made a few gentle adjustments with a mallet until I was happy :) and tightened the clamps again,

I then chucked up a very long 5/16ths" drill bit, drilled the holes for the carriage bolts, tapped the bolts home and tightened them up complete with lock washers to help cut down on the loosen-age that happens over time.

I admit carriage bolts are a bit of a let down for me as I am such a joinery freak, but I had to keep in mind that we live in a rental and someday I may want to move this beast out of the basement, and there is no way it would fit up in one piece, thus no wedged mortise and tenon or anything more fancy, just carriage bolts and lag screw for attaching the legs to the top.

I then lifted down the leg assembly, and flipped the benchtop over bottomside up. Starting to play with things I grabbed my end vise and made a discovery, The top was too thick to allow the flip up bench dog on the vise to be effective. I had to remedy this.

I laid the vice down and measured out the area I would meed to remove and the depth I needed to remove. I then chucked a 1" moticing bit into my router and blew out the area to about an inch depth

This done I positioned and lag screwed the leg assembly to the top. Then it was upstairs to beg and plead with the first lady to com help me flip the whole thing over. Im lucky she loves me because she came down and helped

I could not wait to test out the height, I desperately wanted the workbench to also act as an out feed table for my table saw, I tried my best to judge and measure, but with the angled legs it would have been easy for someone like me to make a mistake, the disaster would be too high because then I would have to either shorten the workbench, or rethink the shop layout I decided on. I bellied up the saw to the bench and threw a board on it.... lot of suspense and maybe a drum roll. The height on the bench was perfect, dead on perfect, I could not believe it myself.
I made several mistakes on this project and I hope to learn from them for the next time, but to at least get this important detail right felt good.

I threw the boards of the bottom shelf and nailed them into place with 4d finishing nails. And I do believe then I called it a night..

good night all

Oldwolf